121 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3e2e9cee2ec03dcd9f4d017bb2bd6dd9.pdf d1848b7108f7660aea5babd09a41c09d PDF Text Text B INGHAMTON U N I V E R S I T Y STAT E  U N I V E R S I T Y   O F   N E W   YO R K L172 2% [4 D E P A R T M E N T Senior  Recital JOANNE DANZHOU LI PIANO W i th G race Kim, violin And rew Tsai, violin J enni fer Ch e n,  cello Kimberly M etaxas, clari net Mengr u Zeng, pian o Mélanie Lag uerre, piano Ewa Mackiewicz­Wolfe, piano Saturday , May 8, 2010 3 :00 p.m. Casadesus Recital Hall �ABOUT THE PERFORMERS PROGRAM Melodie. .  .Fritz Kreisler (1875­1962) G race Kim, violin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11......  ..Fryderyk Chopin I.  Allegro maestoso  II.  Ramance – Larghetto (1810­1849) Ewa Mackiewicz­Wolfe, piano II.  Romance  .  is also the recipient of the Gold Medal in the Local Piano Competition in Harbin,  China,  and  the  Silver  Medal  in  the  Provincial  Level  Piano .Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873­1943) Melanie Laguerre, piano I  Allegro con brio  ..Ludwig van Beethoven Jennifer Chen, cello (1770­1827) Kimberly Metaxas, clarinet Liebesleid (Love’s Sorrow) & Liebesfi'eud (Love’s Joy).....Fritz Kreisler (1875­1962) And rew Tsai, violin The Nutcracker Suite, Op.71..  V.  Arabian Dance ..1.Peter Ilyich Tschaikowsky (1840­1893) Arranged by Eduard Langer Sor four hands, one piano III.  Dance of the Sugar­Plum Fairy  IV.  Russian Dance (Trepak)  VIII.  Waltz of the Flowers Arranged by Nicolas Economou Jor four hands. two pianos Mengr u Zeng, piano In 2002, Li won the National Organization Committee for Musical Trials of  Chinese  Youngsters  in  Xiamen, China and  the National  Musical Competition in  the province Hei  Long Jiang, China.  Li  received the Mengr u Zeng, piano Piano Trio No.4 in B” Major, Op.11  .  .  Chen, a well known pianist and pi ano professor in local areas of Chi na. Instrument Competition (Piano Group, Age12­16) in Beijing, China.  She at) INTERMSSION ca Piano Trio for six hands, one piano.  .  JOANNE DANZHOU LI, pianist, is a graduating senior at Binghamton University,  majoring  in  Bioengineering  in  the  Watson  School  of Engineering and Applied Science.  She was born in Harbin, China, and immigrated to the United States in 2003 at the age of 16.  She started to learn the piano at the age of three with her primary piano teacher Na certificate of the highest level (Level 10) in the Chinese National Music Examinations in 2000.  During the summer of 2004, she participated in the yearly event, “The Summer o f H   arbin” concert as one o f t he pianists in the “Hundred­person piano“ performance. Moreover, she has been the pianist for the Binghamton Chinese Christian Church (division of Twin Orchard Baptist Church) for two years. Now,  she  has  been  studying  the  piano  with  Professor  Ewa Mackiewicz­Wolfe since her freshman year at BU,  Although Li  is not pursuing her future career as a musician, she will always keep learning and playing the piano as an essential part of her life because music is truly something that she cannot live without. Ewa  Mackiewicz­Wolfe,  adjunct  Piano  Professor  at  Binghamton University,  received  her  Bachelor  and  Master  degrees  in  Piano Performance from the Academy of Music in  Lodz, Poland  where she continued as an Assistant Professor and Master Lecturer in music. She won the First Prize of the International Competition of Renaissance and Baroque Music in Warsaw, Poland, and is also the recipient of numerous awards including the international  music competitions in Germany and Hungary. She continued an active performing career as a recitalist, chamber musician  and  a  soloist  with  symphony  orchestras.  She  performed throughout Europe, Canada and the Northeast United States including �Jordan  Hall  of  the  New  England  Conservatory  of  Music,  Phillips Academy and Boston  University. Acclaimed  for her performances of Fryderyk  Chopin  music, she  has given  remembrance  concerts at the Consulate  General  of France, the Consulate General  of Poland, New York City, the Hamilton Conservatory of Arts, Hamilton, Canada and the New England Chopin Society, Boston. In  the concert season of 2008­2009, Mackiewicz­Wolfe appeared in recitals and chamber music concerts featuring Grieg’s Sonata for Cello and Piano with cellist Stephen Stalker; Rachmaninoff’s Suites No. 1, 2 and Symphonic Dances for Two Pianos and the Binghamton premier of John Adams’s  Hallelujah Junction for Two Pianos with pianist Michael Salmirs as part of the Fredheim Memorial Series. Mengru  (Ivy)  Zeng, pianist,  is  a  junior  majoring  in  Accounting  in School of Management at Binghamton University.  She began studying piano at  the age  of four with  one  of the  best  piano teachers  in  her hometown city, Dalian, China.  At the age of seven, she won the city­ wide Piano­performing Competition of Youth and Children, which was also the first award of many competition prizes she has earned.  In 1998, Zeng  started  studying  piano  with  Lai  Yuanpei  at  the  Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China. She took part in the National Piano Grade Examination held by the Association of Chinese Musicians in 1999 and received the highest Level­10 certificate.  In 2004, Zeng was invited by the live show “Good Times This Weekend” of Dalian TV Station to perform a piano solo piece, “The Nightingale,” by Mikhail Glinka. Zeng moved to the United States in June 2004.  She is currently taking  piano  lessons  with  Professor  Ewa  Mackiewicz­Wolfe  at Binghamton University. Even though Zeng is not pursuing a professional career as a pianist, music will always be a significant part of her life. Mélanie LaGuerre, pianist, has been studying with Ewa Mackiewicz­ Wolfe  since  her  freshman year at Binghamton  University. Now as a sophomore, she is a Pre­Dental student, and her major is Biology and her minor is  music. At a young age, her piano studies started at Sylvia’s Ballet Academy in her hometown Long Island, NY.  At the academy she developed a love for classical composers such as Frederic Chopin, and Franz Liszt. Jennifer  Elizabeth  Chen  has  been  a  cellist  for  over  12  years.  A Rochester,  NY  native,  she  has  played  cello  with  several  different orchestras and ensembles, including the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra,  various  All­State  and  All­County  orchestras,  and  most recently, the Binghamton Symphony Orchestra.  She most recently won the Binghamton University Student Concerto and Aria Competition and appeared  as  a soloist  with  the  Binghamton  Symphony  Orchestra  in March.  Jennifer is in her third and final year at Binghamton University, majoring  in  Mathematics  and  Psychology.  She  has  been  actively developing her musicality through the music department at Binghamton University with involvement in several chamber groups, private studio lessons,  as  well  as  membership  in  the  orchestra.  As  a  student  at Binghamton University, Jennifer has been a Resident Assistant for two years.  This University Scholar is a member is Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa  Phi,  and  has  been  awarded  with  the  President’s  Award  for Undergraduate  Student  Excellence  and  the  Chancellor’s  Award  for Student Excellence.  Upon graduation this coming May, Jennifer will be attending Columbia University as a Math for America fellow, pursuing a career in teaching secondary mathematics, but hopes to continue playing the cello in the upcoming years. Kimberly Metaxas, clarinetist, a native of Vestal, NY, is a graduate student of conducting at Binghamton University studying with Professor Robert  Smith.  Ms.  Metaxas  holds  a  Bachelor’s  Degree  in  Music Education  from  SUNY  Fredonia,  and a  Bachelor’s  Degree  in  Music Therapy from Michigan State University.  She is a music teacher for the Susquehanna Valley and Union­Endicott High School marching bands, and BOCES summer school program.  Most recently, Ms. Metaxas has been a member of Binghamton University’s Wind Symphony and Harpur Jazz Ensemble,  Vestal  Community  Band, and the Empire  Statesmen Drum and Bugle Corps. And rew Tsai, violinist, hails from Massachusetts, and has been playing the violin since the age of five. He has been in many youth and school orchestras, as well as district festival orchestras. He is currently studying under Dr. Janey Choi, and  participates in  the Binghamton University Orchestra. �Grace Kim, violinist, is a freshman at Binghamton University.  She was born in Frankfurt, Germany. Her inspiration of music came from her dad who is a pianist and a professor in Korea. She started playing violin since Binghamton University Music Department’s State and All­County Orchestra, Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra, and  Several  youth  orchestras  in  Seoul,  Korea.  She  is  currently  in Binghamton  Symphony Orchestra. She is involved  in  chamber group W  45­ The Binghamton University Department of Music is proud to present its 2010­2011 season concerts. The Department of Music presents over 100 concerts (most of which are free) from solo recitals to orchestra the age of 6. She has played violin in many orchestras including All­ under  Professor  Crawford and taking studio  lessons under Dr.  Janey Choi. U P C O M I N G  E V E N T S concerts to jazz presentations which include a variety of performances by guest, faculty and student artists. For a complete list of our concerts and more, visit us at music.binghamton.edu. AUGUST 2010 Summer Youth Musical Theater Workshop presents Titanic SEPTEMBER 2010 Jonathan Biggers, organ OCTOBER 2010 Reunion Recital with Marietta Simpson, mezzo­soprano University Symphony Orchestra’s Children’s Concert: All Creatures Viola Plus with Roberta Crawford Guest Organists: Michael Bauer & Marie Rubis NOVEMBER 2010 University Chorus Jonathan Biggers, organ Czech Vocal Music: Mary Burgess, soprano, Timothy LeFebvre, baritone, and guest artist Timothy Cheek, piano DECEMBER 2010 University Symphony Orchestra: All­American Program Harpur Jazz Ensemble with guest artist FEBRUARY 2011 Faculty Recital: Timothy LeFebvre, baritone and Michael Salmirs, piano University Symphony Orchestra Jonathan Biggers, organ APRIL 2011 Harpur Jazz Ensemble with guest artist Jonathan Biggers, organ Pianist Michael Salmirs presents a Chopin & S chumann 200th Birthday Celebration MAY 2011 University Chorus with the University Symphony Orchestra present Choral Masterworks: Roman Maciejewski : Requiem, Book 1; Poulenc: Gloria �Melodienstrauld Jl Spring Bouquet of German Lieder, aflrizas & Ensembles German Lyric Diction Finzl Coneert ­ Judy Berry, Instructor a  N E 44/9?   "(\\‘§©/9/// = . Th u ,  M ay 13th at 8 pmi’  3  ;  ,  G 7”), BINGHAMTO} Lasrdesus Recital Hall ­ free  T1111}? T T TT   ' .  p  —–  rane WSKG Public Broadcasting mollumom  a l l a I : I  Lr IF  vn l ’—l I I v: — — —   – . _ — _ — — pTe n i­–­­ “ p r i aTi m m– n u n a  FvENNEN v M EER —   0 — H E inoniyn E Boe —_­——  —  y — — —   —   iridium – slum 4,th � 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 2 sound discs Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 31:24 35:21 Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145295">https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145295</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 Joanne Danzhou Li, piano, senior recital, May 8, 2010 Recital Tape 2010-5-8 Description An account of the resource Works by Kreisler, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky. Held at 3:00 p.m., May 8, 2010, Casadesus Recital Hall. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Li, Joanne Danzhou 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 2010-05-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource sound 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: Universal Viewer / Rosetta Rosetta audio media 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.) 34:40:00 Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145289">https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145289</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>. 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 Jana Kucera, master's recital, May 9, 2010 Recital Tape 2010-5-9 Description An account of the resource Works by Cavalli, Cesti, Parisotti, Sarti, Haydn, Puccini, Hahn, Smetana, Haas, Dvorak, Ježek. Held at 3:00 p.m., May 9, 2010, Casadesus Recital Hall. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kucera, Jana 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 2010-05-09 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/41774088b21335181c6730be7444d171.jpg dfa9269d08933e281a9474035c33e6e1 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/fd8b1d82d66849bb9b20e5a76530d3da.mp3 4ba138d541daa24b62bd12371bed9dd8 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 Troy D. Perry Date of Interview 2010-05-11 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.) 124:39 Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Rev. Troy Perry is an author, activist and founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, which belongs to a Protestant denomination known for affirming with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. He became a licensed Baptist preacher by the age of 15 and was a pastor of several churches several years later, during which he was battling with his sexuality. Perry wrote several books including his autobiography, The Lord is My Shephard and He Knows I'm Gay.&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}">Rev. Troy Perry is an author, activist, and founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, which belongs to a Protestant denomination known for affirming with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. He became a licensed Baptist preacher by the age of 15 and was a pastor of several churches several years later, during which he was battling with his sexuality. Perry wrote several books including his autobiography, <em>The Lord is My Shephard and He Knows I'm Gay</em>.</span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Activism; Gay Rights; Ronald Reagan; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Stonewall Riots; Vietnam Memorial; AIDS; religion; Anti-war; Vietnam Veterans; Leonard Matlovich, LGBT.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Activism; Gay Rights; Ronald Reagan; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Stonewall Riots; Vietnam Memorial; AIDS; religion; Anti-war; Vietnam Veterans; Leonard Matlovich, LGBT.</span> Subject LCSH Clergy; Authors, American--20th century; Civil rights workers; Metropolitan Community Church; Perry, Troy D.--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 Troy Perry Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Perry, Troy D. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Clergy; Authors, American--20th century; Civil rights workers; Metropolitan Community Church; Perry, Troy D.--Interviews Description An account of the resource Rev. Troy Perry is an author, activist, and founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, which belongs to a Protestant denomination known for affirming with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. He became a licensed Baptist preacher by the age of 15 and was a pastor of several churches several years later, during which he was battling with his sexuality. Perry wrote several books including his autobiography, <em>The Lord is My Shephard and He Knows I'm Gay</em>. 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 2010-05-11 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.10.2016.145a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.145b 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. 124:39 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/71452f766a696c7ac0d486b0c646a312.jpg 186582db49d866082ffaf50a0f8806d7 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ecd5e87cc4f0e824568aedc123936ff3.mp3 9fd579f7929436c2fb3522d2aeb8dbb8 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 2010-05-13 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Stephen Gaskin Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Stephen Gaskin (1935 - 2014) was an American counterculture Hippie Icon. He was an author of over a dozen books and a political activist. He went to prison in 1974 for marijuana possession and his voting rights were rescinded. Gaskin was a recipient for the first Right Livelihood Award in 1980 and an inductee in the Counterculture Hall of Fame in 2004.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Stephen Gaskin (1935 - 2014) was an American Hippie counterculture icon. He was an author of over a dozen books and a political activist. He went to prison in 1974 for marijuana possession and his voting rights were rescinded. Gaskin was a recipient for the first Right Livelihood Award in 1980 and an inductee in the Counterculture Hall of Fame in 2004.</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 MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 138:44 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Sexual Relations; Free Speech Movement; Baby boom generation; Women's Rights Movement; Sex; Drugs; Rock n' Roll; Vietnam Memorial; Healing;Free Speech Movement;&nbsp; Kent State; Jackson State; Watergate; Government Corruption; Woodstock; Hippies; Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; Weatherman; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Lyndon B. Johnson; Black Panthers.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:5009,&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;10&quot;:0,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;arial,sans,sans-serif&quot;}"><span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Sexual Relations; Free Speech Movement; Baby boom generation; Women's Rights Movement; Sex; Drugs; Rock n' Roll; Vietnam Memorial; Healing;Free Speech Movement;&nbsp; Kent State; Jackson State; Watergate; Government Corruption; Woodstock; Hippies; Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; Weatherman; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Lyndon B. Johnson; Black Panthers.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:5009,&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;10&quot;:0,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;arial,sans,sans-serif&quot;}">Sexual Relations; Free Speech Movement; Baby boom generation; Women's Rights Movement; Sex; Drugs; Rock n' Roll; Vietnam Memorial; Healing; Free Speech Movement;&nbsp; Kent State; Jackson State; Watergate; Government Corruption; Woodstock; Hippies; Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; Weatherman; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Lyndon B. Johnson; Black Panthers; </span></span><span>Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa; </span>Sixties; The Farm; Stephen Gaskin; Ina May Gaskin; Tennessee; United Nations NGO; Community; Activism; H. Rap Brown; Ralph Featherstone; Mo Udall; Black Panthers; Oren Lyons; Jerry Garcia; Grateful Dead; Tim Leary; Pig Pen; St. Stephen; Bobby Seale; Stokely Carmichael; Russell Means; Beatnik; San Francisco State; Midwife. Subject LCSH Authors; Political activists--United States; Hippies; Gaskin, Stephen--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Stephen Gaskin Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Carrie Blabac-Myers Date of interview: 13 May 2010 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 0:15 SM: First question I want to ask is, before I even talk about your life and your experiences when the (19)60s begin, in your opinion, and what do you think and when did it end? 0:31 SG: Well, the beginning of the (19)60s for me, was a little late because I was finishing up my master's degree, in the real early sixties. And I got my master's, I think in (19)63, I taught (19)64 to (19)65. And the (19)60s began in (19)66 for me. And that was when I realized they were not going to fire me, but I had become too weird to rehire. 1:00 SM: Hmm. And that was when you were in San Francisco State? 1:04 SG: Right, I taught Shree years as San Francisco state, I got my bachelor's there, and my master's. 1:09 SM: Well, obviously, you went off in 1970 form the commune, but- 1:16 SG: We went off in 1970 because [inaudible] tour, we had no idea we were going to make the community. We always say "community", down south people who live in communes are called communists. 1:30 SM: Wow. When did the (19)60s end in your opinion? 1:35 SG: Well, see, people talk about, you know that the (19)70s was such a mess and came apart and stuff but for the (19)70s was the ten years we spent really working smart and loving each other for the work that we did. The (19)70s was make the farm happen so the (19)70 is fine for me. I am not I am not calling things off. I have not forgotten anything. And I am not going to I am not going to [inaudible]- 2:07 SM: When was there a watershed moment for it? Not only for you, but for a lot of members of the boomer generation. Was there a watershed moment when you knew this was a special time? 2:22 SG: Well, my students had to come and tell me when I was teaching at the San Francisco State, and they said, you were fun, and you were smart, you were funny, but you do not know what is happening. I said, oh! And so, they start telling me about it. You got to do a few things for us before we can continue the conversation. Okay, what do I have to do? They said, we will see the Beatles movie, go see the Grateful Dead. 2:48 SM: Oh wow. 2:52 SG: San Francisco State was trying to be kind of new. And they had what they call a mixed media event, which was three teachers reading three different poems and a couple of slides of vectors. I understood the concept but I did not do much. And when we went to see the Grateful Dead, we came in the door to the auditorium and there was a guy in the zebra suit, jumping on a trampoline underneath a strobe light. And you could not even tell what he was. 3:23 SM: Well, that that was a pretty watershed moment! 3:30 SG: And I just suddenly, well I realized that these are my people. And the thing is, I am thirteen years too old to be a boomer. 3:41 SM: Right? 3:42 SG: I am a beatnik. And like they say in the military, you can change from one branch to the other, time and grade, rank and like that. I was able to transfer from the Beatniks to the hippes like that. 3:55 SM: Well, Steven, you know, one thing I have noticed in my interview process is that so many people born in the ten years prior to the boomer period that they, they were kind of boomers, because they have this mentality of like the boomers. 4:11 SG: They kind of built them. 4:12 SM: And yeah, Richie Havens, when I interviewed him was born in 1940. Yeah, and Ritchie says, I am a boomer. I am a boomer. And it is- because it is an attitude. It is a way of thinking, 4:22 SG: I am born in (19)35. 4:26 SM: What you mentioned about your, I get a lot of questions here, but this these Monday night classes that we that you taught when you were at San Francisco State, it says in some of the literature you got up to 1500 students at one time in your class. What were what were some of these experiences over those two years when you taught these classes? 4:50 SG: Well, sometimes we would be in a scholarly way and everybody would be, like one guy came in on the Monday night class one night waving his book. Hey, look at this book, this 'ole monk in the thirteenth century had the same trip, I had last Saturday night! 5:02 SM: [laughs] Oh my gosh. 5:07 SG: We were quite scholarly we were reading a lot, reading all the religions and more we did that. We did not come to San Francisco to convert to religions. We were ransacking religions looking for goodies. 5:20 SM: So subject matter? These students were getting credit for this course correct? 5:25 SG: When it started off, but I had to leave the campus at a time. They got to where they did not peel the political posters off the glass anymore and the revolution taken over San Francisco State. 5:38 SM: Yeah, I know. Yeah. Because you were the president there. I guess he was one of your teachers at one time? Ichiye Hayakawa? 5:46 SG: Hayakawa? I was Hayakawa's student assistant. Hayakawa was one of the media-wise foremost semanticists, general semanticist in the country at that time, although there were about four or five guys smarter than him that did not have the good fortune for his PhD thesis to become a book cult collection. 6:08 SM: Well, he was president during that time when all the student rebellion was happening at the school. 6:13 SG: At the time had split to Ethiopia to get away. They had offered the presidency to all of the faculty and they all turned it down, they say, we are not going to scab and they offered it to Hayakawa and even though he was not full time and even though he did not teach but two courses they made him president anyway. 6:33 SM: What year was that? 6:35 SG: Well golly that would have to be (19)65 or (19)66 something in around there. 6:39 SM: Wow. 6:42 SG: And he came out he came outside wearing a tam o'shanter hat, a very colorful hat thinking he was going to come on like he was a hippie and the hippies snubbed him. 6:54 SM: Oh, wow. 6:57 SG: You know, this is very short time, when in the Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio and those guys pulled up they thought that Hayakawa would like them and he did not. I answered the phone. I told him who it was and he did not like them at all. I am going I am sorry. He does not like you. I do. But he does not. 7:16 SM: My gosh. Yeah, that was (19)64 or (19)65 and that was about the time he became president then. 7:21 SG: Yeah, because he took he took the job when nobody else would do it. 7:25 SM: Wow. Was there any connection with what was going on, on the San Francisco State campus? And what was going on over there at Berkeley? 7:32 SG: Well, we were a little bit different in the sense that they were more the political guys and we was more of the acid guys. But there was not a hard line. It was some of all the same. And I did a class at night that it happened to be in Hayakawa's office with a free speech movement. I was teaching a class that night, one of my an- Francisco State College classes, called a Monday Night Class and so I said, well, we were in solidarity with the guys in Berkeley, according to my understanding that I can say fuck anytime I want, as long as I have the right layers of parentheses and quotation marks around it. And I took a new piece of chalk was three inches long, and used it on its side, take the line about four inches wide. And I wrote FUCK and letters three feet on the blackboard in the front of the room and I went back to the old German origins, you know, and like that, and we thought about it for a while. And I must have said it a couple of hundred times during my class. They were right with me. We were exhibiting solidarity with Berkeley. 8:43 SM: Wow. Those are those were unbelievable times back then. You know, I have interviewed several people [inaudible] in the student protest movement. San Francisco State there was a famous picture of him with African American students look like they were really it was a front of a book cover. I do not know if you remember when the African American students really went after him? 9:08 SG: I do not remember. 9:08 SM: Yeah. So, there was a lot of rebellion. When you think of those years, not only as a student but as a teacher. What was it like being a student what was college life like in the (19)50s or the early (19)60s before this period started? 9:26 SG: Well, that was what I was most likely being more like a beatnik when I was still in school taking class. And I made good grades when I wanted to pay attention. I did not always do it but I did not always pay attention but I graduated cum laude which I used to think was a big deal. And the lady I am married to now was also cum laude. And what I found out was there was a thing that happened to be where I got tired of the papers they were giving. They were so stilted. It was like they were being written for their maiden aunt. I am going to have a heart attack, if they said anything heavy. Something like that. And I complained to them. This is crap you are writing and you are being so careful, you are not saying anything of who you really are and what is really happening. I want to make that assignment for you where I am not going to grade spelling or grammar or anything like that I am more grade [inaudible] and so they sent in a paper like that. And it was a heavy trip man, they like one girl wrote a paper about how her brothers trying to make or give away your half black baby. 10:38 SM: Huh? 10:39 SG: So, the real hard stuff started coming out. And I was knocked out by the, by the content and what I went through a change right there on account of that paper, which was I realized that I loved the students deeply. And I considered the institution to be in the way and not helping out the relationship. 11:02 SM: You said that you were a beatnik. The obviously the beats were very important influence in the (19)50s because they were against the status quo, you know, the Kerouacs, the Burroughs and Ginsburgs. 11:15 SG: The way I got introduced to the beatniks - a friend of mine came to me and says they are having a [inaudible] in the East Coast, where they were having coffee houses, they are drinking coffee, and it goes back in time or Shakespeare when coffee was the dope and folks were uptight about when you talked to much when you did it. There was one down in Laguna Beach, I was in San Bernadino, he says there is one down at Laguna Beach. He goes, do you want it? And we stole the cafe Franken sign, and the plaster cast of the Frankenstein tombstone with a centerpiece and the waitress was in love with the coffee cook and she was spilling over everybody and it was just stoned and sweet and I thought, I think these are my people. 12:12 SM: Did you did you have experiences meeting Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder and the people out there? 12:18 SG: I met Gary Snyder and was my first Monday night class came out it filled up the bookstore, Ferlinghetti's bookstore, the entire window was my book, and the entire glass of the window was the picture of my paper. 12:36 SM: Wow. 12:37 SG: Because everybody - I had been doing the class for several years by then everybody knew was going to come out. No advertising. It got that way by word of mouth. And it just filled up a printing and we have got another printing and sold out a printing and we had another printing like that. And talking to Ferlinghetti about being in his bookstore and I had been. Some of the guys I liked, what is the name of that English guy? 13:08 SM: Neal Cassady or? 13:10 SG: No, I met Neal over in Amsterdam one time more recently. And Neal [inaudible] I knew Big Brother and the Holding Company, when they were an acoustic jug band with no amplifier. 13:32 SM: Now when did they start? That band? 13:36 SG: Well, they what happened to them, as you may recollect, is they were kidnapped by Janis Joplin. [laughs] And that was what happened to them. And so, I knew the guys in the bands and you know, the guy from a Big Brother and the Holding Company came up to me and reminding me of who he was, I said "hey I tell people I know you." 14:05 SM: Wow. So, you when you are talking about the counterculture in the Bay Area, in the (19)60s and the (19)50s, late (19)50s (19)60s and (19)70s, you think primarily in terms of the music and the way people lived their lives? The lifestyle? 14:27 SG: Well, it was it was modern amplification of the music and rock and roll was happening pretty heavy in Europe and then the first rock and roll I ever heard about was referred to as Rock and Roll Riot Detection and by the time I got into San Francisco the Dead you know, Garcia still had black hair. 14:54 SM: Um hmm. 14:55 SG: And the oh, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Cipolina I think one of the crazy real lead guitarists of our time. 15:11 SM: Who was that? 15:12 SG: Cipolina. 15:13 SM: Oh. 15:14 SG: From um, it is tough to remember that name. I had been an English major and then my mother wanted me to be a lawyer and then I ended up being an English major. And I realized I was a creative writing major. And so, I came out as a creative writing major. The thing about a creative writing major is that you get to make up your thesis. 15:43 SM: Hmm. 15:45 SG: It is a group of short stories. 15:46 SM: Right. 15:46 SG: No research, you get to make up your thesis! 15:50 SM: Huh. 15:53 SG: I did that and then on the other side, I was doing general semantics and linguistic study at least the analytical side of the language and the structure of the language. Nothing wrong with the study of a little semantics. 16:09 SM: We you say that when you are around some of these people in two different experiences one in that classroom and another at that club and you say in both instances, I found that people I am most comfortable with. I belong here. Did you feel up to that point, even in your growing up years, with your parents, the years leading up to go into college, even including your military career that you really had not found yourself? 16:39 SG: Yeah, I would say that. I was just doing, you know, after I got in the military, I was supposed to go to school and GI bill, which I did. And I am one of the last people who got out before Reagan screwed the California School System. When I went to San Francisco State to $79 a semester. 17:01 SM: Oh my gosh. 17:02 SG: Not a unit. A semester. 17:04 SM: And what years were those? 17:06 SG: Well, I guess (19)60 - (19)61 something like that I would say. I got it. I took an AA in San Bernadino. And if I uh, well the thing about having that AA is if I had an L I could spell Alabama. 17:36 SM: Yeah you were in the military from (19)52 to (19)55? Right. Now, did you learn anything about war? You were in action over in Korea. You had something, you must have had some feelings coming back from a war? 17:54 SG: Yeah, well, I could not get with the student revolution guys who wanted to send thousands of people up against the administration building and that kind of stuff. I thought that we were supposed to be so media hip and so attractive and neat that we took over that way. 18:17 SM: What was? You were around in during the period many people say is the Summer of Love. Haight Ashbury, that was (19)67. We see all these pictures of Golden Gate Park. It was quiet. He just what was the year 1967 like in San Francisco? 18:38 SG: So, I think that was when we had the we had the first human be- in. 18:47 SM: Please speak up too, thanks. 18:50 SG: So that was just after Woodstock. And we set up in the polo field in Golden Golden Gate Park. And thousands and thousands and thousands of people came. 19:05 SM: Wow. 19:06 SG: I was up on the hill watching it. The meeting was so profound and so powerful, I had to stop and sit down once in a while always walking up to it. A woman there and a mounted policeman: she came up and says, my son is down there! I want to get my son! Help me get my son! Ma'am, all of those people are smoking pot. I cannot go down there. 19:37 SM: Wow. 19:38 SG: And that was also when something happened at later karma which was somebody broke the lines to the stage! The power lines. So, the Hells Angels went out and walked the wires and found them and had a Hells Angel standing on each place the wire was plugged together and protected the jam that way. 19:57 SM: Hmm. 19:57 SG: That is why Garcia had the idea evident for security at Altamont. 20:03 SM: All right, well, that was a disaster. 20:06 SG: Yeah, yeah. Awful. 20:08 SM: Were you at Altamont? 20:10 SG: No, I was with Grateful. 20:12 SM: Wow, because that was the- 20:15 SG: That was one of the low points. 20:17 SM: Some people say that was when everything kind of turned around. But what was it like? The young people, when you look at the boomer generation, you have not only seen them in the classroom, seen them in the communes, seen them in the clubs just experienced them in many different ways, what are their strengths and what are some of their weaknesses in your opinion? Based on the people you knew? 20:46 SG: Well, the strengths and their weaknesses are pretty much the same thing. That was how much they trusted, and how much they were open and how much they were willing to experiment how much they were willing to take along. That stuff is great growth drives, and also can be dangerous. And I loved them and I love hippies still. And in fact, I claim it still. I claim mass affiliation really and say, oh yeah, I am a hippie. And I love the hippies very much and I loved going to rock and roll and I have never had any music that was my own until honor to rock and roll. When I grew up the big hassle was Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. And I thought Sinatra was a better singer but he was such a dick always slapping valet parking people and stuff like that. And Crosby was a nice family man, and not really very interesting or anything and that was what music was when I was a kid. And when suddenly it was rock and roll, man, oh my goodness! People were doing things with guitars that before Rock and Roll would have been considered a catastrophic equipment breakdown. [laughs] You know, when complete and total feedback takes over a whole amp. 22:17 SM: When, when you when you heard young people say, then and many even who are older today say that we were the most unique generation in American history because we were going to end the war, bring peace to the world, end racism, sexism, homophobia, you know, all those other things would not come to fruition all those things and a lot of progress. But what do you what do you say when you hear that this generation feels at times that they were the most unique in our history? 22:53 SG: Well, I think that they are never, there was never anything like that before you because you have never had the social amplifiers that we had. Loud, and using heavy dope. You know, we were we were amplified and, and it was not that we were hiding what we were doing, we were proud of it, we would be dressed different from other folks so that those with like minds, would recognize us. And I still wear my hair long, although it is a little ponytail like a rat tail and smooth on top. I am not going to cut it. They were very afraid. And when I left on the caravan, I left with twenty-five school buses, by the time I got to the farm I had fifty school busses and four hundred and some people who were committed to give it a go. To try to make something happen. And that was one of the things that used to happen is guys would come up to me it was very successful summer dealing. You ever decide you got to go to the land somewhere, let me know, I will help you buy it. Guys like that would come up to me. And I had no personal wealth. I was on the salary, the salary for a teacher. A first-year teacher is not much. And I love those people. And they came here with me. And we have changed since we came here in a bunch of ways because we were wild, wild and crazy both ways as you know. Some folks could not stand us or understand us but then - oh, I would have been with you guys already if I knew that was who you were. 24:56 SM: Here what happened between when the Summer of Love ended (19)67 because we hear stories about (19)68 was a pretty rough year in San Francisco because the many drugs many more drug people came into the Haight Ashbury area and people left like a, like bees. 25:17 SG: What happened when we were on a caravan, which was 1970, we were gone for seven months on the road. And we got back to San Francisco. It has been taken over by crack and cocaine and heroin and alcohol. We did not use to drink as a culture. Hippies did not used to drink the first time Janis Joplin showed up and put a bottle of Southern Comfort down on top of the piano, people were scandalized. 25:46 SM: Oh, wow. 25:47 SG: Yeah. That we were very innocent in our ways. And when we came back off the caravan, we saw that the scene had gone decadent. And we did not know where we were going to get land. But we thought we, we got a good thing going here. We had a very successful tour. Obviously, I was handed over at the state lines from the cop of one state to the next state, hey, they are okay, do not worry about them do not worry about them. When one thing is kind of fun was when we left the first day we left we got busted at the Oregon/California border and the cops had busted us but they had FBI and state police and troopers and a sheriff and whatnot. And they did not know what to do about us at all. But they came out and took my bus and the guy said, I have orders to arrest of the registered owner this bus, well, it was not my bus. This other guy who said What? Gee! What did I do? So, the guy takes out the papers and says I have orders to arrest Stephen Gaskin. But he arrested me and they took me in. I have to admit. The cops did look a little odd. They were counting the change in this great big [inaudible] full of change and small bills that they had bailed me out with. Hey hold on for a second. I got something on the other line I got to take. 27:18 SM: Okay. You were telling the story about the cop and the busses. 27:32 SG: So, they went into court and they want to know who we were. We are the people who are for peace and who are peaceful about being for peace. This is right in the middle of blowing up the Sterling building- 27:52 SM: In Wisconsin, and then the Weatherman. 27:53 SG: And so, we talked to the judge, and the judge says okay. I will tell you what I am going to do, I am going to let you go into speaking tour. At the end of your tour, you got to come back to this courtroom. And I will know where you were. So, I said, okay, and we took off like that. And we went to a lot of changes. We got back off the road and we came back in there. We went into that that office. And he must have got a clipping service or something because all of the walls of the office were covered with pieces of paper for every parcel and point [inaudible]. They had tracked us all the way. 28:34 SM: Unbelievable. 28:35 SG: And the judge, we went back into the courtroom and the judge said, he said, your presence in the courtroom is an embarrassment and you were free to go. 28:51 SM: Hmm. 28:54 SG: When I wrote the Caravan book, the first chapter is half that story in the last chapter is the other half of that story. 29:05 SM: Oh, wow. I got to get that book. Is that book still in print? 29:08 SG: Yeah. 29:09 SM: Oh, I got to order that book. I have a list of all your books here and they are all fascinating. 29:18 SG: I have got it myself and then you hit me up on my website. 29:22 SM: Yeah, because you got forty Miles of a Bad Road. 29:25 SG: That is my master's thesis. 29:28 SM: Yeah. And then you have Monday Night Class, which is one I love. 29:32 SG: Yeah. 29:33 SM: Then you got The Caravan from (19)72 and the one about Haight Ashbury Flashbacks. And An Outlaw in my Heart, a Political- 29:43 SG: Oh, By Heart was the one I put together when I was running against the Ralph Nader for the Green nomination. 29:50 SM: Wow. 29:52 SG: Best thing about that was I got to be friends with Ralph. 29:55 SM: Yeah, I saw Ralph last year when he was talking about his first now when he went around the country. Tell me a little bit about The Caravan. Obviously, you- where did you meet the people that went on the original in the original buses, or cars? 30:13 SG: They were the Monday night class. 30:15 SM: They were all students. 30:17 SG: They were all Monday night classes. 30:20 SM: Then they were off in the Bay Area, most of them? 30:24 SG: Hold on again a minute. 30:38 SM: So, they were mostly, they were students from your Monday night class? 30:41 SG: Yeah. And they were just, we had people there who had PhDs, people that are who were dropped out freshmen 30:48 SM: Oh my gosh! 30:49 SG: They came to the farm and when we get the farm up to a pretty big population and stuff at one time, the farm had more college degrees than the Tennessee State legislature did. 31:00 SM: Oh my gosh, the original when you finally got there. What was your number at the very beginning? 31:11 SG: When we went back, actually, just to land some people dropped off at that point. We came in with about 280 people. 31:19 SM: Wow. 31:20 SG: And we were we were in Nashville, trying to look for land. And we thought, well, as big as we are, we should have a band. A big creature like this needs a voice we should have a band. Philip says, oh, I got to go trade this guitar in. I cannot do rock and roll with a twelve string, I got to get a real rock and roll guitar. He went to get a rock and roll guitar and the lady at the music store says, nobody has lived on my mother's old home place down in Lewis county for about thirty-five years. You guys can go down there and park. They gave us place to land. I found out that they were kind of wealthy liberals. 32:03 SM: Uh huh. 32:04 SG: And the while we were there looking for a tractor, somebody went out came back to the port subtractor with a wide front wheels and low back wheels. And one guy who had ridden with the Hells Angels said, that was not a tractor. And he went out for a tractor and he found this big old John Deere with wheels about, about seven-foot-high and the guy who sold him the tractor said, you guys should buy my place, its 1000 acres and the road does not go through. We went to the bank down in [inaudible] and asked for a loan. And we got to the bank and they said, well it is not just because you are an out of town hippie, it is also because no one has ever asked for a loan as big as that from this bank before. We went back and told Carlos that. And he said, I trust you guys, I will carry it. And that was that was a very important thing because we did not know it but the FBI had every county clerk in the state primed up to let them know have you tried to buy land in their county because they were going to get us. 33:13 SM: [laughs] Oh jeez! 33:14 SG: And because the guy carried the note himself, we were a stranger [inaudible] before they ever heard about us. 33:20 SM: Oh my gosh. 33:26 SG: Some of what I did was I general. You had to have a to have a general because we were facing an organized thing. 33:40 SM: So, they have been being alerted people all over the area that do not lend money to your group. 33:47 SG: Who they had alerted were the county clerks if we came to do a title search or anything. 33:57 SM: They just did not want your type, around did they? 34:00 SG: Well now, we have all become very effusive. They love us. 34:04 SM: Now, what was the, the actual land that you bought finally? 34:09 SG: Well, first, we bought Carlos's 1000 acres. And it is where the highlands where the Nashville basin is, the rim and this land is off of that rim coming down to the lower land it has got a few pretty flat fields not a lot of hills and we are a deciduous oak forest. And anyway, it turned out that the only interest of the place was through about seven or eight other people's driveways. And we bought the land next door, which had an opening on the blacktop. We did that that that the first piece of land was $70 per acre $70,000 for 70 acres. The next piece of land was $100 an acre. 700 acres, same price but we only got 700 but then we had 1700 acres. And then later on, we have had things happen like Japanese land buying companies come in and buy land on our border and clear cut it and stuff like that. By this time, we were big enough that we just chartered a nonprofit corporation and we started buying everything still had trees on it. But now we are up to having six and a quarter square mile, or 6000 acres. I was talking to a guy in Europe about an acre and a hectare. And we finally decided that we had, we had 1000 hectares. And this guy who happened to be the director of the [inaudible] said, you should secede from the union. 35:59 SM: [laughs] Wow. Of the originals that came back in 1970 are there very many still there? 36:13 SG: Not a lot. But, but we were like with other places you were back to be close to their folks or whatnot, you know, we were a very large and well communicated entity and we talked to each other all over the place. Got people. At one time we had twenty-five other farms. 36:32 SM: Wow. 36:33 SG: We had one in Ireland and we had one in India. Like that. 36:39 SM: Wow. How many people live there now? 36:45 SG: I do not think we are up to 300 right now but it was 1500 people and it was also five hippies hitchhiking on every freeway ramp. 36:56 SM: For a while. Cannot hitchhike anymore, though, can you? 37:01 SG: Not much! 37:04 SM: Now, obviously, people think that hippies were very popular in the (19)60s and (19)70s but that there are not very many left. Hippies. You do not hear about them much anymore, except for places like The Farm and that have lived the life. But your thoughts on that? How many? Are there still hippies out there that are young? 37:32 SG: Well, they do not call themselves hippies but they but they are heavy into communication, and rock and roll and they are on the internet and they are a generation that talks to itself more freely than anybody ever has. And they do not call themselves hippies anymore but you hear it used every now and then. And whenever anybody asks me I always say a hippie of course. 38:03 SM: Do you have you have people that actually read about the farm and say, can I come and live there? 38:08 SG: Oh, yeah. We have, when we were big, we had 256-man hours a week in gate. 38:17 SM: Oh my gosh. 38:19 SG: We had we had 150,000 visitors in our first 10 years. 38:26 SM: And what was the process? See it see a person? Well say in 1972 you had been there two years, what was the process for someone to become a part of The Farm? 38:38 SG: We used to call it soaking. We would make you come and live here for a while and work. And we would advise that do not get involved romantically when you are first coming here. But as you get where you cannot tell the difference between falling in love with somebody and falling in love with the farm. And, and after you soak for a while for sure you want to do it, then we check you out and see if we want you. But the beginning you could be a full partner on a handshake and a smile. 39:09 SM: And you said that they were PhDs, master's degrees, bachelor's degrees, dropouts. 39:17 SG: Our giant book was backed up by a PhD in organic chemistry. 39:25 SM: Why do you think I know you your experience but why do you think so many people that were in that class or heard about that class said I am tired of this world. I want to get away from it. I want to go back to nature. 39:40 SG: Well, I ended up right on the spot where stuff was happening. I would usually you go check out a scene you go to hear about the scene and its already going decadent. But this one happened right around me. I saw it when it first grew and I love it and hippies love me, you know, because I never sold out. I am 75 years old now. 40:14 SM: Yeah, I was reading in the some of the things in the web, the wall street journal called The Farm the General Motors of American communes. 40:23 SG: [laughs] 40:25 SM: What did they mean by that? 40:28 SG: Well, that we had like a motor pool, and we had a school up through high school. And we had medical facilities. Our midwives are world famous, that is what my wife's doing right now she is off talking about midwifery in Europe. And she, lectures to doctors, doctors come to her lectures. And we were good at what we did. And nobody, nobody around our neighborhood, thinks hippies are dumb. In fact, this is just like, how stuff would happen. We were anti-nukers, of course. And at some point, we said, we were anti-nukers, we ought to be able to tell us something is hot. We ought to have a Geiger counter. So, we got a Geiger counter. And that year's Geiger counter was a pig, it weighed maybe 15 pounds had a big signal letter and battery in it is just a pig, it was before digital measurization, pretty much although our guys are into them somewhat. But we had we had that thing and it did not have a dial on it, it just had a light and it (noises) and people would write down a number or anything and at the same time, one of our people who is on the farm to have a baby the little farm issue, she was having twins. So, the midwives got the Doppler effect, fetal heart monitor, for sensitivity to separate the twin’s heartbeat and the guy on the crew who was working on the cluster, checked out that and he went back and he says, look, that little heart monitor our posture has a delay in averaging circuit eventually if we hook that delaying and averaging circuit up to the Geiger we could time it. It would have a dial and we would have a needle. So, we figured that out and put it together. And our Geiger counter was about the size of a pack 100-millimeter cigarette. And when 911 hit we had to hire more people to that company. And right now, in Lewis County our Geiger counter company is the only one of our companies that is big enough and strong enough to have health care for its employees. 43:06 SM: It is a fantastic story. 43:09 SG: And right now, the Geiger counter company is listed as the only high-tech business in Lewis County. That is one thing about the neighbors not thinking that hippies are dumb. 43:21 SM: Well, you got some pretty good people there and you are at the farm. Boy, some really good and, you know, reading your background, I was very impressed with your background and your wife's background, but to see the information you are given me about some of your fellow people, they are in The Farm over the years, it is pretty impressive, but I am going to change my tape. Okay. I am back. One of the interesting things about communes is that when the in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, a lot of people say the (19)60s ended in around 1973. So, you got to glue those first few years as part of the (19)60s in the (19)70s. But that was when so many people went back to communes and or they- 44:12 SG: Fake unity. 44:14 SM: Yeah. Or they went into a more spiritual feeling. So, they were not going to church as much. And what I have read here, and I like your comments on the critics of communes as a whole, maybe not The Farm, but communes overall, is that this it is about people who dropped out. People who went back to nature, lived off the land became much more spiritual, and they did not have to go to church or synagogues, but they became more inner, inner spiritual. I would like you to your comments on the critics of the communes and define what a commune is. 44:58 SG: First place like I keep saying. We are a commune and total commune is a- the political term and so we say we are an intentional community living together on purpose, because they want to. And the idea is that people have been trying to do that kind of stuff in this country for a long time, the Shakers and those kinds of people like that. And we are not like we used to be in the sense of like, totally collecting did not have to have any money in your pocket and these glasses, you would have a bank lady and like that. And now, we went through changes in 1983 like the world did and people have their own bank accounts and stuff now. And we have come to find out that in Israel, that is a metamorphosis that happens that it is well documented there and it when a kibbutz turns into a musha'a and it this really collective bit like a collective child raising very like. And the musha'a is, people got their own checkbook and their own job and their own money, but they are still collecting. So, we kind of like went like that thing in Israel, using the technicality of that language, I think we are more of a musha'a now but we like to do big projects together and so we still do big projects. Our Plenty organization that we put together. The first thing we did was help the people whose houses had been destroyed by tornados and stuff then we ended up doing a rather large, that diet health program in Guatemala, where we got into a deal with Faith International and pipelined millions of [inaudible] money into Guatemala and organized. We like big projects, but then we were very clear, that Plenty thing belongs to everybody on The Farm. We did not want to have an acronym, we call it Plenty, because there is actually enough if it was fairly strict. So, we explained what Plenty means and that is pretty revolutionary. 47:31 SM: So why, why did The Farm succeed when most of the other communes did not? There may be three or four major communes in the country, and the rest of them are gone? 47:44 SG: Well, I do not know exactly. The first 13 years, I was really deeply involved in everything. And I have not been since about (19)83. I have lived here, I have worked from here but I do not run it. And it was like it went from running Monday Night Class to running The Caravan and now, it would be superfluous for me to try to run things. But you have gone off and been doing things for years and it is really nice to have competent friends. In fact, somebody came to The Farm and do the story and they said they seem to have a religion of competence. 48:38 SM: For example, within The Farm itself, do you each have your own, like homes? And then you have you eat your meals separately? Or do you eat out common area? 48:49 SG: No, we had we, we have community dinners every now and then and also, we will have a community dinner for a cause like the school needs somebody or something who have a community dinner and charge for it. And we do a lot of music and one of the most successful things we have done is our musicians have passed down lots and lots to our kids. 49:17 SM: See, so if you go out on a lecture circuit or your wife for the band goes out and performs or somebody who has a skill goes out in the community and gets paid for it, does that money all come back to the to one big lump? 49:35 SG: No. 49:37 SM: So, you have your own private counts now? 49:40 SG: Oh, sure. Okay. The government you know wants you to have social security numbers and things. 49:49 SM: Right. 49:52 SG: We got to obey the law of the land everywhere we can and I probably am not going to do any more books based on pot. We have got a very good one out now and I do not need any more. I have one called Cannabis Spirituality. 50:16 SM: Well if pot was a very important part was very important part of The Farm. 50:21 SG: It is part of the whole hippie movement. Anything remarkable about our pot stuff is how well we kept away from crack, and cocaine and heroin. We were hash and acid and peyote. 50:42 SM: How do you deal with that it is illegal in most areas? Still. 50:48 SG: What I do in my own personal areas is be cool. And that is what other people have to do to. 50:53 SM: A one a couple other things here. I am looking at that. One of the when there was the period when and you know this and I know it is not true, but when Charles Manson happened, they thought that that was the kind of a cult and that he was part of a small community and then he had the Symbionese Liberation Army that ended up taking Patty Hearst, and they were supposedly some sort of a commune. 51:26 SG: A commune. 51:28 SM: Yeah, commune I guess. They were small groups, but did some bad things. 51:34 SG: Well the thing about Charlie Manson is, he is not by throwing him in the, the prison system of the United States had him when he was a young man and had him for 20 years before there was ever such a thing as the Haight and he was being educated in the penitentiary system and he is not ours. He was a hitchhiker on us, but we did not make him. And what was the other thing? 52:04 SM: The Symbionese Liberation Army. 52:06 SG: Well, Symbionese Liberation Army, they liked this fancy made up names but they were more of a publicity stunt. They were not going to take anything that was not a revolution or do anything like that would not make any permanent changes or anything. That is not who we are. We vote in our elections here. And when we were big, governors and senators came to our door to talk to us about it. I am a friend of Al Gore's. 52:44 SM: Oh, very good. 52:46 SG: He was by Congressman. And I think the supreme court stole that election completely 52:56 SM: I agree. Life would have been a little different. I think we still might have been attacked though at 911 but still. 53:08 SG: Well the thing about the thing about that stuff is we got to make peace with the Islamic world we cannot cut them off in little pieces and say this is a bad piece and we are going to blow it up and we act like that about a fifth of the world every time we blow up some a little village with a drone. 53:36 SM: A couple of other things regarding just the way the media in the culture of television and movies have portrayed communes. Is Easy Rider? Those scenes when Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper I think Jack Nicholson is in there too, but when they come into this one commune there is that scene and they are kind of talking to them, oh, this would be great because they were referring to all the top potential sex partners they could have within the within the commune that that was very well portrayed in that movie. And then another thing about in (19)98. 54:21 SG: They are rich movie actors. 54:25 SM: So that was really just Hollywood doing a Hollywood thing? 54:29 SG: Complete Hollywood bullshit. 54:31 SM: Yeah, because there was a you may have it. I have a major collection of magazines. There was a Life magazine on the cover with the commune. Do you remember it in the late (19)60s, where it showed a family and a commune and at the top of it says communes and it is very good article that talks about, you know, they, they were not having they had a white they did not have six wives? But there is, there is still that feeling out there that maybe men and women are having more partners than they should. 55:03 SG: They were in the (19)60s but that has consequences, children and stuff. And people want to have the best deal they can for their children and they did not want it to be a haphazard mess because they had to sort it out for the kids. 55:19 SM: Right? 55:22 SG: I do not mind challenging the mores of society I have never been afraid to but I am also not afraid to agree with them when they are useful and necessary for the safety and sanity of everybody else. 55:37 SM: How do you deal with that? I have asked this question, everybody. It is a general question. We have the in 1994, or Newt Gingrich came to power. He kind of he and he still does make commentary about the (19)60s and (19)70s that basically the problems we have in our society today are the problems of the breakdown of the American family, the drug culture, the you know, only one parent at home, lack of respect for authority and basically, culture going astray. And of course, George Will, when he gets chances he'll make commentaries. And Mike Huckabee even does it on his television show. And I remember when John McCain was running for president, he made commentary about Mrs. Clinton, that she was kind of like a hippie. Just general comments degrading the period and the time. How do you respond to those kinds of people when they make general statements? 56:41 SG: Well, there is a pretty good school of thought that being a hippie is an ethnicity. 56:50 SM: Mm hmm. 56:51 SG: And that people do it like they, they get racist about it. And that is the thing. I could cut my hair and get a necktie and if I kept my mouth shut, nobody would ever know. 57:05 SM: Right. 57:06 SG: But I will not and everybody knows I will not and you know, proud of my hippie forebearers and what we have done about it is we are not treated that way. We are not treated that way locally. The neighbors come here. We used to we had to ask the neighbors how to sharpen a chainsaw when we got here. And we had people come to be our electricians, our, our tech company is very strong and we are friends with our neighbors, we had a series of debates with the preachers. We had six or seven Church of Christ preachers come every Wednesday for weeks and then they had one up in Nashville in a big hall with about five or six preachers on stage and me. And the one old guy who said that he was the cult expert in Tennessee said that there are 309 nine cults in Tennessee but that The Farm was not one of them. And then had this you know, discussion in front of all these people and it got to the point where the preachers finally said, I cannot make them out to be Christians no matter how hard I try. But I really wish mine lived as well as they do. 58:38 SM: If someone was to ask you, why was The Farm started and then please define the purpose of The Farm. What would your answer be? 58:53 SG: Well, there was a giant worldwide revolution going on and much of it was being blown off on fireworks and wasted and we wanted to fix that very intelligent sweet good directed energy and make it last and give it a history. I have always said that one of the things that we are doing is to redeem the good name of the hippies. 59:18 SM: You obviously have lived a life of activism to not only obviously, when you when The Farm has experiences like I know you have helped with the improvements for the poor. There have been various causes as you were reading in some of your literature about saving the trees, even saving the whales, helping people down in Guatemala. I mean, where there is a tragedy around the country, a group of you will leave the area, your home, to help. That is activism. Could you define what an activist means to you, and any other activist experiences you have had in your life? 1:00:07 SG: Well, I really was not an activist before I was a hippie but me and my wife, we were both activists, and so is everybody else on the farm. If you see something wrong, you should fix it. And I believe that is in the Good Book too it says, what though your eyes need to do your hands should both do it and that is why Plenty started off, we helped a guy that had bad luck with tornadoes then we got word that Honduras at that time, it had a bad crop year, and they were starving. And so, we went to the Mennonite Central Committee and we said, if you guys would give us the money to buy the beans for them and get them shipped down there. And then we needed more muscle down there and we got hooked up with Canada and we were moving government level money. And it is because we are honest, and we have vision, same with the hippies. And so, it is our way, in the first place. Second place is really necessary to do it and we have been we have had people down in Haiti for a long time. I have a press card in Haiti myself. And we have places down in Belize, Honduras they used to call it. That is an interesting kind of Indians. There is Guatemalan Indians, Mayan's speaking Spanish, Belize Indians/Mayans speak English and another old tribe called [inaudible] who are escaped black slaves who are culturally a Mayan. [laughs] We have people just like that come through here now and then. In front of our bus [inaudible] lovely [inaudible] and it said "out to save the world." 1:02:36 SM: That is nice. 1:02:37 SG: Might as well be framed. 1:02:41 SM: If you are in a, I always do these little scenarios if you were in a college classroom today and you were a guest speaker just for that particular day, maybe you were introduced by the professor, the teacher could even be a large High School and a young person stood up and said, geez, you know, that must have been scary leaving San Francisco and going in those cars and vans, not knowing where you were going to end up. What gave you the courage to do it? 1:03:21 SG: That is like the people who say, where did you park 50 busses? Where did you park the caravan? I said red zones, loading zones- [laughs] 1:03:32 SM: Well, yeah, really what I am getting at here is what is the life lesson that others can learn from when they look at the caravan and the eventual development of The Farm but most importantly, it is like a young person leaving home for the first time it is that risk-taking. What does the caravan mean for life? 1:03:55 SG: For several hundred of us and we were well head-smart and pretty big. You know nobody is going to jump on us. Nobody is going to go up and attack a thousand hippies fine. And we would be good. And people got to like us and we made friends with people right along the road. We had a baby, at Northwestern, the first one my wife saw delivered before she was a midwife. And we had another baby in Ripley, New York and we were parked in front of a church and the cops asked what we were doing and she said we are a caravan but we were having a baby and now we need to stop. Oh. Okay, follow us and we will show you where to park and they parked us downtown on parking meters. [laughs] 1:04:44 SM: Wow. 1:04:45 SG: And we had the baby and when the baby was born, the church rang a bell. 1:04:52 SM: Was that the first baby from The Farm? 1:04:55 SG: The one at Northwestern was the first one. 1:04:58 SM: Okay. 1:05:01 SG: There was another one in Rhode Island and a doctor came to see us. His name was Louie LeFer, Louie the Father and he came in and showed them how to do heart message on a baby to help them get started and showed him a bunch of good little tricks and stuff, which they used in the next two birthing. And what I see is that doctors love our midwives. They just love them. And treat them good and take care of them. 1:05:36 SM: I would love to interview your wife when she gets some time. You know, maybe during the summertime, if that might be possible. 1:05:45 SG: Maybe so she does it quite a lot. We both do a lot of media. 1:05:53 SM: Well I know I sent you and I sent you the master email. I can send one to her or you can just share hers, whichever is okay. I noticed that you say your politics is beatnik? 1:06:06 SG: Yeah. 1:06:07 SM: And, that your religion is hippie. 1:06:11 SG: Right. 1:06:12 SM: So just define that a little bit better. 1:06:19 SG: Well, beatniks came out of an artistic thing. It was artists. In fact, before beatniks were bohemian, and it went like that all the way back to a couple of guys sitting with Socrates. And uh, I do not know I am not sure if I understand that question very well. 1:06:57 SM: Well, it basically I was reading that when someone asked you what your religion was you said hippie, and you did not say Methodist or Catholic or, and then your politics instead of saying Democrat or Republican you said beatnik. 1:07:13 SG: Right, right. Well, I we brought some of the first Jews anybody had seen down into Tennessee. And this one guy, someone was questioning him about his religion and being Jewish you know and he said hey, man, I like the red parts. 1:07:39 SM: [laughs] You mean something very important, because when you are talking about the (19)50s, and you think about the Red Scare that was everywhere, McCarthyism in the early (19)50s, even, even the late (19)40s and then to the- 1:07:52 SG: I was in the Marine Corps from (19)52-(19)55. 1:07:54 SM: Right. And then when you talk to you, you made some references I do not know what was jokingly or serious about the fact that when you say commune people think communism. Was there a fear? Was there a fear that was why people did not speak up that much in the (19)50s who may have had attitudes like the beats? 1:08:15 SG: Well there were people in the (19)50s like that but they were more in the arts. They were not you know, I loved Lena Horne when I was a little boy. She was an activist about it you know. She did not have to act like she was black. Nobody would have known if she decided not let them know. But she would do that. She stuck with it. I felt respect for that. 1:08:56 SM: What were the when you look at the counterculture. Counterculture is really defined as being challenging to the status quo in so many different ways. It is not- it is what people oftentimes look upon is not the normal it is then it is not the abnormal, it is just not normal. Theodore Roszak wrote the book The Making of a Counterculture where he talked about the different consciousness. How do you define counterculture? 1:09:29 SG: Well, in the first place, its spontaneous. It is not made by somebody. When I was running for the Green nomination, I was at one thing and this guy had done and said the socialist thing pretty well. You know, and I got my turn to talk and I started off the first thing was what he said and like that, and that caught on so good that the Green people all over the United States were using that to say they agreed with the previous speaker, you know, what he said and like that was a useful thing, you know that he did not have to be in a relationship of the opposite. You know? And one of my favorite things is the only thing that anybody else needs to know about your religion is how groovy it makes you. No need to tell them anything else. Show them how groovy you are. 1:10:45 SM: You talked about the books you have written. But were there any special books that had an influence on you in the (19)50s and the (19)60s in the (19)70s, that were written by other people? 1:10:56 SG: Well, in (19)49 or it was (19)45, my family was living in an army cold weather base in Colorado [inaudible] and my father was a civilian housing manager, and I went to school there. I stole and burned quite a lot of things. And that base was at the end of the war. They were cutting the barracks up and taking them away and stuff and they were going to burn the library. My mother was scandalized by that we had an old (19)39 Cadillac four door and she went over the library and picked out the stuff she thought would be good and picked out a carload of it that we kept. And what she got me was Fools Bet by Mark Twain, Melville, Robert Lewis Stevenson and those guys. And that was what I read growing up. And then when I was an English major, and I am taking a degree in English, I find it is my old friend! My friends from when I was a kid, these guys are American writers. All right. And that is some of the real philosophy of our thing. And I go back through that kind of writers like Thoreau and people like that, and I do not go on a classical religious paradigm as my father never would church, my mother never went to church. My children, say, man it is so cool that your dad got us out of the church. 1:13:05 SM: Was there any movies that when you look at the movies that have been produced and, on the screen, are there when you talk about the boomer generation in the (19)60s and the (19)70s? Or is there is there anything that is realistic to you? 1:13:25 SG: In movies? I think the main thing about movies is that they are not realistic. That is what they are for so, I do not know what you mean by realistic. 1:13:38 SM: Were there any movies that cause a lot of Vietnam vets say that when they see these movies, that is not the way it was. 1:13:46 SG: Yeah well, I is not a Vietnam vet I am a Korean War vet. In fact, I am the kind of a vet that when I see generals on the screen with [inaudible]- [laughs] 1:14:16 SM: A couple other questions here. This is a very important question I have asked everyone. And that is this business about healing. Boomers, of course, were born between (19)46 and (19)64. And the 1960s, the certainly the assassinations of a president, a senator and a civil rights leader. The riots in the cities, the burnings of the cities, certainly the 1968 convention, there was a lot of turmoil. There is a lot of division, as you well know and you live through it just like I did. The question I am asking is this. Do you who feel that the boomer generation is still having problems with healing, due to the extreme divisions that tore this nation apart in their youth? Divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and lesbian and straight. Divisions between those who supported authority and those who are against it, those who criticized the war and or supported it, as well as the troops? And what role has the wall in Washington DC done with helping to heal the nation beyond the veterans? 1:15:36 SG: The Wall? 1:15:36 SM: In other words, what I am asking is, do you feel the boomer generation will go to its grave like the Civil War generation not truly healing? 1:15:45 SG: I think that we are healing and we are healing other people, and that we are continuing bringing healing on down through history. It is the most loving, and healing and humanistic and best philosophy that I have seen. And I have read the other stuff you know but my wife and I, she is writing things now and one of the things that amuses her quite a lot is that guys who we consider to be heavy philosophers have ideas like that men have 32 teeth and women have 28 and to a midwife, that just an inexcusable level of stupidity. [laughs] Philosophers do not make philosophy they pick it out of the society and learn about it. Tim Leary said that he was a stand-up philosopher. Like a stand-up comic. 1:16:56 SM: Um Hmm. 1:16:58 SG: And I think my friend Paul Krasner who was a very good friend of mine who was like that too. 1:17:04 SM: Yes. 1:17:06 SG: And I think I am kind of like that. I am supposed, where I go, I am supposed to make them like me. When I went to penitentiary, I knew exactly what my job was. I was to show them a class act. And I did, and the result of that was that the news was coming to see James Earl Ray every week. And that was kind of a drag. And then I was there, they would see me for more fun and so got to where I was getting three televisions and two newspapers every week until they got so sick of that talking in Nashville that they sent me out to this place where I got put in the hole. And a counselor said I will tell you what, you can stay at my office until they find you. And there were always people helping me out like that. That was what I was about. And my folks went up to you know, get me out of the hole. And Mr. [inaudible] said let him rot, and they pushed me down and they had this guy Bass, Mr. Charles Bass. And Bass was a minister of corrections who had risen from a guard and when they saw him, he said, I am not worried about people who family come out for and he spun me out of the hole and put me in the trustee camp and gave me my mail that had been held back for several weeks and let The Farm bring me vegetarian food. I told him, I said I mentioned you in my book I was talking to him on the phone, I mentioned you in my book. He said when people came to my house, I show that to them. 1:19:03 SM: Wow. So, you believe then really that a generation like this does not have a problem with healing? 1:19:10 SG: I think we are healers. 1:19:11 SM: Okay. 1:19:12 SG: We are doing everything from a better diet. You know, we are talking about the hippie diet. Hippies are going to live a long time and not have, you know, not have high blood pressure diseases. I have been you know, watching my diet and eating vegetarian stuff for a long time and my last heart appointment the doctor says, I have the heart of a teenager and I should be congratulated. I had a prostate examination they say you get an A plus on this exam. [inaudible] I am a very healthy old dude. 1:19:46 SM: You have never had diabetes huh? 1:19:49 SG: No diabetes. 1:19:51 SM: Which is one of the most rampant disease in the country right now. 1:19:54 SG: Yeah. And it is the diet. 1:19:59 SM: When we asked Senator Muskie that question, I took a group of students and Senator Muskie basically, I he did not say anything about 1968 because he was at that convention. Basically, what he said is we have not healed since the Civil War and he was referring to the racism that was still in the country. So 1:20:18 SG: Yeah. 1:20:19 SM: That was what he was referring to because the Civil War in the south a lot of people have not healed according to him. 1:20:29 SG: Yeah, well, we live down here in the middle of all that kind of stuff. 1:20:37 SM: Did you have a generation gap with your kids? 1:20:44 SG: One of my kids decided that he would follow my military thing and became a martial artist that has a black belt in Jujitsu. The other is a computer guy and does that kind of stuff. My other son turned out to be the house holder yogi and I think I am also a house holding yogi. 1:21:10 SM: Because at that period when you were teaching that was when the generation gap between the boomers and their parents was really in its heyday. 1:21:22 SG: Well, my daughter's a boomer and she is quite proud of me. 1:21:30 SM: So, you obviously you were in the commune, but you did not have any like disagreements over politics or anything? 1:21:39 SG: [inaudible] We do not we do not use that word in that way here, we just do not do it. 1:21:50 SM: Why In your opinion, why did the Vietnam War end? 1:21:56 SG: Ran out of money? 1:22:01 SM: And uh- 1:22:01 SG: I think the people in the streets had a lot to do with it. I had a different experience. I came home Korea people said, where you been? You know? We already knew, in Korea we knew what was going to happen. One of the guys had written a little song. (Singing) Pardon me boy, is that an Indochina convoy? Uncle Sam has my fare it is just a trifle to spare. Come to Yokohama Harbor about a quarter to four. Sink a submarine and then you are looking for more. Dinner on the liner. Nothing could be finer than to have your ham and eggs in Indochina. 1:22:44 SM: Hmm. 1:22:45 SG: We knew that [inaudible] was next. 1:22:48 SM: You were a Korean War vet now Vietnam vets were not welcomed home were Korean War vets welcomed home? 1:22:55 SG: Nobody knew they came home. [laughs] And do not think, there were people who were supposed to be for peace who were dumb enough to be bad to soldiers. And I really hate that and regret that. But veterans, veterans, I am straight with veterans and they are straight with me. I am very grateful for my experience that allowed me to bridge that gap. 1:23:24 SM: Let me change I got this [inaudible] Alright, I am back. I guess I get a series of questions. I am going to ask them some of the personalities of the period. But the other thing I want to ask you was the button issue of trust the boomer generation is, as I see, it oftentimes is labeled as a generation that does not trust because so many lies were seen in their leaders, whether it be Watergate with Nixon and certainly the Gulf of Tonkin with President Johnson, you have the body counts that McNamara used to give on a weekly basis and we knew they were not truthful. So a lot of the boomers grew up with their leaders lying and they did not trust leaders and so obviously, this probably came up in some of your classes at San Francisco State where students just did not trust anybody in a position of responsibility or authority, whether it be university president, a corporate leader, or congressman or a senator and or even, you know, anyone your thoughts on the issue of trust, as you have seen him in your life, not only through your experiences in the (19)60s in San Francisco, but your life on The Farm? 1:28:54 SG: Well, the thing about Monday Night Class was, especially after it got bigger, was my role became much plainer and it was that I could not discriminate against questioners. And that if I did not know something I had to say, I do not know. And if I answered a question for somebody, they were the one who got to say was the question answered. I did not stand up in front of my class. I sat in a chair, talking to them. I did not use a microphone to talk to 1000 people. And it meant that it was like meditation with a conversation on top. And the way I treated people set the standard for how easy it would be for them to speak themselves so nobody was afraid to speak up in Monday Night Class. And I also had to be easy to call down. If I said something wrong or something I was supposed to roll right away for it, and do not argue about it. And none of that stuff bothered me, it was going to be obviously the right way to do it. But it developed a conversational style. And also, to talk to a bunch of people like that. There are things that happen, like sometimes you'll see the room catch a joke. And it is like watching the wind on a wheat field. Just really, really close to everybody's mind. And the day the students were shot at Kent State. It was a Monday. And I had Monday Night Class. And about 100 people showed up very noisy, about we got to get guns! They are trying to kill us you know, you cannot be all peaceful like this you got to get out there and do it. And so, I am having that argument with them. And somebody comes up and gives me, a little girl gives me a piece of candy and as I pop in my mouth, she looks so mischievous, I thought- oh! And sure enough, I been loaded a big chunk of acid. 1:31:11 SM: Oh, no. 1:31:12 SG: So, coming onto acid and having this argument about violence. And I finally got to a place where I said look here. All these nights I have been coming in here and saying love and peace. You guys have been saying yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah. I repeat it and you say yeah, yeah. I say love and peace and the whole audience answered me: yeah, yeah. And that showed me that the violent guys were just a little thin fringe in the back. And they noticed it too. They were very well outnumbered by [inaudible] people. 1:31:47 SM: Well. 1:31:48 SG: So, we had that argument about it. And that was what we did. When heroin came, we talked about that. When crack came, we talked about that. We talked to all that kind of stuff. When Scientology came we talked about that. 1:32:06 SM: Hmm. Did you bring guests in? Or was it just you in the students? 1:32:13 SG: Well, no, I did not bring guests in. 1:32:19 SM: Yeah, Kent State. I just got back from the four days there. This is the 40th anniversary. 1:32:24 SG: Yeah. 1:32:25 And it was phew, it was an event that really shocked everyone. April 30th Nixon gave his speech and then on the fourth with the killings of May. So, was that room full that night when? 1:32:42 SG: Oh, yeah. 1:32:42 SM: How many were students were there that night? 1:32:44 SG: It was about [inaudible] 1:32:47 SM: Wow. 1:32:48 SG: The thing is I do not call people [inaudible] I do not call people [inaudible] 1:33:03 SM: Some said that they wanted to go and create violence, others did not. Did anybody talk about the police? What were the main issues on the student's minds? 1:33:13 SG: Well, the guys who had come to class for the purpose of disrupting and trying to turn it toward a violent thing were strong in what they were saying. The usual people who came to class felt that it was an attack on their consciousness and that they did not want to part of it. 1:33:32 SM: What happened at San Francisco State in the in the days after? 1:33:37 SG: Oh, we had we had we had one time where everybody was thrown off the campus by the police. There were hundreds of cops there. So, I was kind of assaulted. On the way out, I stopped in front of each cop, cops all lined up. I would go up and stop in front of each cop and looked him in the eyes until we had caught his eyes. And then I would stop at the next one and I did that to every cop on the line all the way up because I knew I was right and they were wrong. 1:34:06 SM: Yeah, that was a big issue back then is when do you bring in police from off campus and not just choose your own police and that had to be done by the administration was this where Hayakawa got in trouble? 1:34:21 SG: This goes back to the 1700s you know, town and gown. You know, that same thing. We were peaceful. Everybody knew we were peaceful. And there were people who were not but, that they were welcome to come to class and hear what we said. 1:34:41 SM: Did you ever talk about the Black Panther Party across the bay and what the Black Panther Party was doing? 1:34:50 SG: I did not know him but I would shake hands with him and say hi. And there was also one of them, this one guy point guy that was part of that bunch of guys who was an artist. And the best guy I saw in that bunch of guys, he was so good. And he used to, he knew how to do one of those old dances. Throws a little dime to a little black boy and goes dance for your trip. He knew how to do that. The problem with it was, he was really good at it. And he would do that and the other guys would say make it stop, make it stop augh! And he died because they asked him to start H. Rap Brown's car and it was bombed. 1:35:48 SM: Let us say that again? Uh. 1:35:51 SG: This is the guy Ralph Featherstone. Featherstone. And he was the guy who started H. Rap Brown's car but it had been bombed and they killed him. 1:36:02 SM: Somebody sent a bomb in Brown's car. 1:36:05 SG: Yeah. 1:36:06 SM: Unbelievable. And where was that car located? 1:36:09 SG: I do not know. 1:36:09 SM: Oh, Okay, right here in the Bay Area? 1:36:12 SG: I do not think so. 1:36:13 SM: Oh, okay. 1:36:14 SG: I met Ralph Featherstone when we went to San Francisco State college to do the Mississippi challenge for the Mississippi delegation because of the ride. So, I went, I got to meet a few guys, you know up at the, Mo Udall. Udall said, I agree with guys. And my name starts with a "U" and by the time it gets to me, I want to know whether it is going to make it or not. And if it looks like it is going to make it, I will go on with you. 1:36:46 SM: Right. 1:36:46 SG: If it looks like it is going to make it. 1:36:49 SM: Another issue that happened around the time you were at San Francisco State was People's Park over in Berkeley. 1:36:55 SG: Yeah, I got in a little trouble for that. I said that it was an unreasonable expectation, they could not take real estate away from somebody because they wanted to it was not going to wash and the establishment was not going to allow it to happen. And it was going to cause bad confrontations. And it got somebody killed! 1:37:14 SM: That is right, the guy on top of the building. 1:37:17 SG: And I did not like I did not like the general way. Bad tactic, bad strategy. 1:37:28 SM: Did the students ever talk about Governor Reagan? Because he was tough on students. 1:37:34 SG: Yep. Well, the thing about, about Ronald Reagan is that when I was a little boy in Santa Fe, about 12-13 years old, if I would go to the movies, walk about two and a half miles into Santa Fe to see my weekend movie, and if I came to the movie house, and it was a Ronald Reagan movie, I would turn around and go home without seeing the movie that weekend. I could not stand him. I still cannot stand him. If he is not doing a part he has no more expression in his face than a potato. He was not a smart man. What Reagan did! Reagan did not do shit except for he was an actor for some. 1:38:23 SM: I know I interviewed Ed Meese down in Washington, his attorney general. 1:38:27 SG: Yeah. 1:38:28 SM: And he had picked Ed Meese to be his top person when he was governor. He did not know him until that point. But Mr. Meese had been involved with the Free Speech Movement as the assistant district attorney of Alameda County. So, he had already been involved with the Free Speech Movement (19)64- (19)65 but under Reagan, he was in charge of coming down hard on students in (19)69 at People's Park. 1:38:55 SG: Yeah. 1:38:57 SM: So, before I get into some specific questions I am just got names before we end this. Are there any other, we have talked about, you talked about People's Park, you talked about Kent State, you talked about drugs. What were some of the other topics that you talked about with the students? What were what was on the boomer’s minds when they came into that class? Just general issues? 1:39:23 SG: Well, I did thumbnail sketches on all the world's major religions. And that was one of the things that we talked about it. I used to say take all the religions and put them on old fashioned IBM cards, and stack all the old religions up like that and some of the holes would go clear through the stack. 1:39:50 SM: Hmm. 1:39:51 SG: That was what we were interested in. What would have gone clear through the stack? 1:39:57 SM: Did you talk about any of the other movements like the Women's Movement or the Gay and Lesbian Movement or the Native American, American Indian Movement they were very big too. 1:40:08 SG: Yeah, I, when they did the Longest Walk from Oakland to Washington DC, plenty gave them an ambulance for the run. And I went on that run. And when I got the DC, I saw that the security guys- those guys who had red threads braided into their braids to identify that they were security was keeping the press away from the old guys. 1:40:36 SM: Hmm. 1:40:37 SG: I was friends with one of these Indian chiefs, Oren Lyons, he's one of the Mohawk traditional chiefs and I went to Oren, because I knew him and I said look Oren, the security guys are keeping the press away from the old people and the old people are prettiest thing you have got. They should not be doing that. They should be facilitating the press to get to the old people. So, they had a meeting with the [inaudible] that night, and he expressed my opinion to the meeting and they agreed. He came back out and it was like that. And he told me that I was the hippie elder. 1:41:14 SM: Hmm. When you look at you ever see had all these experiences of the musicians that were in the Bay Area, whether it be the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane. My golly, I remember learning that Boz Skaggs was from there along with the Huey Lewis and the News and Tower of Power, the list goes on and on in the Bay Area. What musicians and artists that you felt were the most important they had the greatest influence on the boomer generation, in your view? 1:41:51 SG: Musicians and artists? 1:41:54 SM: Yeah, what musicians? When you were at San Francisco State did you ever talk about the musicians in your classes? 1:42:03 SG: Oh, I know. I had musicians in my class. And- [laughs] 1:42:10 SM: I mean, did you talk about what was happening in the music scene? 1:42:13 SG: We had quite a hot discussion one night about who was St. Stephen. 1:42:17 SM: Who was who? 1:42:18 SG: St. Stephen. 1:42:20 SM: Okay. 1:42:21 SG: [singing] Was a rose in and out of the garden. He goes country garden wind in the rain, wherever he goes, people are complaining. 1:42:31 SM: And that created discussion for a couple hours? 1:42:35 SG: Yeah! Some people thought it was, some people thought it was not. I had to kind of go easy because I had been over visiting Garcia concerned about Pig Pen he was getting to be a real bad alcoholic. I want to talk to Jerry about it and I did not know it but one of the, one of the guys that wrote the lyrics was in the next room with the door open while I was there talking to Jerry. And we had all this discussion. And that guy is the guy that wrote the lyrics for St. Stephen. 1:43:09 SM: Oh my god. 1:43:10 SG: Stuff out of my mouth from that visit while I was at Jerry's that I recognized. 1:43:14 SM: What was his name? 1:43:16 SG: I think it was Hunter. 1:43:17 SM: Oh, wow. 1:43:17 SG: I think that was the one. I had a couple of them. 1:43:24 SM: So, you knew Jerry Garcia. Who were some of the other personalities in the Bay Area that you got to know? 1:43:31 SG: Well like I said like I said, I knew Big Brother and the Holding Company before they had amplifiers and that I was a family you know, I did not play anything. I was just unabashedly a fan. And I you know; the Airplane came up with Grace. Wow! The Airplane's got a girl! And then Chester brought Janis up from Texas, then Big Brother had a girl. All that stuff is interesting stuff going on at the time and I suppose people there were some people that just put me out there, nirvana. I love rock and roll. 1:44:22 SM: Did you get to meet Janis? 1:44:25 SG: What say? 1:44:26 SM: Did you get to meet Janis Joplin? 1:44:28 SG: Oh, yeah. She did not like me very much. 1:44:31 SM: What was she like? 1:44:32 SG: Well, the hippes were scandalized when one by two turned up and set a bottle of Southern Comfort on top of the piano because we did not drink hard liquor. The hippies were all surprised by that. But you know, her stuff was kind of blues, that is hard on you to sing. And I had to respect to her heavy weightiness in that class. I liked it most it was raising divine. 1:45:12 SM: She died of an overdose of drugs I believe did not she? 1:45:15 SG: Yeah. And not the kind, nothing that I would take either. 1:45:19 SM: What was? What did she die from? 1:45:22 SG: It was not reefer. 1:45:26 SM: Was she drinking and taking medicine at the same time or? 1:45:30 SG: I think I think that she was like, I cannot talk about other people's dope. 1:45:35 SM: Okay. Yeah. And you knew Grace Slick too then? And how about Stevie Nicks? Did you know her? 1:45:43 SG: Who was the second when you said Grace Slick? Grace. Yeah, I did not know Grace, but I admired her greatly. 1:45:51 SM: And Stevie Nicks is the other one that camp out of the came in the area. 1:45:55 SG: Stevie Nicks? 1:45:55 SM: Yup. 1:45:57 SG: No, that is after my time. 1:45:58 SM: Yeah okay. Any other any of the other political people that you get to meet in may be activists like Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis that group? 1:46:13 SG: I went up to Abbie Hoffman's place up on the St. Lawrence Seaway and let my boy Sam drive his boat. I was at Abbie's last gig and it was funny bus but Leary and Abbie and what was his name? One of the Black Panthers. 1:46:30 SM: Bobby Seale. 1:46:32 SG: Bobby Seale and when the guy introduced us, when he introduced Bobby Seale out in the suburbs it would have been a scary thing but now it is just Bobby Seale, but now it is just Bobby Seale's new outdoor cookbook. 1:46:46 SM: Yeah, did not I think Paul was the moderator was not he? Paul Krasner? 1:46:53 SG: No way, not with that one. 1:46:55 SM: I know he moderated one of those programs. 1:46:57 SG: Yeah. Yeah. And the thing about Tim was that he was a technician. And when it was his turn to talk, he leaned up and he put the first syllable right into that microphone and made the room rain. And he had the intention. 1:47:19 SM: Okay, I am going to, I am just going to list some names here that I do this, I finish each interview with this. And then I have a question on the legacy. But these are just personalities or terms from the era when boomers were young. And that is (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s and (19)80s so and you can just get quick responses, these are either personalities or terms or events. First one, first two are just your thoughts on Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda? 1:47:52 SG: Well, there was good leftists and stuff like that. That was fine. I did not mind Jane Fonda that they were not hardcore hippies or anything they were media people who were sympathetic. 1:48:09 SM: John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. 1:48:12 SG: I cried when John was killed. 1:48:15 SM: Where were you? Obviously, people remember where they were when that happened. Do you remember the exact moment that you heard it? 1:48:22 SG: Yes, I came down out of my apartment on Castro Street in San Francisco right at the entrance of the tunnel, I came out and everybody was weird. I could not tell what it was but people were weird. I just walked up to somebody says what happened? And he knew I did not have to explain, he said: They killed Kennedy. 1:48:40 SM: Oh, wow. 1:48:43 SG: I could tell, the street was just freezing. 1:48:46 SM: And then the next everybody remembers the next four days around the TV set. Were you around it to? 1:48:52 SG: Somewhat but I did not have television. I had to go to somebody else’s. I did happen to be around a television set when Martin Luther King gave the "I have a" I got to see that. It was very eerie that they shot him the next day. 1:49:08 SM: Yeah, Bobby Kennedy. 1:49:11 SG: I loved Bobby too. He did not have a chance to develop but he would have been a heavy weight with a chance to develop and in those days look how easily it passed by that it was a Muslim that killed him. These days that would cause a fire. 1:49:32 SM: How about Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern? 1:49:36 SG: They were good guys and they tried hard and I appreciate them but I thought they the Clean for Gene was a bad idea. 1:49:49 SM: Hmm. 1:49:49 SG: He did not want the hippies to look like him. He wanted. They believed in him for his philosophy but he was not visibly supported by them. So, they put out the word Clean for Gene. 1:50:02 SM: So that turned a lot of people off towards Senator McCarthy? 1:50:05 SG: I think so. 1:50:07 SM: I wish he knew that because he was advised to do that. 1:50:10 SG: Yeah. 1:50:12 SM: That was not his idea. 1:50:13 SG: Good! 1:50:14 SM: No, because I already interviewed the guy in my book project here, who gave him the idea. 1:50:21 SG: Ahh. 1:50:21 SM: So that that did not come from him originally. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. 1:50:31 SG: Well, I was, in the beginning was a gringo enough that Martin Luther King embarrassed me because of his passion. And Malcolm X. You know, I got to like Malcolm X. I liked him pretty well. And it was one of the interesting things about him was when he went to go visit Islam and he came back. Islam is not a racist religion. 1:51:02 SM: Hmm mm. 1:51:03 SG: Of course, he had to do something to get him killed. 1:51:08 SM: Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew? 1:51:15 SG: Cheap ass politicians. 1:51:17 SM: How about Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford? 1:51:24 SG: Ronald Reagan. Like I said, I would not go to a movie that weekend. A Ronald Reagan movie. Gerald Ford got a bum rap. He was not as dumb as they made him out to be. 1:51:34 SM: How about Dwight Eisenhower? 1:51:36 SG: Now there is a general and a president, you know? And a guy that had the nerve to say the thing that they get people to say yet: It was clear and present danger to allow undo power of the United States military industrial complex. 1:51:55 SM: You are right. 1:51:56 SG: Best thing a president ever said. 1:52:01 SM: Hubert Humphrey. 1:52:04 SG: Called him Hugh the Jew but I kind of liked him. 1:52:06 SM: How about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin? 1:52:10 SG: Well, I was at a gig with Jerry Rubin and I said something to him and he said: I did not mean you Stephen! People over thirty. 1:52:19 SM: Remember he was on the Phil Donahue show, and he really gave it to Phil Donahue. 1:52:23 SG: I was on the Donahue show. 1:52:29 SM: Who was on Donahue? 1:52:30 SG: Yeah. 1:52:31 SM: You were? 1:52:32 SG: Yeah. 1:52:33 SM: Really? What year was that? 1:52:35 SG: Well, it was kind of a spoof because Donahue was just about to Marlo Thomas and so he was running a bunch of shows, several a day to build up a little honeymoon time for him. And so, I got some kind of a crew, I never got to meet him. He did not come to the farm. He sent a crew down here. The lady from the crew was having an affair with one of the techs and stuff. Then I got to go talk to him and so I never got to - he did not have a clue who I was when we went on the air. And he said how many billionaires had I cashed out! 1:53:12 SM: How many what? 1:53:14 SG: Millionaires had I cashed out into our commune. 1:53:19 SM: Oh my gosh. 1:53:22 SG: This is Marlo fixed him up, she civilized him. But he did that to me and the result of that was we are coming down on Chicago in our Greyhound bus and the semis that are passing us say - hey look at that their bus man, hey, you guys got any wacky tabacky? Another time, though, we were in the Greyhound and a driver coming the other way said, to look at that old Greyhound, pretty as Dolly Parton in a wet t-shirt. [laughs] 1:53:53 SM: What are your thoughts on Chicago Eight because that was a very big trial. 1:53:58 SG: I knew somebody from then that [inaudible] those guys 1:54:03 SM: That was you know, that was both Rubin and Hoffman and Hayden and Huey Newton and Dave Dellinger and Lee Weiner. 1:54:16 SG: Well, I already told you about the guys I knew. 1:54:17 SM: Yeah. That was well, that was a big event in (19)68. What do you think about the women leaders? I have not been talking about them yet, but Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, Bella Abzug, the feminists. 1:54:33 SG: I like them fine they have a hard road to hoe and if they get shrill with it and like that but I am very impressed by their courage although I still think that, it was Johnson who called Bella Azberg was not it? 1:54:59 SM: I am not sure. 1:54:59 SG: [laughs] 1:55:03 SM: Yeah, when we talked one of the big issues within the movements itself, the civil rights, the antiwar, gay and lesbian, American Indian Movement, all the movements basically it was the sexism that took place within the movements in the (19)60s and the (19)70s. It is a lot of reasons why the women left the, the antiwar movement and joined, joined well, started the women's movement, the second wave, so to speak. How has when that happened with the movement, you obviously had men and women in the communes. How are women treated in the commune? 1:55:47 SG: Do not do not call it a commune. If you get in the habit of it you will put it on the page if you get in the habit of calling it that. 1:55:53 SM: The Farm. 1:55:54 SG: The Farm, exactly. 1:55:58 SM: I correct myself, sorry. 1:56:04 SG: [laughs] The way it was on the farm is that there was one pick-up on the farm that would start and it belonged to a midwife. 1:56:17 SM: I did not quite hear that. Say that again? 1:56:21 SG: I said that the way the farm was about that stuff, if there is only one pick-up on the farm that ran it would belong to a midwife. 1:56:28 SM: Okay. 1:56:29 SG: Our, we had guys who went to medical school from the farm and came back as doctors. And so, we had midwives and doctors instead of being the other way. It is one of the reasons that our midwives are so uppity. I love uppity women. 1:56:43 SM: Well that is that is a positive thing then. Your thoughts on the Black Panthers themselves the Huey Newton's, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Bobby Seales, H. Rap Brown. 1:56:53 SG: You know, I understood it and I loved them a lot but I was just sorry that they were so involved with the guns. 1:57:08 SM: Good point. Would you would say the same thing about the Weatherman? 1:57:11 SG: Yeah. 1:57:12 SM: Yeah and the American Indian Movement went that direction too. 1:57:17 SG: Being a combat veteran I had to carry dead and wounded back out of the rice paddies. It gets rid of making guns seem romantic pretty well. What was the last thing you just said there about? 1:57:29 SM: They were the names of the Black Panthers: Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown that you already mentioned. 1:57:37 SG: I met Stokely. I did not meet H. Rap Brown buy my friend got killed starting his car. 1:57:47 SM: He is in jail now. You want to want to talk about American Indians? Yeah, the American Indian Movement was between (19)69 and (19)73 very strong. They took over Alcatraz and then ended up at Wounded Knee where there was violence. 1:58:09 SG: I know the two guys who got busted. 1:58:20 SM: Dennis Banks. 1:58:21 SG: Dennis Banks and what is his name? 1:58:25 SM: The other one. 1:58:26 SG: Russell Means. 1:58:27 SM: Russel Means. Yeah. 1:58:28 SG: I have a funny relationship with Russell Means he knows I got juice. He does not know why. [laughs] I saw him at a thing with him one time and I said 'Hey, Russell, you are really doing good.' And the look he gave back to me said, who the fuck are you to tell me how I am doing? 1:58:48 SM: He has done pretty well. He has been in movies. 1:58:50 SG: Yeah, well, they called Hollywood before he had ever been in the movie. 1:58:53 SM: Right? 1:58:55 SG: But also, we were at a thing and in Taos and we were supposed to hold it down to ten minutes and Russell says well I expect brother Steve will try to hold it down but I do not know if I can or not. 1:59:09 SM: Wow. Well you know, Alcatraz was happening when you were teaching that class. I believe. 1:59:14 SG: Very likely. 1:59:15 SM: Yeah. Because that was (19)69. And it might have been an issue too. Couple more names here, Dr. Benjamin Spock. 1:59:25 SG: Well, he was considered the godfather of the movement and all that and he said one thing that was like, true, but I was kind of sorry he said it. He said that they did not really pay any attention to us and we knocked all the windows out of the Senate [inaudible] building. 1:59:43 SM: He was in the group that levitated the Pentagon. 1:59:47 SG: Yeah and [inaudible] was in that. 1:59:51 SM: And Norman Mailer was there too. He wrote a book on how about the Barrigan brothers Philip and Daniel Barrigan. 1:59:59 SG: Oh, that is what you call a good Christian! 2:00:03 SM: Walter Cronkite. 2:00:05 SG: I love the one right in the middle of the shit totally hitting the fan. The biggest, best circulation magazine cover was Cronkite and at the wheel of his yacht and it was obviously the ship of the day. 2:00:26 SM: Daniel Ellsberg. 2:00:29 SG: Great dude. Great dude. 2:00:33 SM: How about Walt Disney? 2:00:36 SG: You mean? 2:00:38 SM: The man who created the dynasty? 2:00:43 SG: Dynasty? 2:00:44 SM: Disney, Disneyland, Disney Studios. 2:00:49 SG: I kind of like the dope smokers that used to work for him before he started hiring people who smoked dope. 2:00:55 SM: He is more influential than people realize with the TV in the (19)50s. 2:01:02 SG: Yeah. Well I did not have TV in the (19)50s. 2:01:05 SM: You know, it is interesting Howdy Doody is another one because somebody wrote an article that Howdy Doody was the reason why the (19)60s began, can you believe that? 2:01:18 SG: No. 2:01:18 SM: [laughs] Just a few more here, Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali. 2:01:24 SG: Well, I feel that the thing about them is like when Joe Lewis went and knocked Max Schmelling down. And it was that is one of the ways that people can get out is athletics because they break out of their cultural shell that way that those guys showed to break things out that way. I have to admit that I had to smile when he was trying to talk about what kind of a boxer he was and he says just look at me. I am pretty. I am pretty! 2:02:07 SM: [laughs] Yeah. How about Robert McNamara and John Dean? 2:02:18 SG: John Dean was the one they called the young man with the dirty hands of the clean mind. And he has still got a good reputation on the tube, he used to talk all the time. McNamara, the guys were just what do you call them? Apparatchik? 2:02:35 SM: Yeah. How about Watergate and Tet? 2:02:40 SG: Tet? The Tet Offensive? 2:02:44 SM: Yeah. 2:02:46 SG: Well, Watergate was good because it got Nixon in deep personal shit. But the Tet Offensive that was just them finishing kicking us out of Vietnam was not it? 2:03:03 SM: Yeah, Tet was in (19)68, which many people believe is why LBJ decided to withdraw. Because even though we beat them back, they, they had the opportunity to attack us all over the countries of Vietnam that is. 2:03:22 SG: Well, Vietnam was when we took over a place that was being held in an evil political grip from the people who was holding, which was the French. And we just took over somebody else's old Colonial got there and we had to pay the bill for life was ours. 2:03:46 SM: How would you define the hippies? in comparing them to the hippie? 2:03:53 SG: Era? Okay, he was International. 2:03:59 SM: They were they were much more political than the hippies though, would not you say? 2:04:03 SG: Yeah, but politics is not bad when you need it. 2:04:07 SM: Right? 2:04:08 SG: The politics if you are comparing politics to inspiration and stuff. 2:04:14 SM: Yeah 2:04:14 SG: You want to give people guns and things, they got to know. 2:04:14 SM: I have three slogans here that that I have asked each person that I have interviewed, that define the boomer generation, and these are the three slogans: Malcolm X: "by any means necessary" which is symbolizing the more violent aspects, the guns, the radicalism. Then you have got the Bobby Kennedy who gave that those words: "Some men sees things as they are and ask why I see things that never were and ask why not." That was kind of the activist mentality and all the movements without violence. And then what I call the more hippie mentality which is the which was on the Peter Max posters that were so popular in college campuses in the early (19)70s which said, and I had one in my room: "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should get together, it'll be beautiful." And the only other quote that somebody said to me was "We shall overcome" which symbolic of the civil rights movement. Do you think those kinds of define the boomers? 2:05:18 SG: No, no, I do not think so. 2:05:35 SM: Do you have some that you feel would define them? 2:05:46 SG: I do not think of them as the boomers. I think that that is a that is a psychological and media kind of a thing. And it does not have a lot of magic to me. 2:06:06 SM: But the term may not but do the- do the way the people that were living at that time, the younger people, does that kind of cover them? Or are there some quotes that maybe are better? 2:06:21 SG: Well, the first one of that bunch of the ones that you gave me, well, I like this 2:06:32 SM: The Malcolm X? 2:06:34 SG: What was this? 2:06:36 SM: By any means necessary. 2:06:37 SG: Oh no, I do not like that one. By any means necessary is a threat. By any means necessary is trying to justify guns. I do not like that. 2:06:51 SM: Bobby Kennedy's is okay. The Bobby Kennedy ones, okay? 2:06:57 SG: Yeah, I like that. I like that. 2:06:58 SM: How about the Peter Max one? 2:07:03 SG: It is okay. But it gets kind of long and involved, it is not what I am picking out as the writer [inaudible] 2:07:13 SM: Are there any words that you think could better define? 2:07:25 SG: People who talk about how the (19)70s was a drag? When the (9)70s was happening, we were building the farm and we some of our great, finest years. It is like that. I, I sort of parted company [inaudible] when I came out on the road and we came here [inaudible] 2:07:56 SM: You know a lot of people do when they compare the (19)60s in the (19)70s they really put the (19)70s way below the (19)60s. 2:08:03 SG: Yeah. 2:08:04 SM: Particularly after (19)73. 2:08:07 SG: Yeah well, we built The Farm at that time. We were very strong. And you know, we had a United Nations grounds pass because we were an NGO united nation. We were powerful political [inaudible] categories and stuff. 2:08:28 SM: A lot of reasons why people attack the (19)70s as they think of disco music and- 2:08:35 SG: Yeah. 2:08:36 SM: And the lack, and the dying of activism. I think that is oftentimes- 2:08:40 SG: Our guys said they might start a band called the Cisco Ducks. 2:08:47 SM: Oh, that would be interesting. 2:08:50 SG: Which is "Disco sucks" Y. 2:08:52 SM: Yeah, I remember that. Ok, a couple more and then we are done. Vietnam veterans against the war. Your thoughts on them? 2:09:01 SG: Well, the Vietnam War was such a hard on the other people thing, that the guys were just used up like that. And I got big compassion for Vietnam vets and [inaudible] 2:09:15 SM: Have you visited the wall in Washington? 2:09:17 SG: No. 2:09:18 SM: Oh, okay. Have you seen it though? on TV or? 2:09:22 SG: Yeah, sure. 2:09:23 SM: Have you talked to any vets? What do you think that wall means to this nation? 2:09:29 SG: Well, it was supposed to make them notice that a lot of young men were sacrificed but I do not. Let us see Kurt Vonnegut has the place where this guy says we are not going to have any airplanes fly over and celebrate the war heroes. What we are going to do is what we ought to do all of the guys who were in power and had anything to do with it, are going to [inaudible] fluid rub mud on themselves and crawl around on the ground and oink like pigs. 2:10:09 SM: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. 2:10:15 SG: Clinton was skillful but unreal. And Jimmy Carter was really real it could have been more skillful. 2:10:24 SM: How about George Bush, the first? 2:10:32 SG: Some rich guy that had no business in politics. 2:10:39 SM: How about the Catonsville nine. Are you aware that? That was the Barrigan brothers. 2:10:44 SG: Well, I thought that they were they were good priests, that is what priests are supposed to do, stand up for everybody. 2:10:52 SM: How about My Lai- 2:10:54 SG: Massacre? 2:10:56 SM: Yes. 2:10:58 SG: Well, there is so much illegal violence in the cleanest war that none of its clean and violence as a way to just threatening people and bullying. 2:11:22 SM: And people think that and a couple other instances is the reason why Vets were not treated well when they came home. Not so much by Americans as a whole but by organizations, veterans’ organizations. Angela Davis and Timothy Leary. 2:11:42 SG: Well, I like Angela Davis accept its a dumb thing to carry a pistol into a courtroom. It was a stupid thing to do and it ruined her reputation. And Tim Leary, I always thought of him as Uncle Tim. Because your uncle does not care what you do as much as your dad does. 2:12:02 SM: Right. And we already mentioned The Weathermen. The year 1968. Just the year. 2:12:15 SG: I met the love of my life who I am still with 40 some years later. 2:12:23 SM: John Lennon. 2:12:25 SG: I liked John Lennon. I was in Germany and when I talked it was being translator. And so, I talked about that when he says, "train car with (...?). He translated it and then I turned to my translator and said, you did not say [inaudible] 2:12:48 SM: Still there? 2:12:50 SG: Yeah. 2:12:50 SM: Okay. Yeah, Barry Goldwater and William Buckley. 2:13:01 SG: Goldwater is an honest whatever he is. And Buckley is not. Well, he was kind of a gross old fart but he had a hard row to hoe and he did pretty good. 2:13:34 SM: How about the Little Rock Nine and the Free Speech Movement? 2:13:39 SG: The Free Speech Movement like I said, I answered the phone when they called [inaudible] but I do not know about that nine? Which nine? 2:13:49 SM: The Little Rock Nine were the, they refused entrance to the school, Little Rock, Arkansas. 2:13:58 SG: I guess I missed those guys. 2:13:59 SM: When the Port Huron statement, which was the SDS manifesto, and the Peace Corps. 2:14:07 SG: Peace Corps was a good thing. 2:14:10 SM: When the best history books are written they are often written 50 years minimum after a period takes place. So, the (19)60s some of the best ones should be written in 10 years. But some say that the best books are written once the generation has passed on, which is one day all 74 million boomers will no longer be around. Your thoughts on what do you think historians and sociologists will be writing in saying about this period, and the young people and you know, they still got 20 more years of life, even though the oldest is 63, and the youngest is 47. So, they are, they are still going to do a lot of things yet. But- 2:15:02 SG: A revolution is that thing that those who can do and those who cannot teach. I did not like being in the penitentiary but it did not hurt me a bit as far as my immediate history. 2:15:23 SM: And you were in the penitentiary for selling drugs? 2:15:26 SG: No, I never sold dope. I was in the penitentiary because guys on the Farm were caught growing grass. I did a year. 2:15:34 SM: Okay. 2:15:38 SG: I had the best penitentiary stay outside of Martha Stewart. I mean the warden would come out and get with me in the yard. One time the guy says, well you are vegetarian, I am a vegetarian, what do I do? And basically, they said, go line up with the black Muslim which I not know what they were talking about. I got there. The black Muslim was not in the chow line, he was pre-arranged [inaudible] 2:16:06 SM: Wow. 2:16:07 SG: So, I said, [inaudible] somebody said I should ask you guys about vegetarian food and the guy says someone has been in the [inaudible] And then when they found out who we were and where we were at, I was in the chow line and that same leader that afternoon was behind me in the chow line. And he kind of shouldered me in the back a little bit and [inaudible] white means 'very clean brother'. 2:16:40 SM: I guess, is there any questions that you felt I was going to ask that I did not? 2:16:49 SG: Well, I do not know. The thing is, I do not depend too much on the on the aphorisms and the media, they use aphorisms like they are important but they are not really that important. 2:17:08 SM: So, you do not like that term? Boomer. 2:17:10 SG: No, not really. 2:17:11 SM: Yeah, because you know, the group that followed Boomers are Generation X. 2:17:16 SG: I can hardly hear you. 2:17:18 SM: Okay, can you hear me now? 2:17:20 SG: Better? 2:17:21 SM: Yeah. The group that found is Generation X, and today's young people are Millennials. So, it is something that educators put on and they call the Greatest Generation, the World War II generation and then the Silent Generation, which was only five years. So, it is the way people put labels on and I found by doing this project that most people do not like the labels. 2:17:49 SG: Yeah. 2:17:50 SM: My last question is this. If you do not like the Boomer Generation, what would what would the Vietnam generation? Woodstock generation? The Protest Generation, what? How would you label the generation? 2:18:06 SG: What generation? 2:18:08 SM: The generation born after World War II. 2:18:16 SG: I do not know that is not how I do my nomenclature. I do not sort names is to maybe complicate things. 2:18:29 SM: He just more really and not- 2:18:32 SG: I cannot get you over your phone anymore. 2:18:34 SM: Are you there? Can you hear me? 2:18:37 SG: Barely. 2:18:38 SM: Well, I am done. 2:18:40 SG: Year what? (End of Interview) 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>. Description 2 Microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. 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Title A name given to the resource Interview with Stephen Gaskin Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Gaskin, Stephen ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Political activists--United States; Hippies; Gaskin, Stephen--Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen Gaskin (1935 - 2014) was an American Hippie counterculture icon. He was an author of over a dozen books and a political activist. He went to prison in 1974 for marijuana possession and his voting rights were rescinded. Gaskin was a recipient for the first Right Livelihood Award in 1980 and an inductee in the Counterculture Hall of Fame in 2004. 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 2010-05-13 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.10.2016.103a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.103b 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. 138:44 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e84b35b727327e96de274ea313cc0dc8.pdf dc5b5483ba1d661c0851864cc2e8f29a PDF Text Text BINGHAMTON U N I V E R S I T Y STATE  U N I V E R S I T Y   O F  N E W   Y O R K vwdee D E P A R T M E N T [4 Melodienstrauld A Spriné Bouquet of German Lieder, fitters?) Ensembles German Lyric Diction Finsl Concert Judy ‘Berry. Instructor Tlvfllbm Lawson. plmo “\<{/’ s e x y / K £  63/93/53 13, 2010 Casadests Recrtzrl Hell �PROGRAM Der Frtlhling (Spring) Fruhlingsmorgen, Gustav Mahler (1860­1911) Jennifer Groves, soprano 898980 INTERMISSION  cscscs Der Tod (Death) Der Tod und das Madchen, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Tahnee Fallis, mezzo soprano Das Veilchen, Clara Wieck­Schumann (1819­1896) Jana Kucera. soprano Anakreons Grab, Hugo Wolf (1860 –1903) Wie Melodien, Johannes Brahms (1833­1897) Cabiria Jacobsen, mezzo soprano Loreley, Clara Wieck­Schumann (1819­1896) Jana Kucera, soprano Die Traume (Dreams) Nacht und Traume. Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Laura MacAvoy, soprano “Himmel und Erde” (Heaven & Earth) Ich harrete des Herrn (Psalm 40), Felix Mendelssohn­Bartholdy (1809­ 1847) Briana Sakamoto, soprano & Cabiria  Jacobsen, mezzo soprano Traum durch die Dammerung, Richard Strauss (1864–1949) Briana Sakamoto, soprano Traume, Richard Wagner (1813­1883) Julie Williams, soprano Das Wald (Woods ) Waldseligkeit, Joseph Marx (1882­1964) Amanda Chmela, soprano Waldesgeprach, from Liederkreis Op. 39, Robert Alexander Schumann (1810­1856) Julian Whitley, baritone Die Manner (Men!) “Kommt ein schlanker Bursch gegangen’ from Der Freischiitz by Carl Maria von Weber (1786 – 1826) Briana Sakamoto, soprano Die Manner sind méchant, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Samantha Banton, soprano Das verlassene Magdlein, Hugo Wolf (1860 –1903) Victoria Cannizzo, soprano Der Leiermann, Franz Peter Schubert (1797­1828) Heather Worden, mezzo soprano Der Herbst (Autumn) Herbstlied, op. 63, no. 4, Felix Mendelssohn­Bartholdy (1809­1847), Jana Kucera, soprano & Briana Sakamoto, soprano Julian Whitley, baritone Seligkeit, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Samantha Banton, soprano Die Liebe (Love) “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz” from Das Land des Lachelns by Franz Lehar (1870 –1948) Dan Ibeling, tenor Widmung, Robert Alexander Schumann (1810­1856) Julie Williams, soprano Lachen und Weinen, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Laura MacAvoy, soprano Unbewegte laue Luft, Johannes Brahms (1833­1897) Cabiria Jacobsen, mezzo soprano Zueignung, Richard Strauss (1864­1949) Jennifer Groves, soprano Von ewiger Liebe, Johannes Brahms (1833­1897) Victoria Cannizzo, soprano Hat dich die Liebe beruhrt, Joseph Marx (1882­1964) Amanda Chmela, soprano Zu guter Letzt (Finale) “Wohl mir, dass ich Jesum habe” chorale from Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147, Johann Seba stian Bach (1685 –1750) entire class, conducted by Heather Worden �PROGRAM TEXTS Friihlingsmorgen (Sprlng Morning) There taps at the window the linden tree With branches, blossomladen: Arise! Arise! Why do you lie in a dream? The sun has come up! Arise! Arise! And what is more, I saw your merry sweetheart already. Arise, you sleepyhead! Sleepyhead, arise! Arise! Arise! Das Veilchen (The Violet) A little violet Stood on the meadow Bent over itself, And unknown Along came a shepherdess With light step and air, And sang “Ah!” (Thought the little violet) “Were I the most beautiful bloom of nature­ Ah! If she were to press me to her bosom for just a quarter hour!” Ah! The maiden came! And paid no attention To the little violet It sank and withered But rejoiced For even though he died, He died at herfeet Wie Melodien (Like Melodies) Like melodies it moves, Gently through my mind ; Like spring flowers it blooms, And wafts away like fragrance. Then comes language and grasps it, And draws it before my eyes, Like a gray mist it pales, And disappears like a breath. And yet, remaining in poetry There hides a fragrance still, Which mildly from the quiet bud My moist eyes call forth. Nacht und Traume (Night and Dreams) Hallowed night, you sink down! Downward float also the dreams, like your moonlight, through space, through the silent bosom of men. They listen to you with pleasure­ cry out, when the day breaks: Come back, hallowed night; lovely dreams, come ba ck. Traum durch die Dammerung (Dream through the twilight) Wide meadows in the twilight’s gray; The sun is sunk, the stars are moving, Now I go there to the loveliest women, Far over meadows in the twilight’s gray, Deep into bushes of jasmine. Through the twilight’s gray in love’s land; I do not go quickly, I do not hurry. I am drawn by a soft, velvet band Through the twilight’s gray in Iove’s land, Into a blue, mild light. Trauma (Dreams) Tell me, what kind of wondrous dreams Are embracing my senses, That have not, like sea­foam, Vanished into desolate Nothingness? Dreams, that with each passing houn Each passing day, bloom fairer, And with their heavenly tidings Roam blissfully through my heart! Dreams which, like holy rays of light Sink into the soul, There to paint an eternal image: Forgetting all, remembering. Dreams which, when the Spring sun Kisses the blossoms from the Oh flee! Oh flee! You don‘t know who I am.’ So richly adorned is horse and lady, So wondrously beautiful is the young body; Now I know you, God stand with me! You are witch, Loreley! You have recognized me from the high cliffs, My castle gazes silently deep into the Rhine. It is already late, it has become cold, snow, You will never again come out of this forest! So that they grow, so that they bloom, and dreaming, bestow their fragrance, These dreams gently glow and fade on your breast, And then sink into the grave. Kommt ein schlanker Bursch gegangen (When a slim guy comes along) When a slim guy comes along, Blond haired or brown, Bright eyed, rosy­cheeked, Yeah, one can take a good look at him! Sure, one drops her eyes towards her bodice, In the bashful maiden’s manner; But stealthily lifts one’s eyes, When the little man is not looking Should your glances find each So that into unsuspected bliss They greet the new day, Weldseligkelt (Forest Bliss) The forest begins to rustle, night descends upon the trees as if they blissfully eavesdrop, gently touching each other. And under their branches here I am completely alone, here I am completely myself, yet completely yours. Waldgesprach (Conversation in  the woods) “It is already late, it is already cold, Why do you ride alone in the woods? The woods are large and you are alone, You beautiful bride! I will lead you here! ‘The deceit and cunning of men is great, My heart is broken from pain There strays the forest horn here and there, other, Now, where’s the harm in that? No one‘s going to turn blind on the spot, Even if someone turns a little red. A little glance here and a little glance there, Till the mouth becomes just as bold! He sighs: Beautiful! She says: Lovey! Soon they’re called bride and groom. Come closer, dear little people! Do you want to see me with a bridal wreath, Well, isn’t that a nice little bride, And the guy no less beautiful? �Die Manner sind méchant O would it were gone again! leave. Men are faithless, you told me, mother: He’s a young rascal! I wouldn’t believe you Until I had tormented myself sick. Yes, now I know he really is, I’d simply misjudged him. You told me, mother. Der Leiermann (The hurdy­gurdy men) There, behind the village, stands a hurdy­gurdy­man, And with numb fingers he plays the best he can. Der Tod und das Madchen (Death and the Maiden) (Das Madchen) Vomber, ach, vorliber! Geh, wilder Knochenmann Ich bin noch jung, geh. Lieber! Und rithre mich nicht an. (Men are naughty) ‘Men are faithless!‘ Yesterday, as dusk fell silently, In the grove outside the village I heard a whispered ‘Good evening!‘ And a whispered ‘Many thanks!‘ I crept up and listened, Stood there as if transfixed: It was he, with another ­ ‘Men are faithless!‘ O mother, what torture! It must be said, it must! It didn’t just stop at whispering, It didn’t just stop at greetings! From greetings it went to kisses. From kisses to holding hands, From holding hands . . . ah, dear mother, ‘Men are faithless!‘ Das verlassene Mégdlein (The forsaken maiden) Early, when the cock crows, before the stars disappear. I must stand at the hearth; I must light the fire. Beautiful is the blaze of the flames; the sparks fly. I gaze into the fire, sunk in grief. Suddenlyl it  comes to  me, Barefoot on the ice, he staggers back and forth, And his little plate remains ever empty. No one wants to hear him, no one looks at him, And the hounds snarl at the old man. And he lets it all go by, everything as it will, He plays, and his hurdy­gurdy is never still. Strange old man, shall I go with you? Will you play your hurdy­gurdy to my songs? Herbstlied (Autumn song) Ah, how so soon the cycle ends, Spring turns into wintertime! Oh how so soon into moumful Silence All happiness turns as well! Soon the last sounds have faded! Soon the last songbirds have flown! Soon the last green is gone away! All of them want to return home! Ah, how so soon the cycle ends, Happiness turns into yearning pain. unfaithful boy, that last night I dreamed of you. Were you a dream, you thoughts of love? Sweet as spring and fast Tears upon tears then pour down; So the day comes ­ One, only one thing will never waver: It is the yearning that will never vanishing? (Der Tod) Gib deine Hand, du schon und zart Gebild! Bin Freund und komme nicht zu strafen. Sel gutes Muts! ich bin nicht wild, Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen! Anakreons Grab (Anakreon’s Grave) Here, where the rose still blooms, Where the vines and laurel entwine, Where the turtledove coos, Where the grasshopper rejoices, What grave is here, which all the gods have adorned with beautiful living plants? It is Anakreon’s resting place. Spring, Summer and Autumn were enjoyed by the happy poet, And he was shielded from the Winter by the hills. Loreley (Loreley) I don’t know what it means, Why I feel so sad; An old tale, Won’t leave my mind. The air is cool and dark And Rein flows peacefully The top of the rocks Sparkle in the evening sunshine The most beautiful maiden sits Atop it, sorrowfully; Her golden jewels twinkle; She combs her golden hair, She combs it with a golden comb, And sings a song It has a wondrous, powerful melody A sailor in a little ship, Is seized with wild pain He doesn’t see the rocky reef, He looks up at her in the end I think the waves swallow And kill the sailor and his boat And that, with her singing, The Loreley has done Ioh harrete des Herrn (I waited for the Lord) I waited for the Lord, And he leaned down to me And heard my prayer. Blessed are they who put their hope in the Lord! Blessed are they who put their hope in Him! Seligkeit (Bliss) Joys without number bloom in heaven’s hall of angels and transfigured beings, just as ourfathers taught us. 0 ,  there I would like to be and rejoice forever! Upon everyone dearly smiles a heavenly bride; harp and psalter resound, and everyone dances and sings. 0,  there I would like to be and rejoice forever! But I‘d rather remain here i f  L aura would smile a t  m e with one glance that said I should end my lamenting. Blissfully then with her, I would stay here forever! �Dein ist mein ganzes Herz {My heart is yours alone) My heart is yours alone! I cannot be without you. Like a flower that wilts when unkissed by the sun! My most beautiful song is yours, for it is created out of love. Tell me once more, my one and only. oh tell me once more: I love you! Wherever I am I feel you are near. I want to drink your breath and kneel adoringly at your feet, yours, yours alone! How wonderful your shining hair is! Dreamy and full of longing is your radiant gaze Full of dreams and ancient longing When I hear your voice, it is like music My whole heart is yours. Wldmung (Dedication) You my soul, you my heart. You my bliss. o you my pain, You the world in which I live; You my heaven. in which I float, O you my grave. into which I eternally cast my grief. You are rest, you are peace, You are bestowed upon me from heaven. That you love me makes me worthy of you; Your gaze transfigures me before you; You raise me lovingly above myself, My good spirit, my better self! Lachen und Weinen (Laughing and weeping) Laughing and weeping, at whatever hour, are based, in the case of love. on so many different reasons. Every morning I laughed for joy; and why I now weep in the evening’s glow is even to myself unknown. Weeping and laughing, at whatever hour, are based, in the case of love. on so many different reasons. Evenings I have wept for sorrow; and how can you wake up in the morning with laughing. must I ask you. oh heart. Unbewegte Iaue Luft (Motionless. warm air) Motionless, warm air, Deep rest of nature; Through the still garden­night Only the fountain splashes. But in my heart there surges Hot desires, But in my veins swells Life. and a longing for life. Should not also your breast Lift itself to longing wishes? Should not the call of my soul Reverberate deeply in yours? Softly, with ethereal steps. Do not tarry to float to me! Come, oh come, so that we might Give each other heavenly satisfaction! Zueignung (Dedication) Yes, you know it, dearest soul, How I suffer far from you, Love makes the heart sick. Have thanks. Once I, drinker of freedom. Held high the amethyst beaker, And you blessed the drink, Have thanks. And you exorcised the evils in it. Until I, as I had never been before. Blessed, blessed sank upon your heart, Have thanks. Iron and steel can be recast by the Von ewiger Liebe ( Of eternal love) Dark, how dark it is in the forest But who would transform our love? Iron and steel can melt; Our love, our love will have to last and field! Night has fallen; the world now is silent. Nowhere a light and nowhere smoke. Yes, now even the lark is silent. From yonder village there comes the young lad, Taking his beloved home. He leads her past the willow bushes, Talking so much, and of so many things: “If you suffer shame and if you grieve. If you suffer disgrace before others because of me, Then our love shall be ended ever so fast As fast as we once came together; It shall go with the rain and go with the wind, As fast as we once came together.” Then says the maiden, the maiden says: “Our love shall never end! Steel is firm and iron is firm, Yet our love is firmer still. smith forever!” Hat dich die Llebe bertlhrt (If love has touched you) If love has touched you, quietly amidst the noisy crowds, you will walk on a golden cloud, safely guided by God. As if lost, you let you glances wander, allowing others to enjoy their pleasures while you have only one desire. Timidly repressing your ecstasy, you attempt, in vain, to deny that the crown of life now radiantly adorns your brow. “Wohl mir, dass ich Jesum habe” (Happy am I, to have my Jesus) Happy am I, to have my Jesus, oh how firmly I hold on to him so that he may refresh my heart when I am sick and sorrowful, I have Jesus, who loves me and gives himself to me. Ah therefore I shall not abandon Jesus even if my heart breaks. �Binghamton University Music Departm ent ’s U P C O M I N G  E V E N T S ‘WSKG Public Broadcasting m m   vb­ The Binghamton University Department of Music is proud to present its 2010­2011 season concerts. The Department of Music presents over 100 concerts (most of which are free) from  solo recitals to orchestra concerts to jazz presentations which include a variety of performances by guest, faculty and student artists. For a complete list of our concerts and more, visit us at music.binghamton.edu. I ’ _I I _  I _ i = _ fll  l – A R I R.­,  FR I  N gut­"555355! imenifp C E E o  m   x v e t AUGUST 2010 Summer Youth Musical Theater Workshop presents Titanic  S r e e SEPTEMBER 2010 Jonathan Biggers, organ OCTOBER 2010 Reunion Recital with Marietta Simpson, mezzo­soprano University Symphony Orchestra’s Children’s Concert: All Creatures Viola Plus with Roberta Crawford Guest Organists: Michael Bauer & Marie Rubis visit­s atwskgorg WeKE MERCH  ane w.   a % t“;  “  «" magi); “%  ,   vq 3 %  [AVES 35  3.79  (SQ.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support of the Binghamton University Music Department and we look forward to entertaining you in our 2010­ 2011 Concert Season! " § $  “odajy W  NANBRR a ” 5 1.115th  . M 0 ? S  G R A C I A S !  T h a n k  1 7021!)  ( 7 q(figus   NOVEMBER 2010 University Chorus Jonathan Biggers, organ Czech Vocal Music: Mary Burgess, soprano, Timothy LeFebvre, baritone, and guest artist Timothy Cheek, piano DECEMBER 2010 University Symphony Orchestra: All­American Program Harpur Jazz Ensemble with guest artist FEBRUARY 2011 Faculty Recital: Timothy LeFebvre, baritone and Michael Salmirs, piano University Symphony Orchestra Jonathan Biggers, organ APRIL 201 1 Harpur Jazz Ensemble with guest artist Jonathan Biggers, organ Pianist Michael Salmirs presents a Chopin & Schumann 200th Birthday Celebration MAY2011 University Chorus with the University Symphony Orchestra present Choral Masterworks: Roman Maciejewskl : Requiem, Book 1; Poulenc: Gloria � 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 2 sound discs Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 37:50 39:56 Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145196">https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145196</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 Melodienstrauß, a spring bouquet of German lieder, arias and ensembles : German Lyric Diction final concert, May 13, 2010 Recital Tape 2010-5-13 Description An account of the resource Works by Brahms, Strauss, Wagner, Marx, Schumann, Von Weber, Schubert, Wolf, Mendelssohn, Wieck-Schumann, Lehar, Strauss, Bach. Held on May 13, 2010, Casadesus Recital Hall. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Berry, Judy Lawson, William 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 2010-05-13 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/cc2699896c213ad039479cea47024a7b.jpg f442ef3434bf04a2ad491c4a4bd5087b https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/0df9a26ade2a96366b900dd1d2f98592.mp3 4d0153c1c9b1eeff07d8f551c66b7730 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 2010-05-18 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Al Santoli, 1949- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Al Santoli is a writer and a former combatant who served in Vietnam. He earned a Bronze Star for valor and three Purple Hearts. He has also served as a policy oversight expert in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is currently teaching at the Institute of World Politics.&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}">Al Santoli is a writer and a former combatant who served in Vietnam. He earned a Bronze Star for valor and three Purple Hearts. He has also served as a policy oversight expert in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is currently teaching at the Institute of World Politics.</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.) 147:37 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Vietnam War; Anti-war Movement; Veterans; Weatherman Underground; Jim Webb; Vietnam Memorial; Maya Lin; trust; WWII; Watergate; Bob Muller; Counterculture; Louis Puller.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:16370588},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Vietnam War; Anti-war Movement; Veterans; Weatherman Underground; Jim Webb; Vietnam Memorial; Maya Lin; trust; WWII; Watergate; Bob Muller; Counterculture; Louis Puller.</span> Subject LCSH Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Authors; Bronze Star Medal (U.S.); Purple Heart; Santoli, Al, 1949--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: Albert Santoli Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 18 May 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two, testing. Start it right now. Al (00:00:08): Let me go to your email as well. SM (00:00:11): Okay. Did you get my email address for [inaudible]- Al (00:00:22): I Did. Thank you very much. SM (00:00:26): Yeah. And do not forget, Paul Yuppies at Merrill Lynch in New York City. Al (00:00:30): Should I just... I have never met him before. Who else... Who is he close to? What board? SM (00:00:36): Well, he is close to Jan Scruggs. Al (00:00:40): Okay. SM (00:00:41): For the Vietnam Memorial. But Paul is... He is one of the top people at Merrill Lynch in New York City. He has had a lot of different positions because they had to go through... You know some people lost their jobs there, but he has been very successful and has moved on to different roles. And I am not sure how financially stable they are, but he is a big supporter of Vietnam veterans. And he has spoken at the wall and he has contributed, I believe, to the Women's Memorial and to Jan Scruggs' Vietnam Memorial through the Merrill Lynch. So he would be a great contact. Al (00:01:20): Mm-hmm. SM (00:01:22): So, alright I do not know if you are ready to go. Al (00:01:25): Just about. I have one more sentence here on this message that I have to send, so I can clear the deck on this one and then I am a hundred percent with you. SM (00:01:34): Okay. [inaudible]. Okay. We are going right with the questions that I sent you and- Al (00:01:40): Now those are a lots of questions. I was thinking of, maybe streamline it. Like the stuff of, what do I think about these different decades? I do not see that that is really... You might have a reason for that, very specific reason for that. The theme of your book. I do not know that I have that much to say about it. I think that there is other things there that, probably, I can address and put some statements into that are going to be more meaningful. SM (00:02:16): Mm-hmm. Well, let us go right to number two then. How did the 1950s shape you? Al (00:02:24): Well, that is when I was born, I mean, in (19)49. So the (19)50s was my childhood. And I do not know, I think the people's characters are what they are and the (19)50s, people are people no matter when they are born. And I think that you can say that it was pre-high-tech. SM (00:02:53): Mm-hmm. Al (00:02:54): But then again, I do not know how that influences people because even technology is a tool and it is about your, and your family is your family, and there has always been harmony and disharmony in families that affect people no matter who they are, rich or poor, and no matter when they were born. So that is why with those, I do not see them as being as relevant to me- SM (00:03:17): Mm-hmm. Al (00:03:17): As some other things. But I never, I do not see it in those terms. I have never seen it in those terms. I have never seen... I have never really taken it seriously or seriously, I will put it this way, seriously considered the issue of baby boomers except that we were a very, very fortunate bunch of people to be born at a time when this country really had a lot of economic security and stability and that is really important. I think that in itself shaped people a certain way. But the kinds of people, they became either responsible or irresponsible that is about their character. SM (00:04:07): So you do not see, when we are talking the (19)50s and then the (19)60s and all these changes took place, would you see any difference between those two decades for people of your age? Al (00:04:23): No, and I think I judge people by who they are today, but all that matters to me is who people are. And you cannot really tell who somebody is going to become, but you can tell who somebody is. And I feel that a lot of people hide the issue of the (19)60s being this very high polluting time. But I have to tell you that I really do not think it was any more special and I think there were a lot of people who were fake idealists. Who when push came to shove and it was their term to be responsible, completely dropped the ball. I think the people that grew up in the 1930s and were shaped by World War II in the (19)40s had a lot more character development and a lot more character than this group of the 1950s. I say the 1950s as being a bunch of phonies. They are a bunch of spoiled brats by and large. And I think adversity makes people stronger and everybody has adversity in their own lives. And they have, you know, all of us have obstacles that we have to overcome. But, I think that for people to say this, I do not think World War II was the best generation. I do not think that Vietnam was the best generation. I do not think the people today, just because they are high-tech savvy, are the best generation. I just tend to think people are people no matter when they are born. SM (00:06:11): When you were in the service, what were your thoughts on your peers who really were trying to get out of serving? And there were many in college, but some outside of college too, and those who protested the war. What were your thoughts on them when you were in Vietnam and when you came home? Al (00:06:29): Well, of course when you are in the war, you do not appreciate it because they helped prolong the war because it gave the other side, and rightly so, that was always the target. If you look at the Bratislava conference and the Havana conferences that were met by the Russians and the Cuban and the Vietnamese to whip up the... And Vietnam learned that from what happened with France during the French period, the Communist always knew this. The Soviet Communist always knew this because, how they did mass mobilization. So I felt that the anti-war movement did not stop the war. They prolonged the war. But when I came back from the war, I had friends that were protestors and friends that were in anti-war movement. I myself had very, very mixed feelings about what was going on in Vietnam. Not because I was against defeating the Communist, but because they were bad guys. And they proved that after 1975 in Spain, that I felt that our country had betrayed us and our lives did not mean anything. We are just a bunch of harm. And that itself was something that was very hurtful. And I think part of the reason that there were so many veterans that had such a rough homecoming and that is what my books were about. SM (00:07:57): Right. Al (00:07:57): It was trying to reconcile the fact that people that went were just, was not that Vietnam veterans were like any different than anybody else. SM (00:08:06): Mm-hmm. Al (00:08:07): We have been tested in a way others had not been tested, uniquely, because of the circumstances. And there were some people that were destroyed by that. And then there were some people that became better people from it as well. And I am thinking if you look at the books, like everything we had, where I included pictures of people in the book. The purpose being of showing that everyone in this book could be your next door neighbor. And there were people in the book that had mixed feelings about being there while that they were there and when they came home. And it was a, I would say one thing, it was a very complex generation, that is for sure. SM (00:08:53): Mm-hmm. Al (00:08:53): And there was definitely a division between those who would be drafted and those who had the ability to get out of the draft. For me, I was an enlistee. I chose it. I volunteered and I knew it would kill me or change me, which it did. And it almost did both because of the illness that I contacted from the blood transfusion, it could almost both have changed me and killed me. But I am passing, passing through that second stage of it, on the second stage being that even now as I am entering the last quadrant of my life. That a natural cycle that I have been able to use what I learned as a young soldier to help shape me. I think in a way that is constructive that I never would have had if I had not been invested in that manner. SM (00:09:44): Yeah, you... Al (00:09:45): I cannot say I am grateful to Lyndon Johnson, but I am grateful for the experience because for me personally, it made a better person of me. There were other people that it destroyed. There were people in the anti-war movement, some of whom became better people from it, some of whom became bigger jerks because of it, some of whom it destroyed. If you look at the people that were involved in things like the Weather Underground and other radical movement, if you take it to the extreme. SM (00:10:17): Mm-hmm. Al (00:10:17): But my personal feeling is that people have a core character, and that character can either be augmented or diminished depending upon their life experience and how they deal with it. And also, I have to say, the mentors and the people that they have around them also makes me appreciate the work I am doing now, and accepting at the stage of my life that it is important for me to be a mentor. To pass on whatever I have learned constructively to the young ones who are going to be taking our place. And that in it for me, it includes very much centrally working in areas of conflict. So there is not many of us that can do that. Just because it is a very tough thing to do. Just like there are not so many people that can be cops and not so many people that can be firemen and not too many people that can be school teachers. All of us have a calling. And I feel that my wartime experience really helped bring that out of me in a constructive way. SM (00:11:17): You really answered question six and seven by responding because what did the Vietnam War teach you as a person, and what did the (19)60s, and (19)60s and (19)70s teach you as a person. So- Al (00:11:28): Yeah. SM (00:11:29): Those are, they are combined there. Certainly what you are doing now is very important. And with all the divisions that took place in America during the (19)60s and the (19)70s, have we- Al (00:11:42): So you are on question four now. Okay. SM (00:11:43): Yeah. We are on question four and then we are going to go to five. Well, all the divisions that took place in America during the (19)60s and (19)70s, had we healed as a nation from those many divisions or will most members of this generation, boomers that is, be going to their graves not healing like many from the Civil War, who was documented, did not heal? Al (00:12:04): I think as a society, the Vietnam War was the symptom, it was not a cause. The Vietnam War was a product of who we were becoming as a nation. I think before this generation ends, this country will be tested like it never has been before. Not since World War II, because of economic reasons, because of conflicts that are just over the horizon. Because of the ramifications of what has been happening with Iraq and Afghanistan of the war on terror. We are still in the process of becoming, and it is going to be not easy. And for the coming generations, they are going to have to deal with a much more difficult world. And for America, we are not going to be having it as easy as we had it before. And I hope this brings out the best in people. And I hope it brings out leadership that we do not see in this country now, because people will be tested. And when you are tested heavily, the best and the worst comes out of people. I am just praying that in this country there is more good things than negative things. But in terms of all the stuff, civil rights, movement, everything that was part of that period, that was something our country was going through in evolution. And the Vietnam War was part of the evolution. The Vietnam War did not create that. It was part of it. SM (00:13:32): Do you think the boomers failed, the oldest boomers are now 63 and the youngest are 47. Do you think as a generation that oftentimes you... Al (00:13:42): A generation, I think as a generation, it is a failed generation because this generation had the ability to do really wonderful things in the world as a nation. And greed, selfishness, the spoiled brat side of it. The parents who had been through the Great Depression in World War II, who did not want their kids to have to go through that and tried to shelter them from it created a group of privileged. A group, I am talking about people that would be naturally in leadership positions or would be, or they went to the best schools. They were given the best opportunities in life that they lost, they lost their soul because they got so caught up in being, quote "the world's only superpower", the world only economic superpower, et cetera, et cetera. And what we came out of it was basically, what came out of it was Oliver Stone. In terms of the bitterness of someone who had been through prep school, been through Vietnam, had seen people on both sides of the fence and was pretty much pissed off at everybody. I do not feel pissed off like Oliver Stone does, but I think that we had a real opportunity that due to our own selfishness and greed, we have thrown away. I feel very bad about that because it is going to affect the next generations. But hopefully the next generations will rebound and find the kind of character that was missing in the, that post World War II generation. SM (00:15:23): When we talk about that post World War II generation, it is not just America. It is in different parts of the world too. Al (00:15:29): Oh heck yeah. SM (00:15:29): Because when we talk about 1968... Al (00:15:32): Active leadership everywhere. SM (00:15:34): England, Spain, Japan, Germany. There were protests in some of the Eastern European countries, student protests, and they were the same boomers, but they were from different countries. Do you see that it is part of the boomer generation worldwide? Al (00:15:52): I think the world was going through certain stages of evolution, end of the industrial age, beginning of the high-tech age, beginning of globalism. We might see globalism rise and fall within our own lifetime because ultimately people cannot be homogenized. International culture cannot be homogenized if they are, I think that all these high-tech companies thought they would create one global society of consumers that would all act like Pavlov's dogs, the same commercial. SM (00:16:26): Mm-hmm. Al (00:16:27): And I think what is happening is we are seeing that there is a lot of resistance to that. Unfortunately, some of it is very violent resistance. SM (00:16:35): What we are seeing in Greece could happen in America, England. And maybe it is- Al (00:16:40): Oh heck yeah. SM (00:16:40): All part of it. Al (00:16:41): England is not as bad as shape financially as Greece and China might be worse off than both of them. So I mean, that is what I mean. These coming years are going to be not easy. And I am just hoping that we have people that can rise up in terms of leadership, good judgment, and have the ability to deal with this because it is, I think, going to become more and more unpredictably chaotic because overpopulation, food and water shortages. You can go right down the list of all the challenges that the world is facing right now. And God bless the coming generation because they are going to need it. SM (00:17:26): The only two boomer presidents we have had, of course, is George Bush and Bill Clinton. And President Obama tries to disassociate himself from this generation, but he is still a boomer because he was- Al (00:17:39): I agree with that. SM (00:17:39): -He was three years old when, in (19)61, is when he was born. Your thoughts on them as boomers, are they just typical examples of boomers, your thoughts on those leaders? Al (00:17:56): Well, they are a product of their time. They are a product of their generation because everyone is. So, for anyone to try to disassociate themselves, that political mumbo jumbo because you are a part of the historical period that you were born in and lived in, no matter who you are. SM (00:18:18): What has the wall done to heal the nation? I know what it is done to, I have been down there and I have seen what is it is done to vets. But I am not a vet, and so I cannot feel how you feel when you go there. Al (00:18:30): I think it is different things for different people. I was of the group of veteran who was against the wall being just attuned. I was one of the ones who spoke out and supported the position that Jim Webb and others took that there should be a flag and that there should be some kind of a statue that represents hope. And represents the perseverance, not only of the living, but even of those that sacrificed. So, I mean, my feeling was during the time of that wall that it was imperfect. It had, I think for a lot of people, it had a very positive result in terms of closure and in terms of mourning, in terms of trauma relief. I mean, for poor people who lost family members, et cetera. So in that regard, I cannot say anything negative about it. But I am very happy that the American flag, because it was pretty snotty of the person who built it. They called the American flag a mustache on their work of art. And she actually did. SM (00:19:40): Who is that? Al (00:19:41): On paper. Yeah, the architect who did it. SM (00:19:44): Maya Lin? Al (00:19:45): Yeah. SM (00:19:45): Yeah. Al (00:19:46): And she deserved to be put down for that. But bottom line is that regardless of the process, you have to look at what has been the result. And the result has been largely positive. So I have nothing negative to say about it. For me it is like, I do not know. I mean I am, I believe in moving on. Has everybody, have I been to the wall? Sure, everyone has. And but did it change my life. No, because my life has been in doing the work that I do. SM (00:20:22): Mm-hmm. Al (00:20:24): That is how I reconciled the experience. But for people who have not had that opportunity to go right back into war zones and work in war zones and find, and utilize both the negative and the positive into something that you hope is beneficial, I think that wall has been an okay thing. But I am really happy that there is a flag. And I am really happy that there is a sculpture that represents the hope of the living and so also reminds people that you can die. You can say people died for nothing, but if you can learn something from the experience, something constructive and something that moves, helps to move a generation forward. And they did not die for nothing. SM (00:21:10): When, you were probably there in 1982 when it opened, what was that day like? Al (00:21:15): No, I did not go. SM (00:21:16): Oh, you did not go? Al (00:21:17): I really, really did not because I felt that I had done my part with getting the American flag, helping to get the American flight included. That was enough for me. SM (00:21:26): Mm-hmm. Al (00:21:27): Because these people did not die in an abstract way. They were not in a car crash on some lonely road. SM (00:21:32): Right. Al (00:21:32): They died wearing the uniform of their country. And it was also part of still kind of my protest against the initial attitude of the people that made the wall. But I did not want to be there. I did not want to be there because I felt it was ridiculous that we had to do such a struggle to get the American flag there. But like I said, I have never publicly spoken out anything negative against it because I feel if it is doing a good thing, then more power to it. SM (00:21:59): I think you have already answered number eight, but when you think of the boomer generation, what are their strengths and weaknesses? Al (00:22:05): I think I have already. SM (00:22:06): Yeah. And you already said they are not unique. Do you like the term boomer? Is there another term that you think better defines a generation? Al (00:22:14): I have never really, I have never really used that. I just have always said post World War II. But if you look at the baby boomer generation, yeah, it is called the baby boomer generation. But I have never seen it that way. I just always looked at it as post World War II. And I do not know that there is another term that better defines it. SM (00:22:36): I think that... Al (00:22:37): Sure. Some historian someday will come up with something. Some historian will come up with a clever break. SM (00:22:44): I know that some say the Vietnam generation, others say the Woodstock generation or the protest generation, or the movement generation. Al (00:22:52): You have to think about how many people protested. It was not the majority. SM (00:22:56): Between 5 and 15 percent. Al (00:22:59): Yeah. It was not the majority. So it is the hype. Maybe it is the hype generation. It is the TV generation. How about that? SM (00:23:05): Hmm. Al (00:23:06): That is probably what that generation was, TV. SM (00:23:10): Yeah. That... Al (00:23:11): Came back from World War II. They had babies and they got TV. SM (00:23:14): That is right. Al (00:23:15): TV generation. SM (00:23:17): Now, one of the things is that this is definitely truthful, and you may agree with this, that this is a generation just does not trust anybody. And... Al (00:23:26): I would not say that. I would not say that they trust anybody more or less than the generation before them. SM (00:23:32): Mm-hmm. Al (00:23:34): And how also, why would not they trust anybody? Man. they were given everything. SM (00:23:38): Well, it is the lies that leaders told them, whether it be Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of China. Al (00:23:43): Oh my gosh. But think of the World War I guys coming back and doing the squatters things and then getting the shit beat out of them by MacArthur. SM (00:23:51): Mm-hmm. Al (00:23:51): Was that? No, that was not MacArthur. Who beat them up? SM (00:23:54): What was the... Al (00:23:55): They had? Remember they had the squatters. SM (00:23:58): Yes. Al (00:23:59): They had, and the guys that all the World War I guys that came back and had nothing. And then- SM (00:24:05): Yes. Al (00:24:05): -Different parts of the country they set up squatters areas. SM (00:24:08): Mm-hmm. Al (00:24:09): And got the shit beat out of them by the US Army. SM (00:24:13): Yeah. They came to Washington and made a, did a major protest in Washington, I believe. Al (00:24:17): They probably got beat up pretty good there too. SM (00:24:19): Yeah. But forget... Al (00:24:21): Did you ever see that movie? What was it about, the heavyweight champion, the Light Heavyweight Champion. SM (00:24:28): Raging Bolt? Al (00:24:29): No-no-no. It was a very positive movie about the guy during the Great Depression. He had to go on welfare and cause his career was over and then he came back and won the championship. SM (00:24:43): Was that John Garfield? Al (00:24:47): No-no. The movie was made a few years ago. SM (00:24:49): Oh, I do not, do not know. Al (00:24:51): Oh, that was a good movie. But the thing is, part of that movie was about the veterans going and protesting and getting beaten up. Because the movie was really about the Great Depression and about how this guy just would not be defeated. And even when people thought his career was washed up, he came back as a light heavyweight, won the heavyweight championship, and I think he got beaten by Joe Louis. That is when he lost it. But he held onto it for three or four years and then he went on to build the Verrazano Bridge. SM (00:25:23): Oh, wow. Al (00:25:23): Construction company built the Verrazano Bridge. SM (00:25:26): Huh? Al (00:25:28): At the end. It was real, if you guys tend to see it, it is a good movie. SM (00:25:29): Yeah, I will... Al (00:25:29): Trillion actors is in it. SM (00:25:33): So this issue of trust, it is, trust is often defined by political science majors as a very positive quality within a group because that means the dissent is alive and well in the, in any government, in any country. So it is not having trust is oftentimes a positive thing, not a negative thing. Do you agree with that? Al (00:25:55): Questioning? I mean, questioning. Not taking things that pays value. SM (00:25:59): Mm-hmm. Yeah. Al (00:26:01): I mean you could say that is part of it, but I think even kids, but kids today, well, I think the kids today get so caught up in testing. It is more impersonal. I think for, because it was TV rather than texting and rather than interactive games, violent interactive games, that it was much more personal. So I guess trust would be part of it. It seems that this generation, I am not going to generalize it, but I would say in terms of technology and the way technology affected them, it is more detached. And you could say that maybe the post-World War II generation was more attached. SM (00:26:47): Very good. Al (00:26:47): Because yeah. And also there were a lot of kids. I mean, there were a lot of kids born during that time so you always had a lot of kids to play with. SM (00:26:56): One thing is, I think I might have mentioned before is that there are more in the people in the millennial generation than there were in the boomer generation. Al (00:27:04): Oh, there are. SM (00:27:05): Yes. There are now close to 80 million millennials and there were 74 to seventy... You were never quite sure. 74 to 78 million boomers. Now millennials have passed them. Al (00:27:18): But you know what I think it is that there were less children per family because the larger number of kids happened. And then, you know what I mean? Families are not, I can tell you the neighborhood I grew up in with this neighborhood I live in now is not even close. And there is kids, but it is not like kids just coming popping out of the woodwork. SM (00:27:41): Right. What do these events mean to you? And you do not have to say, you already talked about the wall, so do not have to say anything about that. But yeah, real quick, what does Jackson State and Kent State mean to you? That tragedy in 1970? Al (00:27:54): Not very much. It really does not because that was not something that was part of my reality. SM (00:28:02): How about Watergate? Al (00:28:04): Yeah, I think Watergate affected everybody. That a president would be impeached. But if you look at stuff presidents have done then. I mean, Nixon was not so bad. There has been a lot worse guys that followed him. SM (00:28:18): How about Woodstock? Al (00:28:20): Woodstock was a party. SM (00:28:23): How about the hippies? Al (00:28:28): The hippies, the ones that did not get burned out? I mean, let us face it, the idealism lasted as long as long as it was convenient. And you did not have the responsibility of having to make a living. When you got up daddy's dollar. If you did not, if you were not dead from drug overdose. SM (00:28:49): How about the Yippies? Al (00:28:51): The Yippies. Ridiculous and troublemakers. SM (00:28:53): How about Vietnam veterans against the war, which was Bobby Muller and Ron Kovic and that group? Al (00:28:59): Well, I think more of Kovic and Barry Ramo and those guys. And I think we were very, those are the guys I knew best were like Kovic and Barry Ramo, and those guys. And I thought they were very, very determined and very sincere in what they were doing. And I have always liked them because I respected the fact that they were being true to their beliefs. SM (00:29:30): How about the counterculture itself, which was included dressed long hair, the drugs. Al (00:29:35): Contrary. I did not like the political part of those veterans against the war I despised. And I still feel that way about John Kerry. I feel Kerry is a big pony. SM (00:29:45): How about Bobby Muller? He is a very political person. Al (00:29:50): No comment. SM (00:29:51): Okay. Al (00:29:51): I will not comment on Bob Muller. SM (00:29:55): Okay. I respect the fact that he sacrificed for his country, but Bob is a politician that never made it as far as John Kerry. Al (00:30:03): A politician that never made it as far as John Kerry in that regard. But Kerry, I have always felt total opportunity. SM (00:30:10): How about Jan Scruggs and all his work with the Vietnam Memorial? Al (00:30:13): Well, I think he worked hard at, I think Jan came from kind of the humble background, and he had a dream and he had a vision and he worked hard for it. SM (00:30:23): And how about Lewis Puller? Al (00:30:26): I never knew him, so I cannot say. SM (00:30:28): I interviewed his wife yesterday. Al (00:30:30): No, I never met him. I knew people that knew him and really liked him a lot. SM (00:30:34): He was a really nice person. Very nice person. But just the term, the counterculture, you do not... Al (00:30:41): Well, I felt bad for him that he had so much angst inside of him. It was not directed to be negative to other people, but inside of him, he felt maybe it was from having a famous father. I mean, I have known other people that have had famous parents in different ways that it is hard for them because they always have to live up to something they feel that people are judging them with. And it is not an easy thing. And especially in the case of this where you have been through trauma, you have lost your physical mobility. And all I can say is God bless us all. I hope he has found peace. SM (00:31:20): The word counterculture, just what it stands for. Al (00:31:26): I think, yeah, there was truth to that word that people were seeking to find a counterculture within their own society, but it was not something that was very real. It was something that was a temporary fascination. SM (00:31:41): How about communes? There are still a couple successful communes in America today. Al (00:31:49): Yeah, the farm is a big one. Yeah, the farming communes, farming co-op. I mean, it is the spirit of the pioneers. SM (00:31:55): How about the Black Panthers and Black Power? Al (00:32:01): I do not know what kind of lasting effect they had. Black Power was different things, but when you choose violence as a means of political persuasion, it does not work. I would say the stuff that was done by those who were not violent had a lot more lasting effect. SM (00:32:19): How about My Lai? Al (00:32:22): My Lai was a tragic incident that was used to try to color an entire million people that served and most of whom served honorably and never committed any atrocities. I felt My Lai political. It was a political weapon that was used against the US government, regardless of the fact that the people that did it should have been prosecuted. There was no excuse for it, but I felt that it was used in a way that did far more harm than good. It did not bring back those who died. And it really helped the people who later massacred millions to be able to help. It has helped them to succeed. The same way I feel now that there is stuff happening in Iraq, it had the, what do you call the Abu Ghraib? What a horrible thing that was. And that empowered extremism. SM (00:33:23): Yeah. How do you deal with commentators? And I have read a couple books where things have been said is that we had prisoners of war, but there were no prisoners of war for the North Vietnamese or the Vietcong because the American soldiers handed them over to the South Vietnamese army, and they did them in. So there are no POWs. Is that the... Al (00:33:46): No, that was not the case. They had prisons full, and they let a lot of them go too. Yeah. No, that is not true. That is a... SM (00:33:55): That is a myth then. Al (00:33:56): That is a myth. SM (00:33:57): Well, that needs to be corrected. Al (00:33:58): There were times when people were shot on the spot in the same way there were Americans that were shot during the conflicts. And there were a lot of South Vietnamese, my goodness, that were just massacred by the communists. So I mean, it was a brutal civil war, but there were prisons full of war prisoners. SM (00:34:19): How about Tet? Al (00:34:22): Tet, I agree with the idea that it was a political defeat for the other side, but it was a military defeat. But it was a political victory because of the fact that Johnson and some of his generals believed that they had the war won. But in effect, if they had pursued it after that, maybe the war would have been over and it would have turned out very differently. But then again, going back to the reality of that time, that did not happen because that was the reality of the time. So that political defeat was part of the landscape. SM (00:35:02): What event in your youth had the greatest impact on your life at home and at war? You may have already mentioned it, just being in the service. Is there any one event that happened at home and then one... Al (00:35:19): No, I think it is a process. I really do believe it is a process. I mean, there are many events, but it is the evolution that you go through. That is the thing. It is the evolution that you go through. And as you get older, you realize it happens over a period of time. And some people might have the event, and I am sure there were some people that had an event that changed their life. But for a lot of us, it is a progression in a series of many events. And you cannot say which one was more important than another because they all had their importance or they all had their significance. SM (00:36:00): Why did the Vietnam War end in your view? And I think you have already responded the impact the college student protest had on ending the war, you felt it prolonged the war. Al (00:36:08): I mean, it was not because there was a lack of political will. But even beyond that, it is the same mistake they are making with Afghanistan right now. If you do not have a government that is credible, and you try to build a central government and you base everything you do on the credibility of a government that is not acceptable to its own people or at least a substantial number of its own people, then you are ultimately going to lose. SM (00:36:41): I have been listing three slogans from the period. These are quotes that I feel defined this post World War II generation. Number one, Malcolm X by any means necessary, symbolizing the more violent aspects of that period. Bobby Kennedy's quote where he says, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that are not and ask why not." And then symbolizing activism and fighting for injustice in a peaceful way, nonviolent protest. And then of course, the hippie kind of mentality, which was on the Peter Max posters, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." Which is kind of a hippie mentality. The only other people that have made comments is the quote, "We shall overcome." Symbolizing the Civil rights movement. And John Kennedy's "Ask, not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Do those quotations kind of symbolize this generation, or are there some quotes or slogans you think symbolize it more? Al (00:37:51): I am not sure. I mean, all those quotes that you mentioned had their effect. In terms of dominant effect, I do not know. In terms of masses of people that were affected, I am not sure. Definitely TV and movies had effect. The music industry had its effect. And I think that there were a number of songs and slogans and whatever that had a, again, I look at things in terms of when you are talking about a generation, it is not just one thing, it is comprehensive. But the ones that you mentioned, yeah, I mean, they all had their impact on different people. SM (00:38:33): The last question is a lot of different people. And just to respond, it does not have to be any in depth response. It could be quick responses or you can say a few sentences more on people that had greater impact on you. Al (00:38:46): I would rather go through this list and rather than saying, no-no-no-no-no-no-no. I would say, okay, John Kennedy had an impact on everybody because he was the president. Bobby Kennedy was his little brother. Dwight Eisenhower represented stability. LBJ was president when I was in Vietnam, so I guess he had an impact. Martin Luther King affected everybody because the Civil Rights Movement. Ronald Reagan, made me believe that something constructive could happen in politics if you had people that believed in what they were doing. Gerald Ford, what I remember for him saying is, "Let us forget about those Vietnam veterans, they are just a bunch of troublemakers anyway." Richard Nixon, the whole Watergate thing had a negative impact on everybody. Abbie Hoffman Jerry Rubin to me were just a couple of rabble-rousers with the Jimmy Carter meant well and much better after being a president than while being a president. Let us see. Let us see. I think Woodward and Bernstein, for those of us that became writers, I mean that whole idea that you could be an investigative reporter, and you have to add Jack Anderson to that too, and some of those guys. The whole issue of the crusading investigative reporter, as a writer that affected, that affected a lot of us. Robert McNamara, I did not have any respect for him because he was a cold, intellectual, sending people to their death and really was before my time per se. Timothy Leary basically was a Pied Piper. A lot of people had drug overdoses because of him. The Weathermen were basically lost souls, and they did a lot of damage to people who were innocent and people that they killed, and they even killed themselves with bombs exploding and things. Earth Day, I think has probably more meaning now than then because of what is happening with the earth. Although the whole issue of preserving the Earth has always been a good one. Little Rock Nine, no-no. Free speech movement. Peace Corps always was seen as a very positive, and it was symbolizing the Kennedy era. Get out there, and do something for society. And international, do something for international society. Of course, all those television shows, in terms of lasting impact, I think Disney and a number of Disney programs have always had, for better or for worse. I mean, now I think it is more not just because they are older, because I have an eight-year-old daughter. And the Disney kids have not turned out so well. Where back in those days, and that is, I think, the biggest difference, where you had the image that Disney very carefully crafted of family values and kids and his actors and actresses not getting in trouble and all that stuff is very different than the Disney kids today. Not all of them, but at least some of them. The Cowboys Hopalong Cassidy. Well, the whole cowboy, I think the cowboy movies affected all of us because cowboy movies were morality plays. And you had this sense of right and wrong, the sense of almost like Puritan values in cowboy movies. At least in the series, there used to be TV series even up through Gunsmoke, I mean, there was always the sense of justice. And that if justice was not happening on a structured basis, that there would be those individuals that would ride in and save the day and create justice where justice did not exist. So I think Cowboy movies had a big impact, I think of all that, probably cowboy movies. SM (00:43:17): And certainly the Indian was always the bad guy too. Al (00:43:22): Well, Long Ranger had Tonto and Tonto was a good guy. SM (00:43:25): Let me change my tape. We are at 43 minutes. Al (00:43:32): And also Davy Crockett protected the Indian, brought them. If you remember Davy Crockett, Davy Crockett did not want to see the Indians treated unfairly. So anyway, I never had anything against Indians. And plus one of my favorite characters of all time was Hawk-eye of the Last of the Mohicans in the James Fenimore Cooper series. So anyway, for all of us, it is different. But for me, one of my, I always believed in you are with the underdog. And in the case of the frontier, the Natty Bumppo or Hawk-eye represented the sense of being close to the earth, being with the people that really knew it. And the British were the guys bumbling around and getting in all the trouble. The British and the French were the ones making all the trouble. Anyway, yeah. But that is for me. SM (00:44:42): And any of the other names or just did not want to comment on any more? Al (00:44:45): No, I mean, none of them really impacted me very much at all. SM (00:44:48): And you are not upset over the person like a Jane Fonda? Al (00:44:54): No. I mean, she is an actress. I think what she did sitting behind the North Vietnamese, I think the worst thing she did, I will put it this way. Yes, I will say a comment. The worst thing she did was attack Joan Baez, when Joan Baez was trying to call attention to the refugees and to the tragedies and the massacres that were happening after the war ended. I think what Jane Fonda did there was despicable. You can say during the war that she was naive, and she was angry at her father and all of this stuff. But what she did after the war when there were thousands and thousands of people dying, and she did not have the decency because she did not want to speak out and say she had backed the wrong people, that they turned out to be butchers. And at least I have always respected, and I do not see Joan Ba on your list here, but I have always respected Joan Baez because Joan Baez fervently pacifist, fervently against the war. But when she saw injustice, she spoke out. She is consistent. You respect the consistency and the integrity of one's belief. And so Joan Baez is to me, the other side of the universe from Jane Fondant and Tom Hayden. SM (00:46:10): Yeah. Okay. One last thing that I just want to add here. When Bill Clinton came to the wall in 1993, there was a lot of mixed feelings. And of course, Lewis Puller was one of the main reasons that Bill Clinton was there. He had been working with Jan Scruggs and they together invited Bill Clinton. And I remember we had a group of students that met with Lewis at the wall. And since the wall was about healing, they felt Bill Clinton should come, and Bill Clinton accepted. But there were some people that shouted at Bill Clinton. So what were your feelings about Bill Clinton coming to the vehicle? Al (00:46:46): I do not even remember that. I think they... SM (00:46:49): 1993, he came and spoke. Al (00:46:50): Mut I understand why they would do that in terms of their feeling the need for the healing. And he went, Clinton was the president. I mean, let us face it. He was the President of the United States, and you have to respect the office. So I fully understand why they did that, and I do not think there was anything wrong in them inviting him there. Whether it healed anything, I do not know. But I think the intent of what they were doing was a good intention. SM (00:47:18): Last question, what is the lasting legacy once history books are written of this generation, the 74 to 78 million when the last of them have passed on, and historians are writing about the era, the period, and the emphasis they might place on the generation as a whole, knowing that the oldest is still, so... Al (00:47:39): [inaudible] to look back. And again, we do not know how this era is going to play out because the most challenging times are still ahead, and most of us will still be alive. And we will see what happens to what we created collectively over the next, I think the next decade between 2012 and 2020 is going to be one challenging period of time. And that will determine in many ways what happened since the end of World War II. If I have to think about this, I mean, if I have to do a projection, what I would say, because no matter how we come out of it, and I hope we come out of it intact as a nation, and I hope we come out of it with the least amount of suffering by not only our people, but other people in the world, that this was an opportunity. It was truly an experiment unknown before in human history in terms of the idea of democracy, the way the Tocqueville described it, and the way that it was created here in this country. And the unfortunate thing is that the people who had the most privilege, the generation that had the most privilege, was the least respectful of it and almost blew it. I hope they will say almost blew it. I hope they do not say and blew it. SM (00:49:07): I think most people that look at America, it is like looking at an individual person. They are constantly evolving, dealing with the pluses and minuses of life. So a lot of people believe that America will get through it just like they got through the war and the Depression and everything else. But what could be the worst case scenario if we did not get through this? Because it is the world here now. It is not just the United States. Al (00:49:33): And it is a much smaller world. It is a much greater population. And we are more dependent on a limited number of technologies for our wellbeing than we have ever been. And The oceans no longer protect us because of cyber warfare, space-based warfare, computer warfare, everything else, economic warfare, that we are very vulnerable. We are vulnerable in ways that people are now starting to realize that far more vulnerable than we have ever been before. Plus, we have no industry left. So say for instance, if we faced a horrendous attack and we lost a lot of our infrastructure, if we lost a lot of our ships at sea, we would not be able to rebuild them. If we lost a lot of our airplanes, there are hardly any factories left to build them. And that puts us really... This is unlike Pearl Harbor. This is unlike that period. Even during the Great Depression, we still had factories intact, and it was not so expensive to build them. That is nearly impossible now. SM (00:50:33): Yeah, I have read some. And I will close with this, that I have read some terrible scenarios. And that is that many Americans working today will lose their pensions, and there will be no social security and they will have nothing to live on. Al (00:50:50): Well, and... SM (00:50:50): And so a worst-case scenario is such that... Al (00:50:57): External and internal. External and internal, and that could be devastating to the survival of the society. So again, I am with you. We hope in the evolution that somehow, we come out of a tailspin but it is not going to be easy. It is going to require a lot of sacrifice, a lot of teamwork. And the unfortunate thing about the generation that we are discussing is that there is an awful lot of selfishness. There is an awful lot of lack of teamwork. And it is something that, one, I am not a pessimist, but I am a realist and I am putting my faith in the next generation. But I think that our generation has blown it. I think that if we are going to pull out of this, it is going to be the next generation that does it. And that is why the mentoring and everything else, whatever we can find that is of value, that can be passed on to the ones who will be taking over leadership in the next 10 to 15 to 20 years. They deserve the best teachers. And maybe sometimes the best teacher is things not going well, so that they have to learn to be strong, and they have to learn to be resourceful. So I am with you. Let us pray for it and let us work for it. We are going to go through some tough challenging times if we pass through it. SM (00:52:22): Yeah, I agree. I think that the generation that followed the boomers, the generation Xers, never really liked boomers, and were in constant conflict with them and are part of the problem themselves, along with the boomers. But the... Al (00:52:38): I am not talking about them because... SM (00:52:40): Millennials are the ones we are talking about now, and they are a good group. Al (00:52:44): Those are the ones I have to thrive I am having the faith in. And I tell you, with my interns, I have had over 120 interns from all over the world, from at least 20 different countries. And I like those kids a lot. SM (00:52:58): That is good. Al (00:53:01): Good. And I do have, again, there is going to be tremendous challenges coming, but I feel that there is that proof of life and a proof of courage and a proof of intelligence that I see in these kids that, I mean, I am hoping that American kids, I mean, because I do not just deal with American kids, I deal with kids from all over the world, but the American kids, they are just right there with them. So again, it will be a little bit different. The solutions, the problems are global. Solutions have to be global. But I hope that the strength of what comes from our traditions and our systems are right there in helping to lead the way. SM (00:53:47): Well, thanks a lot, Al. I really appreciate the time you have spent. I know you are very busy and I hope the... Al (00:53:52): I am making out the proposal, Steven. You know how that is. This is the time that during this month of the months of April and May, if you do not get those proposals in, you are sunk for the rest of the year. SM (00:54:02): Right. Well, I... AS (00:54:08): Society was fragmented that there became stereotypes. But it is the same thing. I mean, if you went to the other side of it and you say, okay, people that were anti-war, what are they doing today? You find a whole panorama of people doing different things, some successful, some not successful, some having triumphs, others having tragedies. SM (00:54:33): The first question I really wanted to ask you is the organization that you created right now that you are working with, I think it is unbelievable. And the more I have read about it and what you are trying to do, I think, yeah, personally, I think you should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize because you are doing some unbelievable things. And I do not know if anybody has ever nominated you, but you are doing unbelievable things. How did your experience as a Vietnam veteran, how does that carry over and link with your current work, the organization that you created? AS (00:55:12): Well, it is a motivation for sure because on one hand you can say there is the element of all the work I did on the history and understanding, not just my own small experience in Vietnam, but in terms of the bigger picture. And if you look at the books like To Bear Any Burden and whatnot, it gets into the intercultural aspect of it and how important that is. And especially in a much more interconnected local community, it is probably the most significant dynamic because people of different cultures are almost forced to have to deal with each other. And that can create some things that are very positive, some things that are very negative because root cultures do not change. They can adjust, they can adapt. They really do not change. But there are commonalities in human nature that you could bet you could work with in a constructive and positive. And so when this whole 911 thing happened, at the time I was working in Congress. And I had worked Afghanistan for a number of years and understood somewhat the nature of what was creating that conflict of civilizations. It partly was the fact that there were people taking advantage of very decimated society where the Afghans were very vulnerable because their families, their tribes, their plan structures were torn apart. More than half of the population was outside of the country because of the refugee situation and then a lot more than the Civil War afterwards. But I felt that there were many valuable lessons that I had learned starting with my own war time experience, followed by all the history work that I did, followed by other humanitarian work I had done working with refugees and human rights and whatnot. But then the experience with the Afghans kind of prepared me for what was coming down the pike with a billion Muslims. Because if you think about it, a lot of people always look at Islam in the Middle East, which is really not that big of a population. The much bigger Muslim population is in south and East Asia between Pakistan, India, and then that route through the Malacca straits into the Philippines. That is where Indonesia has a population of Muslims equal to the size of the entire Middle East or larger than the entire Middle East. And in the Philippines, it is the longest standing civil war, which is based on... I mean, actually it is economics and land holding, but it has the veneer of a religious struggle that is been going on now that the Sri Lankan wars appears to be over. It is the longest running war in the world. And so my feeling was because I had also been monitoring the peace process in the Philippines at the same time I was working on Afghanistan, that in the Philippines you had a much better chance of helping create models that would have an international implication between people of different cultures and religions than there would be in Afghanistan, because Afghanistan was too polarized. And also the way the international community was going, it made it more polarized because billions of dollars was going into a non-existent central government in a tribal Balkanized society, divided society of tribes, clans, families. And there was no chance of success with that. And whereas in the Philippines, you had longstanding arm struggle, horrendous poverty, but you had coherent families, clans, and tribes, and you could work on that. And so what we will do, we will do interventions work. We will do... AS (01:00:03): What we will do, we will do interventions work, we will do humanitarian campaigns and whatnot in other places. I felt there had to be a place where we could create a model that would be something that would go against the brain of the tactic that was being done. At the time I started this, right after 9/11 in 2002, because I felt when you have movements that are based upon revenge vengeance, that if you put more revenge, vengeance, and violence into it, you are strengthening the negative elements and you cannot possibly succeed. And the way that you succeed, if you look at those pictures on the wall, same kids within six months, the difference between that classroom and that classroom, you just look in the eyes. SM (01:00:55): Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. AS (01:00:57): Is that somebody cares that they are not alone. SM (01:01:01): Ah, agree. That smiling, it is very, it is like, "What are you doing here?" That kind of... AS (01:01:11): Because nobody cares. And to know that someone cares, not to do their work for them, but cares enough about them to want to see them be treated like human beings, makes it. And their own leaders will not do that. Even with their own leaders, there has to be a positive model showing. But it is not going to change unless the same way that a lot of these problems with these conflicts are generational. Over many generations, many generations of bad habits, I consider as bad human character habits. If you work with the young, you are also affecting the here and now. Because their parents, their grandparents are going to be happy the fact that their kids might have a future. They are still not going to break a lot of their habits because they are ingrained. But at least you calm it down to perform that you get the next generations can have a chance to develop better leadership and to develop more equitable societies. And that was always the plan. That it is long term. It is not something that you can do, go in, do a flash intervention, and introduce some computers, bring in a couple thousand sacks of rice, drinks, so much tea. That lasts for as long as the tea lasts or as long as the rice lasts. But if you can create a situation where people have both, and they have got the tools, they have got the educational tools, they have got the life of the tools, then they can build it. And that they can build it, they will defend it. SM (01:02:55): Interesting. My niece married a young man whose heritage is the Philippines. Marcelos, the Marcelos. They at Geneseo College and fell in love. And they just had their first child. He is the cutest little thing, little Ryan, he is six weeks old. But their family is rich. I am not talking about money. I am talking culture. I am talking about connections, family. I mean, they are all over the United States. I mean, it is a strong, strong family. Strong family. You mentioned that we did not learn the lessons of Vietnam. Who is we? AS (01:03:36): I think collectively as a society. But especially, people in leadership positions, whether it be in government or in the military. There is this idea that we do not have to learn history because we are number one. We are the strongest superpower and we make history. And there was like something, there was this kind of article, I do not know if you ever read this. But at one time in the Washington Post in an Outlook article, they were interviewing 20-somethings at the National Security Council. And the reporter asked, it was what Afghanistan asked, "Well, what do you think of Durand Line?" Because one of the problems there going to be the fact that the Pashtuns are divided. That will always be a factor. Going back to the British Raj, none of them knew what the Durand line was. And then the reporter then said, " Well, you guys ever take the time to read history?" And the response was, "Well, we do not have to read history because we are making history." SM (01:04:40): That is interesting. Yeah, because we had a person at our school that put the... Well, actually, an honor student from Great Valley High School. And we were in a meeting one day and she said, "When was the Vietnam War?" She thought it was before World War II. How did she get to be an honor student with that kind of a comment? So, the lack of history is... AS (01:05:03): But I think that with Vietnam, if you take it beyond into a broader context, into our development as a nation. After we achieved this role of being the strongest country in the West after World War II, Korea in the way was not really a test of that. It was like an extension of World War II, beginning of the Cold War. It was a bridge between World War II and the Cold War. But Vietnam was our first test as to how we were going to conduct ourselves as a leader of the West. And the ambivalence that we had within our own society to what direction we were going to take as a nation, whether we were going to be the international policemen, or guarantor of supremacy of Western societies picking up from the branch, not really colonizing, but kind of maintaining a kind of legacy. Even though you could say what we wanted with South Vietnam was where they would be independent, but they would be more leaning to the West. And whereas the North Vietnamese were, of course, leaning to the East with the Chinese and Russian influence. But it tested us in terms of what direction? We are the leader of the West now. And the Europeans cannot really compete with us. What direction do we take history? I think Vietnam represented that dichotomy that we felt as a nation, which is why there was the polarization. Why there was the, I mean, it was not just Vietnam. I think it was our society in general that now we are making history. We are no longer a part of an ongoing history. World War I was not our war. SM (01:07:17): Right. AS (01:07:18): The Industrial Revolution we were very much a part of. And it helped to shape us. A lot of inventions were made here that fueled the Industrial Revolution. But it is not the same thing as having your economy intact, your industry intact, after so much of Europe was destroyed in World War II. And we really had the leverage. Plus, television and other multimedia was largely coming out of the United States. So, we really were influencing and shaping culture on a very, very broad international, not just national, but international level. So I mean, I look at the Vietnam War as much more than just a little isolated thing. It was very much a part of our collective psyche and our development as a nation, as not an old nation, but an experiment. SM (01:08:16): How did you become who you were or are in terms of going to Vietnam? What was your high school experiences? Who were your role models, the people you looked up to that inspired you? And then what was that experience like in Vietnam? And what did you think about the students who were protesting the war back home? AS (01:08:44): Back then, I mean, it was more of an... You can look at it two ways. One of which is that there is a war going on. You serve your country. But also, the knowledge that it is going to change your life. And I think that for me, it was okay to do it because our country was at war. And I already had one of my friend's brothers die in the war and all of that. But also, it was something I knew would be help me to change me. SM (01:09:24): You knew that going in, you felt that going in? AS (01:09:26): Correct, that is why I signed up for the infantry. I wanted to be tested. And I knew it would be something profound, even though I did not know how it would be or how profound it would be. I knew that I would not be the same person. That it would draw out a lot, for better or for worse, draw it out early. SM (01:09:48): Did you go in right out of high school, or did you go to college? AS (01:09:51): Right out of high school. Graduated what, mid-June? And that would be six weeks later, I was released from training. So, it was a conscious choice. SM (01:10:05): How do you feel when... Vietnam, the two words that always seem to stir people, and particularly boomers, if you are in an audience with a group of boomers. And sometimes even younger people are upset because boomers have a tendency to oftentimes reflect on their life like nostalgia, whether it is good or bad. But I was leading into a question and I forgot what direction I was going here. My goodness. It will come back to me. I want you to talk a little bit more about your upbringing now. Because the Vietnam War, we talk about the people that went to war. So, many people were deferred. A lot of students that had maybe a little bit more money or had the right connections, they were deferred and did not have to go. And it was very obvious. But many of the others that did not have those... You wanted to go. AS (01:11:13): Yeah. I was- SM (01:11:14): But what did you feel about your fellow vets? In terms of... AS (01:11:19): To me, everybody was just people. I mean, I am serious about that. Everybody to me was just people. And because I came from a family of immigrants. And grew up in a place where my formative years, the neighborhood I lived in, in Cleveland, on the southeast side of Cleveland, a lot of people were factory workers and were very salt of the earth people. That it was the typical immigrant experience, first generation. We were first generation American. I was born here. My father was born in Italy. My mother's family came from there. That you do not have an attitude. You have to prove yourself. I mean, the attitude is that you do have an attitude, but that is that you have to prove yourself. That nothing is really given to you. You are not entitled to anything. That whatever you succeed with in life is something that you are going to earn because it is not going to be given. And I think that was the other thing too. Being in the military was a way of proving to yourself that you could withstand the tests and that you could eventually rise above it. I mean, because you think about most of World War II people, I mean, went to school on GI Bill after they served. A lot of people got their American citizenship by serving in the military because they were largely immigrants. First generation, they never gotten citizenship. SM (01:13:12): Right. AS (01:13:13): And this was like an extension, continuation of that. Because my family only arrived here in the 1940s. SM (01:13:18): Wow. AS (01:13:21): So, World War II was really defining because for that group that came in after the post-World War I group, they were part of post-World War I, that it would define them as being fully accepted as Americans. SM (01:13:43): Why did, in your opinion, I have gotten so many different opinion, why did we lose the Vietnam War? Now some people say we did not lose it. I have even had a couple say we did not lose it, we just did not put the effort into it. AS (01:13:53): Like what I said before is that we were not sure who we were as a nation. There were many different opinions. So, we were divided among ourselves. I mean, you can say whether we could have, what could have been or should have been, and how you interpret this or that. But the bottom line, I look at Vietnam as part of a process. I mean, we did not quote, lose it that we were a conquered nation. That we lost to a stronger country and hence, we lost our identity. But on the other hand, it was something, and even it did not resolve that question of who we were as a nation. It was just kind of an amazing thing. Now, what happened afterwards from as part of the progression, you can even say part of a process because a Jimmy Carter presidency was very different than a Ronald Reagan presidency. It was very good. SM (01:14:50): Yeah. AS (01:14:51): Because it has all been a process. And it has been a very fast-moving process going from what could be the richest country the world has ever known 10 years ago to now not being sure, most people not being sure if they can keep their houses. It is just so fast-paced. And there is a question of who are we? Because we are an idea. We are not... Because I deal with tribes that have long histories and that are interconnected. And loyalty to the tribe is first and foremost. We are not a tribal society. We are an idea. The idea of basically that you become some place that you can work hard, you can get an education, you can prove yourself, and you can achieve. Is that still possible? A lot of people doubt, they question that that is even possible anymore within a globalized society. The way the people that have been had the best educations in this country, basically turned against that idea by globalizing and then denying people living within their own homeland the opportunity to achieve middle class, or go beyond middle class if that is possible. SM (01:16:13): When you came home, I would like to know, first off, how you were treated? I have asked that to other people on both sides. Secondly, do you feel that the anti-war movement and the students who protested... And again, when I am talking about the boomer generation now, we are talking 78 million. But only about 15 percent of that 78 million was involved in any kind of activism. But that is still a large number. AS (01:16:43): Yeah, [inaudible]- SM (01:16:43): But- AS (01:16:44): ...number, but it is not- SM (01:16:45): ...how were- AS (01:16:45): ...a dominant majority. SM (01:16:47): How were your fellow veterans, when you were over there, were they aware of what was happening in America, number one? Because (19)67 is kind of the fine point. The Americans kind of supported the war through (19)67. Something happened, (19)67, (19)68, (19)69, (19)70 and (19)71, those five years. I mean, people, everybody went against the war. And people, families whose sons and daughters were from Ohio were against the war when you hit (19)70 and (19)71. AS (01:17:16): Quite a lot of people were not per se. A lot of people were like, "Okay, our country is doing anything, who am I to say?" And also when you came from communities where there were a lot of people that were in the military, there was not a hostility. Going to school, you would feel some of it. But it was all in how you carried yourself. It was all in how you handled yourself. But at the same time, it was a difficult period I think for anybody that came back, especially those of us that came back barely out of our teens, if we went in our teens. Because on one hand, you would experience events that very few people in this country have experienced, being in war. And especially, within your generation. And then how do you reconcile that with the general experience that many people that you knew? And even if it was not in your neighborhood, if you went to school, most of the people would not have experienced that. SM (01:18:29): Right. AS (01:18:30): There would have been very-very few people who had actually had prior military service before being in school. You are talking about 1970, 1971. And so, you had to inside of yourself deal with all of that. And I think anybody coming back from the war, I mean, you can look at now the amount of post-traumatic stress that there is in people coming back from, but again, we are talking about a situation here where it is multiple tours. They were short. In many cases, they have been short tours. But you never know when you were going to be called back. But I think the key thing is that when you are in wars that drag on, that appear to be unwinnable, how do you reconcile that with the sacrifices, even if it is not just your sacrifice, but the sacrifices where people die in a jam? And then you ask, "For what?" It seemed to be clear at the beginning of this current stuff that is going on, that this was revenge for 9/11. I think by now, people know the Iraq War had nothing to do with that. No one can explain the Iraq... I mean, I do not know who can explain the Iraq War except that the Bush family had a hard on for Saddam Hussein. SM (01:19:54): Right. AS (01:19:55): It had nothing to do with 9/11. It had a lot to do with oil. The Afghan War, I mean, it has been dragging on and dragging on now for eight years. And now they are saying, "Well, they did not... The most ridiculous quote I saw was the commanding general saying, "Well, we did not know it would be culturally offensive if we raided people's home in the middle of the night." That is culturally offensive anywhere. But again, maybe it is such that the all-volunteer force, people are so isolated from reality. And plus, these wars have dragged on for eight years. And people that have made careers of this with all the best of intentions, I am not going to impugn anybody's integrity, or their patriotism, or anything like that. But they lose track of reality. That is why I felt it was important for some of us that could be out in the field to show there is a different way of doing it, when you do not lose track of those common causes. The truth is that is one thing that I learned in Vietnam between being in a conventional unit and then being in a more specialized unit that was unconventional. That there is a common base of community. And that if you are away from a large group coming through and raiding people's homes or tearing down their fields, that you start, you can develop a relationship that is a constructive relationship, that is a positive relationship. And I felt that in these circumstances I felt full confidence not knowing what to expect. But there is a part of you that is at peace because you know it is possible. And there is very few of us that have been in that situation where we have been, and I say it did change me. I know what it is like to almost be dead. I know what it is like to be in a totally hostile environment and to maintain a sense of equilibrium. It is not an easy thing to do. And it is not like intervention for earthquake relief, or refugee relief, or flood relief where you are going in to set up emergency shelters for people. The stuff we are doing here we have to become part of people's lives. People who have never experienced anybody from like you from your culture, and where we have to learn the culture. Which is why I feel very comfortable with having a staff of mostly local people that you can establish though that common kind of instinctive bond with besides technical. So, that you know how to work with the local communities who are not very trusting of anybody. SM (01:22:58): That is beautiful because understanding culture has gotten us in a lot of trouble in our history. And obviously, Vietnam being one, not understanding the history of Vietnam all the way back, and who they fought for hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years, and understanding that. AS (01:23:18): And how you would be perceived. SM (01:23:19): Yes. AS (01:23:20): Even if you were different, they would still perceive you as they would perceive anybody else that came into their space. SM (01:23:25): Right. AS (01:23:26): And that is the one thing, that I had a high school principal, once people got to trust me, gave me a book on the, and again, I was learning, but she also gave me a book and said, "I want you to read this because my brother wrote this, and he is one of us." And it was a book, I will show you the book, on the history and the psychology of the art of the tribe. SM (01:23:49): Oh, wow. AS (01:23:50): To understand the tribal art. This is how they interact and perceive their relationship with the world. SM (01:23:56): Okay. AS (01:23:57): And it was the best gift anyone could have ever given. SM (01:23:59): And this was given to you in what year? AS (01:24:00): About, this was 2003. SM (01:24:02): Wow. AS (01:24:10): I understand why people relate to art in their environment. You can start to understand how they perceive things. And you start to develop a sense of, you learn it by interacting. But it is also nice to know the culture, the history, and warmth, the form of communication. So, expressions in the culture, arts, and society of the Muslims in the Philippines. In particular- SM (01:24:49): Oh, wow. AS (01:24:50): In particular, the tribe that I was working with, which is the fiercest tribe, the Tausogs, that everyone was afraid of because they were the fiercest warriors in Southeast Asia. But I know that when warriors... Warriors are determined people. And if they are focused, they are very-very focused. And if they can be focused in ways that are constructive, they can do incredible things, incredibly. Or, they can do incredibly destructive things. It all depends upon the relationship, the communications, and their identity. SM (01:25:26): I got to share, I got to write this. Well, I will write this down before I leave. AS (01:25:29): That is a rare book because it was only published in just probably a couple hundred copies. SM (01:25:35): Oh, really? AS (01:25:35): Through a university press in the Philippines. But I found it to be profound at that moment because it gave me a sense of structure. It was not just instinctive relationship, but a sense of structure in how people are conditioned to perceive their environment. And the one thing with this, the most helpful thing was understanding... Read the inscription here. SM (01:26:17): Dear Mr. Albert Santoli, please accept this book written by Ahta Suk. AS (01:26:23): Ahta Suk. SM (01:26:24): Ahta Suk, Dr. Abraham Sedeqi, my brother, is in token of one heartfelt gratitude for all your kindness and generosity that you will always have touched the lives of the, less privileged? AS (01:26:45): Yeah, less privileged. SM (01:26:48): People of this province. Very nice. AS (01:26:54): But the thing in here that really got to me, and this is if you are creating educational forms and you are introducing new ideas, is that if you look at their paintings, in their calligraphy paintings, calligraphy... Let us see what we got here. Space is always full. And if space is perceived as not being full, people respond in a negative way for whatever reason that is. So, and it also means it has to be full of things that they can relate to, that they understand. So, when we started working in the schools, I did not want to bring in educational technologies- SM (01:27:41): [inaudible]. AS (01:27:47): ...at the outset. I had to find ways by which you could replace things that did not work with things that did work. And part of it would be educational technologies. But it had to be able to fit in and keep the space full in a way that people would be comfortable with. So, rather than bringing in computers, educational TV, because a teacher would not be afraid of a remote control, a DVD, or a video that has core curriculum in schools that have no books, where the blackboards are so fucking decrepit that if you write on it, you cannot even read it. And you do not even have chalk. But if you bring an educational TV with a generator, because there is always brownouts. SM (01:28:38): Right. AS (01:28:38): There is not consistent electricity. A, you are not using up as much electric. So, you can be using medium-sized generator sets, which do not cost all that much. And you can afford it when you are working with a small budget. B, you are getting a full... We have this one program we were working with that was sanctioned by the Department of Education National that would bring the tribal peoples into a national curriculum so that their education would have value and they could find jobs. Starting with reading, writing, arithmetic, in the form of Sesame Street type puppets. And the kids loved it because they do not have TV at home. And here is a very entertaining, like Sesame Street with the kids here. And the teachers could feel they were in charge because they could put the tapes in and out and use the remote control. And they still were in control of their classroom. SM (01:29:31): And I was reading that we are living in a world of terrorism right now. But during the Vietnam War, it was not as much terrorism as it was not understanding one's culture, the Cold War. AS (01:29:48): Well, it was the threat of- SM (01:29:48): We were in a Cold War. AS (01:29:49): ...nuclear annihilation. SM (01:29:55): Yeah. So, would this have worked in that era? AS (01:29:57): Not in terms of big power confrontation, but in terms of some of the other things. I mean, you can look at things- In terms of some of the other things. You can look at things like the corps program, the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps was a part of that. You are right. Yeah. It is kind of like the Peace Corps, except that Peace Corps people cannot go into places that are just very hostile. We can be kidnapped and killed real easily. I do that because I am used to dealing in violent situations and just trying to have good sense and knowing how to work with local people. And I do not utilize, I will not use the word use because we try to respect everybody, we do not utilize expatriates as field staff because it is better to have field staff who know their own space, who know their own culture. SM (01:30:56): When you look at the generation that... You are a boomer; what year were you- AS (01:31:03): I was born in (19)49. SM (01:31:04): Yeah. So you are definitely a boomer, you are an early boomer. I know it is hard to generalize, but what would you think are some of the positive and some of the negative characteristics of your generation? I am probably speaking more about the activists. AS (01:31:18): I think there was a sense that all things were possible. There was an unbridled optimism for the most part. I think that depending on what kind of community you came from and what color you were, things were not so hard, you did not have to struggle so much. Education meant something. Now, I do not know, with my kids in high school and college, I do not know. Everybody's worried they cannot find jobs even with- SM (01:31:59): Oh, I know. AS (01:32:00): Well, you know, just coming up- SM (01:32:01): Yeah. I have students who graduated with teaching degrees that cannot find work. AS (01:32:06): And for us that is never a problem. SM (01:32:08): Yeah. AS (01:32:08): That is a big difference because we always had a sense of optimism and hope. When you start to lose that everything really has shifted. And what we have to do, working in the reverse process, with people that have not had hope since anyone could remember, is you are starting to try to build that stuff up. And it is coming down to, I am looking at what we are doing and what we are learning with the tribal people, that will have to be used here too. So I am looking in the future, and I am looking forward in the future to the methodologies and techniques that we are learning by working in these very tough environments that eventually we will be using it right here in the US with very collegial organizations that are community-based NGOs working in Washington and Chicago and New York and Philly. It will be the same, it is the same thing. How do you create hope, education, livelihood that has a meaning in places where people have lost a sense of [inaudible]. SM (01:33:08): You are going to do this in the US too? AS (01:33:12): Eventually, I am sure. SM (01:33:14): Philly needs it. It really needs it. AS (01:33:16): Because it really is about common [inaudible]. It really is connecting with people. And there are many good community groups here. I think one of the best things that happened to me in the course of... also defining how one gets into this work, there was a period of time when I was writing for Parade Magazine when the Chief Editor, Walter Anderson, said, "You are not going to do any military stories. You are not going to do any foreign stories. I want you for a period of time," it was about two or three years, "Where you are doing nothing but localized stories." When Walter had a vision he goes, we have 100 million readers at Parade. Any story we do becomes a national role model. So I want you to get out there and find community-based programs that are exemplary programs of people that are heroes in their community. And you go out there and you find them. And whether it is a cover story, not a cover story, it does not matter because a lot of people are going to see it. And we can do something really good with showing people that are making a difference in their community. And other people communities will see it and they will adapt it however they will, but it creates hope. And at first, I was a little bit resentful because I would rather be out doing the other stuff. But the more I got into it, it really taught me so much. And it taught me about leadership because I was watching people that were good leaders. It taught me about what does not work in terms of politics and how it impacts on social and humanitarian programs. And usually the biggest enemy of the community organizers who are not politicians, we are the politicians because politicians want people to be dependent on them. And so a true community organizer is an antithesis of a politician if they are trying to help create independence within a community, self-reliability, self-sustenance. Because then they become the exact enemy of the people that are saying, here, take your monthly check and then come back and see me, rather than saying, here is an education program, here is how we are going to improve this housing project. We are going to do a community-based garden out in the... I did one, it was a community garden in the South Bronx where they were doing hydroponic farming. They were farming in the South Bronx, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and selling their [inaudible] because the Bronx is still a farming district. A lot of people do not realize that. SM (01:35:57): No, I did not know that. AS (01:35:58): But the Bronx was and still is zoned as a farming area. SM (01:36:05): I have been there to do some interviews. I did not see any of that. But that is really interesting. AS (01:36:12): And so this guy, he was a local businessman, Hispanic guy. I am sure he was not totally aware of that. And that was completely irrelevant. But he saw that hydroponics work and he also saw there was a trend to a lot of restaurants running natural ingredients so they could grow all kinds of herbs. Just used cars or little vans, truck them around the city and create employment for people in the neighborhoods. So that was a pretty cool story. SM (01:36:42): And you have heard of Benjamin Barber, that Benjamin Barber. He used to be at the Walt Whitman Center at Rutgers, and I think he is at the University of Maryland now. But he has written a lot about the importance of understanding that we have a tendency to want to have strong presidents and strong leaders when in reality our nation will be greater if we have a strong citizenry without the need of a strong leader. Now we need a strong leader like FDR in times of crises and President Obama- AS (01:37:11): [inaudible] people would be- SM (01:37:12): But basically, he is saying, we always need, more than we need a great president, we need great citizens. And that is- AS (01:37:19): Education is critical to that. SM (01:37:20): Yes. AS (01:37:21): People have to believe that education has to have a purpose. And that is what I worry most that we are losing in this country. We have already lost it in the inner cities. SM (01:37:31): See, I think there is some, and I cannot pinpoint it, but I think there is some... we had Dr. Botstein on our campus, and he has been a very critical president of Bard University, a very talented person. And he has been very supportive of elementary education, that elementary education is working in the United States, but secondary education is not. And he advocates ending the senior year, and I am hearing more and more of ending the senior year and letting them graduate at 17. But he basically said that the universities have somewhat failed in many respects because we talked and we were wondering, of all those students in the (19)60s who got deferments because they went to become teachers instead of going to serve their country, but they had no interest in teaching, the effect- AS (01:38:20): And did not stay as teachers. SM (01:38:21): And did not stay as teachers. What has the effect of the education on those students- AS (01:38:28): I never thought- SM (01:38:28): Because I know when I went to Binghamton, members of my intermural team, they had no interest in being teachers. And that is frustrating. Quick question here on the [inaudible] and the (19)60s generation and boomers as a whole, I think even Vietnam veterans too, felt that they were the most unique generation in history, that they were going to be the cure to all these- AS (01:38:53): Maybe the most pampered. SM (01:38:55): Most pampered. But when you hear, and I know you have heard this before, there was a feeling as a generation that they were unique. They were different than anything before and anything that will follow. AS (01:39:07): Well, the thing is, the opportunity that was there and the wealth that was there, the creature comforts that were there was unique. I mean, I am sure that throughout it, throughout antiquity, that there were periods of times, maybe at some point Rome had that at some time, some place in Greece had that at some point, parts of China had that during different kingdoms that there was a uniqueness because they were so better off than any other kingdom or any other country or any other population compared to how the rest of the world lived. And we did have that uniqueness. I mean, we still do. Even though things here are not as easy as it used to be, from what I see in the places where we are working, other places I visited as a journalist and whatnot, we still do not have it so badly. But what worries me is what is coming down the road. SM (01:40:05): See something that you are talking about here, boomers are going to be supposedly changed retirement. I retired to write my book, but I do not plan on being retired. I know a lot of my friends do not either. A lot of people do not look at sitting on a beach and maybe taking a trip once a year or whatever, go and see the grandkids, as the fulfillment of one's life in your organization. With the boomers retiring and the attitudes that so many of them had that they wanted to be the change agents for the betterment of society, that might be a group that can link up if they know people like you exist. AS (01:40:55): Communicating what we have learned and what we are doing. And that is one thing we had not done so well, partly because I wanted to make sure we had something that was real. And also because trying to do that work in difficult places and create the model, I could not be doing everything at once, including administration, which I have to do fundraising, we do not have government money. SM (01:41:19): You are nonprofit? AS (01:41:20): Yep. And we do not have government money. Most nonprofits will survive on government. We do not have government funds. So I have to be continually fundraising and then continuing budgeting to lower than a T. We are in a constant month-to-month crisis as to how we keep things going. And on top of that, as a part of my wartime experience, I found out in 2005 that I got a bad blood transfusion. One of the times that I was wounded and my liver was gone, just about gone, and so you would not believe this, but in September I had very serious surgery and almost lost my life on the operating tank. And that puts a whole other perspective on things as a feeling of responsibility that I do not know how much longer I have to live. I hope it is another 30 years, but it might not be. I have had doctors tell me in the past, I had two or three years to live. SM (01:42:32): Because of your liver? AS (01:42:33): Because of my liver. And here I am, you can see my energy, it is pretty good. And except for this little eye thing, which is unrelated to the liver, I think it is the commitment to the work that keeps going strong. SM (01:42:49): Oh, I believe people that care about others. This leads into my next question, which is about healing. We took a group of students to Washington about nine years ago to meet Senator Aman Musk. He was pretty ill at the time. He passed away with a very sharp period. He had been in the hospital and he had watched the Ken Burns series. But the students came up with this question because these were students who were not boomers. And the question they wanted to ask is when they looked at 1968 and the protests in Chicago and the people being smashed over the heads and all that kind of stuff, and the divisions even within the hall itself, the question they wanted to ask was, have we healed as a nation? And how close were we to a civil war in 1968 with all the divisions? And we had riots in the streets and the assassinations of two major figures, a president resigning and even though we had the walk on the Moon which was a hopeful thing, I think that was a blessing at the end of the year. But do you feel as those who supported the war, those who were against the war, those who were white versus black, all the divisions and all the things that were happening at that time, do you think that we still have a problem in this nation with healing, particularly within the boomer generation? I do not think the generations [inaudible] really care, but I am talking about the boomer generation. Is there an issue of healing here? AS (01:44:25): I think it depends on the individual. I really do think it depends. I think in large part that there was a lot of evolution that was done in terms of, if you look at the positive trends in the social elements of things in regard to racial acceptance and a number of other things. But again, it does not happen overnight. It is a generational process. So you figured from the time of (19)68, those assassinations, to now having a partially black president given his mixed race, still most people considering him black, that is from 40 years. So it is like two generations. SM (01:45:09): Yeah, we are the Generation X and millennials. AS (01:45:11): So that is why I am looking at what we are doing here. And again, it is something that we know from our own experience that it takes a couple of generations to get something on track. You plant a seed, you try to stay with it the best you can. There is going to be all kinds of turmoil along the way because that is life. That is human nature. But it takes a little bit of time. But I think that there were a lot of very positive trends and changes that happened. And even with the negative things you could say about the military, the military was a social leader in starting with things like citizenship and bringing people together to the issue of integration. SM (01:45:59): Oh yeah. Harry Truman and that whole integration. AS (01:46:03): And then a number of other areas as well that I am sure somebody in the future will look back and say, well, I do not think it is good for young mothers to be sent into combat. I think that is wrong. Because it is for a number of reasons. One is just because you should not separate a child from a mother unless you have desperate situation where you are defending your homeland on your own soil and everyone has to defend it. But also because it hurts morale. It hurts morale terribly. And I think it is very countless. And I think the one thing that concerned me after 9/11 was that we would become vengeful ourselves. I have been dealing with Taliban for six years and saw the way that vengeance was being turned into just a horrendous psychotic poison. And the way boys being separated from their mothers, because that is a part of the evil psychology of the Osama bin Laden and the Prince Turki al Faisal and the [inaudible]. The guys who created the Taliban, they know human psychology. These guys were trained in the best schools in England. They are not idiots. SM (01:47:15): What is interesting, one of my last efforts at Westchester was a day and a half conference called Islam in America. And we brought major figures in and I wrote a grant, I did a lot of things to make it happen with a very small committee of three faculty members and three students in the Muslim Student Association. And I could not believe, we were packed. Every session was packed, but security was all concerned. And also the Jewish community was out in arms that we were doing a program on understanding Islam. There was nothing in this program that was supposed to be attacking Israel. It was simply understanding the faith and understanding Islam, even though some of the people they were attacking, they checked the backgrounds. But I can understand again about the culture. It is not understanding a culture. And even if you are a person who wants to educate students about the culture, you are an enemy because you are not supporting our culture. AS (01:48:17): The Middle Eastern thing was the worst. SM (01:48:19): Senator Muskie responded by saying that he felt that we had not healed since the Civil War. And he did not even talk about (19)68. [inaudible] Civil War. And anybody that goes to Gettysburg like I do, because I feel I have to understand war, and I go there to understand it because I did not serve and my dad did in the Pacific. But I have noticed that on the southern side, there is a lot of flags [inaudible]. Nothing is ever left at the northern side. And I am trying to figure it out. I am trying to figure it out. And then I interviewed Phyllis Schlafly last week and she said the south has healed but the north has not healed. I disagreed with her. She says, oh no, the south has healed from the Civil War but the north still has a problem. So I am getting all these different perspectives on the healing. And I think of when I talk about the healing, I was thinking about the Vietnam Memorial. I made a point of going to the wall since I got to know Lewis Puller. Lewis met with our students in November before he committed suicide the following spring. And the wall means a lot to me. But I think it is very important for our generation. I think Jan Scruggs' book "To Heal a Nation" is right on. But I wanted to ask you, as a Vietnam veteran, what does the wall mean to you as a veteran? And I know a lot of vets still have not healed because I had been there and I have experienced it. But those that were the anti-war people on the other side, I am wondering if there is guilt feelings that they did not serve. AS (01:50:02): I think it is [inaudible] to the individual. When that monument was being planned, I felt very strongly that it should not just be a tombstone because a tombstone is about you do not heal from it. You agree. And I felt it was important and I very strongly supported it at that time. Jim Webb was the guy that was most up front. But I supported very much having an American flag there and also to have something else that would be about life. I felt it was important that life be a part of it. Not just death, but life. Because there were 55,000 that died, but there were over 2 million who survived. And it should be something when healing takes place, it is the whole picture. It is not just a partial picture. Grief in itself. I know that there is people, I know that there were some, the friends of the Vietnam Memorial, nice people, really nice people, I do not know if they still have a station down there, but they used to and they had grief counseling, they had nurses that were specialists. And I think all of that is great. But I also felt that there should also be, the way that you deal with grief is life, is to know that life continues and that there is some things you cannot do anything about except cry because it happened. You are going to have the emotions about it. Because it is very real and it is very deep. But life has to go on. And so with that, back then, I did not have a problem with the wall itself being built, but I felt it should not just be in place like a cemetery. We [inaudible] as a cemetery but there should be something about it that put it in perspective. So I was really happy that the statute and the flag were there. Because it should be about transcendence and transformation, the optimism of the boomers. But I believe in transformation. I believe in transcendency. SM (01:52:17): So I am not in your shoes, but it is a great quality that Vietnam vets have, and that is brotherhood. I see it. I know some vets that I know in Philly, some of the top leaders in Philly wish that some of the vets would quit wearing their outfits from Vietnam because they are gaining weight and all that other stuff. And they wear suits and that is the only thing that they love them. But they are tired, they wish they would stop wearing that stuff. But I have been to the wall now for 14 some years, since Bill Clinton gave his speech. And they can be whatever they want when they come to the wall. They identify and they all have people on that wall they lost. And I just admire them. I admire the brotherhood, I admire the caring. It is something I wish you could just bottle and people put it on their breakfast every morning. So not only that we did not have another war. AS (01:53:19): It was about adversity. And unlike what you could say, what happened in certain ghetto environments, it was a broader adversity because it was one part of the American society that was not small, it was a minority who did feel isolated. And even for Joe McDonald, Joe was in the Navy and I think Joe felt that too. Even though he became a symbol of anti-war and this and that, he still was very much a part of feeling a part of brotherhood. SM (01:53:57): He served early though. He served- AS (01:53:59): But he still felt a part of it even though he then experienced and got involved with the other part of that experience. But there is a sense of that. You still have it in you because you did have the experience. And I think that is a part of it is that we are thinking about with everything we had and my books, especially everything we had, if you look at the beginning of the book, the preface, I said, we do not want to parade, a monument, or mercy, or pity. We were simply people like any others. Except that what we experienced in its own way, was prepped. And we cannot talk to our families about it. Because if you have experienced, especially those of us that were combatants, I know a lot of World War II guys when I was growing up that would not talk about their experiences. SM (01:54:54): Why did not you talk? AS (01:54:56): Because it is not the kind of thing you share with people because it is tough and you do not know yourself because you have all kinds of people when you are involved and kill or be killed. And it is within a structure, you have all kinds of mixed emotions because you know how to survive it because you have not fully crossed the line like someone who commits an act of murder out of passion, and you can justify if you are fighting people that you could say are wanting to take over the world and do bad things. But still there is those common bonds. We are still as a human being with a conscience, even if you kill somebody that is very bad or you could say whatever the case may be. But you still have gone beyond a line that is a part of our social convention and our emotional convention and how you reconcile that is not an easy thing. And I think that is a root of PTSD and all that stuff is how do you reconcile [inaudible]? And especially if you are young, Vietnam had the youngest level of combat, youngest age combatants. The average age was 19, 20 years old. And you know from working with students, 19 or 20, for your own kids, when they are 19 or 20, when you are going through, it is like everything is just going to happen. SM (01:56:34): Yeah. The first Vietnam vet that I knew was in my very first job at Ohio University. And he was a father, I think one child or two. He was working at Ohio University, the Lancaster campus outside of Columbus. And he had a little office. So Ohio University was a little ahead of the game here, but the students never went to say hi to him, none of them. And I was close to all the students because we had a campus of 2000. But I got to know him. So I was sensitive about the war anyway- AS (01:56:59): Oh, he was only 2000 students? SM (01:57:01): The Lancaster campus. AS (01:57:02): Oh, okay. SM (01:57:02): I worked at the branch campus, which was outside Columbus. And that campus was the most radical of all the schools because they purged from 18 five to 13 five in a year and a half. Some of these I read a book on. They purged all the liberal students out of the campus in Athens. Ron Kovic actually came there and he was arrested just for the mere fact of being there. And it was a very conservative community. And where they- AS (01:57:31): Were they West Virginia? SM (01:57:32): Yeah. And I can remember when Ron Kovic came, I actually went down to see him speak, but they would not allow him on campus. So they just booted him off and they took him off to the prison. They did not care if he was in a wheelchair or not. He was a radical. But what are the other, I know you probably- AS (01:57:50): I have to go, it is past 6:30. SM (01:57:51): Yeah. AS (01:57:52): I need to get home and make sure the kids have eaten. SM (01:57:56): Yeah, sorry. Could we continue this with another... Because there is a lot of questions like personalities and I had a whole section here, but- AS (01:58:03): A part of the experience. But it is not the dominant... I would not be doing this if it was not for that. So I cannot say it was not the dominant experience. SM (01:58:13): If you could sign that for me. Just [inaudible], your name and today's date. I wish I had my other books, but I do not have a [inaudible]. I had three of your four books. AS (01:58:28): But I am more concerned right now about what direction things are going in. I am worried we are going to go broke and on a lot of different levels, forget who we are- SM (01:58:41): It is interesting, a person that I interviewed said to me when I asked that question about did we have a second Civil War, of course they did not live at those times, but this person said, the times that we are living in today are comparable to the Depression and the Civil War. I thought, whoa, and because we have such a potential for people to lose everything and when people lose everything, violence can start, people place blame. The reason why I am in this situation is because of this person or that group or the immigrants are the problem or the people from Mexico are the problem or the taking the jobs over to China are the problem. And or blaming the whole boomer generation. AS (01:59:30): Well what concerns me is the big one is coming. Because inevitably that is what it leads to. And it is not the stuff now. The stuff right now is an agitation. I am more concerned about the fight over food shortages, will be continuing because of low weather patterns changing and water shortages become more profound. And when you have more competing countries that are fighting for the same oil, gas and other things we are like during World War II or right before World War II... like during World War II, right before World War II, the Depression. Then the competition and the conflict between the emerging empires like Japan and Germany, reconstituting its strength against the West. And I am very concerned we are going into a similar period right now. SM (02:00:23): Do you think Japan could eventually come back to the- AS (02:00:26): No. SM (02:00:26): Okay, because- AS (02:00:27): But Russia definitely- SM (02:00:27): A lot of people are- AS (02:00:34): And China. And China, most definitely. I am watching it happening in Asia. And there is... Rivalry is very strong. And the thing that I am looking at is instability among the smaller countries. And if there can be some coherency and some stability among the smaller countries, it might have influence the larger countries. But if there is instability and weakness of the smaller countries with the resources and other countries believe that they can take advantage of it, it will lead to big power conflict. That is my historical perspective on that. SM (02:01:12): Everybody predicts that the problem will end up with Israel and the Middle East, and Palestine or whatever the issue might be. But the- AS (02:01:22): That is a flash point for sure. But the bigger problem is going to be... China right now is very full of itself. And they believe that they had a couple of bad centuries. And there are the resources to sustain everything. Plus, and on top of it, there is the hold onto a system that is an intolerant system, and that the elite, not every Chinese person, but the elite, that whatever the 1 percent that controls the dominance of wealth will get very a vicious and be looking for outside enemies. I mean, here we have a problem with the potential of emerging police state. And with higher technology, that makes it a little bit easier, because it is more easy to monitor people. That worries me a lot. And also, now our dependence upon private security groups and vigilante, not vigilante, but mercenary groups, to be doing national bidding, it undermines democracy and [inaudible]. SM (02:02:33): Oh, we had a discussion just before I left. It was not a program, but some of the top scholars at a school that was at a luncheon. And there was a fear that something will happen to President Obama, and that whoever the powers are that... Anybody that threatens the money market or the money has to be eliminated. And, of course, the China situation is something we know. And historically they have hated the Japanese. And the question is, will they destroy them? And they do not like Vietnam either. And the two historic enemies of China, even though Vietnam and China were linked, is Vietnam and Japan. They do not like... I know there is a relations... They do not like each other. AS (02:03:29): The Vietnamese, right now are a threat. SM (02:03:31): They might have resources there, but they want to take over. AS (02:03:35): They will take it. They will take it in the north. They will just take it. But with Japan, they owe some heavy, heavy vengeance too. I would not be comfortable right now if I was Japanese. This is going to get real interesting these next five or 10 years. SM (02:03:54): Will the Germans ever forget that we beat them either? AS (02:03:57): The Germans have largely gotten over it. I think it is partly because there has been other... Like, Russia was always the overriding shadow. Maybe if it was not for Russia it would be different. But Germany has been more aligned with the West because of that. SM (02:04:16): Russia might be heading... Of course we see some changes happening now with a- AS (02:04:20): Sliding back. SM (02:04:21): Yeah, sliding back. They do not like what is going on in Eastern Europe. AS (02:04:37): Well, like I say, I am hoping that the hard times bring upon us greater, better leadership, and that also there is a way of sustaining some of what is- SM (02:04:49): Three more pictures. And then I will let you go. AS (02:04:51): Okay, some of what is remaining of the things that led to the optimism of this country. Actually, there you go. Oh, that is fine. SM (02:05:08): The one thing I was going to ask too is when you think of... There is two things that happened in the (19)80s that really stand out when you think about Vietnam. It is when Ronald Reagan came to the presidency, I interviewed Ed Meese last week, and Ed says, "I do not remember him saying that." He does not remember. I have got to find the speech where I read it. But it is basically saying, "We are back." And it was a reason. He is going to build the military up and he is going to do a lot of different things. That is what it really meant, that is what he thought. AS (02:05:38): Well, I remember when he said that Vietnam was a noble cause. And I thought that was a really radical but a good thing to say. And it was also during the Iranian hostage crisis, and the country was different, was ready for a different view of itself. SM (02:05:58): Right. AS (02:05:59): That Iranian hostage crisis also was a flashpoint history that altered our perceptions of ourselves. SM (02:06:08): I was taping the whole thing. AS (02:06:10): So, again, if you are looking at all of these things, that historical progression. Remember, the other one was the Vietnam syndrome is over, which is what George Sr. said. And a lot of people said, "Oh, that is ridiculous," because every time we had to do something in foreign policy, we are still talking about Vietnam. And whenever you bring up the word Vietnam, or the word quagmire, it sends shivers down... Did I... SM (02:06:34): [inaudible]. AS (02:06:35): Yeah. I actually go up New York Avenue and get back on the highway, and... That is the only thing I know. No, not that [inaudible]. You want to get to the... Are you talking about the 30th Street Station? Or not 30... SM (02:07:18): [inaudible 02:07:23]. AS (02:07:18): Can you point me on how to get there? SM (02:07:18): [inaudible 02:07:32]. AS (02:07:18): Yeah. [inaudible]. Should I follow you, or? SM (02:07:18): [inaudible 02:08:02]. (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 Albert Santoli Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Santoli, Al, 1949- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Authors; Bronze Star Medal (U.S.); Purple Heart; Santoli, Al, 1949--Interviews Description An account of the resource Al Santoli is a writer and a former combatant who served in Vietnam and earned a Bronze Star for valor and three Purple Hearts. He has also served as a policy oversight expert in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is currently teaching at the Institute of World Politics. 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 2010-05-18 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.10.2016.108a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.108b 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. 147:37 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/865b94d1d82b207fb09a54bb74849eb2.jpg 3673e92aab85ac7422f80866fdc1c776 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/14d1edbfbc93f86fe9853a30be860be5.mp3 c38f7e1829afc127e8c6cf0b28b26324 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 Toddy Puller Date of Interview 2010-05-18 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.) 105:11 Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Linda Todd Puller is a former Democratic member of the Virginia State Senate. Puller represented District 36 from 1999 to 2016 and served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1992 to 2000. Before she began her political career, she married the Lewis Puller, Jr., the most decorated Marine in American history. Puller has a Bachelor's degree in Art History from Mary Washington College.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,3355443],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Toddy Puller is a former Democratic member of the Virginia State Senate. Puller represented District 36 from 1999 to 2016 and served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1992 to 2000. Before she began her political career, she married Lewis Puller, Jr., the most decorated Marine in American history. Puller has a Bachelor's degree in Art History from Mary Washington College.</span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Women's Rights Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Gay/Lesbian Rights movement; LGBT; Anti-War Movement; Baby boom generation; Black Panthers; Vietnam War; The nineteen-sixties; Lewis Burwell Puller Jr.; Veterans.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Women's Rights Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Gay/Lesbian Rights movement; LGBT; Anti-War Movement; Baby boom generation; Black Panthers; Vietnam War; The nineteen-sixties; Lewis Burwell Puller Jr.; Veterans.</span> Subject LCSH Legislators—United States--Virginia; Democratic Party (Va.); Puller, Linda Todd--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 Toddy Puller Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Puller, Linda Todd ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Legislators—United States--Virginia; Democratic Party (Va.); Puller, Linda Todd--Interviews Description An account of the resource Linda Todd Puller is a former Democratic member of the Virginia State Senate. Puller represented District 36 from 1999 to 2016 and served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1992 to 2000. Before she began her political career, she married Lewis Puller, Jr., the most decorated Marine in American history. Puller has a Bachelor's degree in Art History from Mary Washington College. 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 2010-05-18 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.10.2016.159a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.159b 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. 105:11 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/abc025a431a1c146a42ddfdd47107bee.jpg e83c83c726c9ee63007c3fd9e77d90e6 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a61c46fc62f49f369fa26455193be36b.mp3 d5fde6ff7ae3efaa251234a5d7c43478 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 2010-05-26 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Zillah R. Eisenstein Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Zillah Eisenstein is a scholar, political activist and Emerita Professor of Political Science at Ithaca College. Her work focuses primarilly on political struggles for social justice. She was able to document problems such as the rise of neoliberalism (both within the U.S. and across the globe), the growth of imperial and militarist globalization, injustices of racial laws, diseases and affirmative action in the U.S.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:6535,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&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;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Zillah Eisenstein is a scholar, political activist and Emerita Professor of Political Science at Ithaca College. Her work focuses primarily on political struggles for social justice. She was able to document issues such as the rise of neoliberalism (both within the U.S. and across the globe), the growth of imperial and militarist globalization, injustices of racial laws, diseases, and affirmative action in the U.S.</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.) 86:35 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Civil Rights Movement; Communist Party; Communism; Marxism; The Way We Were; Women's Rights movement; Feminism; Baby boom generation; Feminism; Racism; Black women; Abortion; Sexism; Second-Wave feminism; Women's studies; Eleanor Roosevelt.&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;:13689059}}">Civil Rights Movement; Communist Party; Communism; Marxism; The Way We Were; Women's Rights movement; Feminism; Baby boom generation; Feminism; Racism; Black women; Abortion; Sexism; Second-Wave feminism; Women's studies; Eleanor Roosevelt.</span> Subject LCSH Scholars; Political activists--United States; College teachers; Eisenstein, Zillah R.--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: Zillah Eisenstein Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 26 May 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two. Could you give me a little bit about your background, your growing up years, and what it was like to grow up... The influences that were a force in your life that maybe helped you in your career path? And also, when you are talking about this, I am always asking people about their college experiences. Was there something during their undergraduate years that had an influence on you that... Where you changed and went in a certain direction in your life? ZE (00:00:38): Well, my growing up years were enormously influenced by being the daughter of people who had been in the Communist Party and whose whole life was committed to civil rights activity. So, I had three sisters and we just grew up. Saturday mornings, you went and picketed Woolworths. I mean, that was... SM (00:01:04): So you learned that as a little girl, then? ZE (00:01:06): Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, my politics is from the womb. SM (00:01:12): Right. ZE (00:01:13): So in some ways just giving... As I was walking down here, I just thought, "Well, maybe I should just talk about my parents rather than myself." You know? SM (00:01:26): Talk about your parents, because... ZE (00:01:28): But I will just say just quickly, and then you can kind of do what you want with it. But my mother actually is the woman that... The way we were. You know? SM (00:01:37): Oh, yes. ZE (00:01:39): Okay. Well, it is based on her. Her name was Fanny Price. And I always forget his name, but the guy who wrote and produced the film, mom used to always say, "We were told that," and mom said, "Do not be silly." My mother went to Cornell, she went to the ACT School. She was completely poor, she got the [inaudible] scholarship. That is how she went to school. It was like the ritual story that was always told to us as children about work hard to get your intellect, and then you will go forth with whatever you want to do. But they did that as communists, not as liberals. But anyhow, when he wrote his book, the guy, whatever his name is, in the book finally, it came out I think maybe eight years ago, he says, "The woman who I was mesmerized by in my days at Cornell was Fanny Price." And- SM (00:02:39): The person, Barbara Streisand... ZE (00:02:41): Yeah. SM (00:02:41): Wow. ZE (00:02:42): I mean, my mother was really annoyed, she did not like the film, she said that was not... But mom did. When she was here, she founded the Young Communist League at Cornell. And then, of course, I never really heard very much about this until I got my job at Ithaca College and came here. And then that first semester, I was feeling pretty lonely here. It was kind of strange. And they came up for a weekend and she said, "Come on, let me take you on Cornell's campus and I will show you where I gave the first young communist [inaudible] speech." And it was on Bailey Hall and stuff like that. SM (00:03:20): Oh, my God. ZE (00:03:20): So anyhow, that is my roots and my sister's roots. I mean Sarah, who was Roz's friend, we both did... We did civil rights activism at a very you age. My two youngest sisters, when my father along with Staughton Lynd and Howard Zinn, the three of them are taught at Atlanta University. Well, no, Staughton was, I think at Morehouse. My dad was at AU, which was the graduate center for the Black colleges. And then Zinn was at Spelman. But there was a picket. I stayed home to study for my SATs, my sisters Julia and Gia, who were very young at the time, like seven and nine, I think. Anyhow, all of them were arrested. And Staughton Lynd came to get me to go help find them because my sisters had been separated from my parents and taken to juvenile detention. So anyhow, that just gives you a flavor. I mean, our life was very difficult and intense and rich as children. But there was a lot of anti-communism, we often were ostracized for that and it was not your typical upbringing. I mean, my father and mother lost their jobs pretty regularly because, still, of the leftovers of the hounding of people out of jobs. And so we grew up just everywhere. I mean, we lived everywhere. SM (00:05:13): What was it like? Because we are talking about the boomer generation, but a lot of people I am interviewing, one third of them are not boomers, they just lived during that time. So it has become much more than just a boomer thing. But when you look at that period after World War II, which is the red diaper babies and the pressures put on people who were affiliated with the Communist Party through the late (19)40s and the (19)50s, even into the early (19)60s, what was it like living in America at that time, being the child or of parents who were communists? And how did you get along with your peers? ZE (00:05:48): Well, I mean, it was very difficult. If you were kind of found out, oftentimes you were found out though, in weird ways. I mean, you would say something in a class discussion and someone would yell, "You are a communist." Like if you said something about equality or whatever. I mean, it is not like you walked around... Nobody walked around saying, "My parents were in the party." You would have to be out of your mind. But at the same time, there was such a vigorous social community that was part of the civil rights movement. That really was the way that an awful lot of communists... I mean, my parents joined the Communist Party primarily because of their stance against racism. And that is really what... SM (00:06:37): Yeah. Like Paul Robeson. ZE (00:06:38): Yeah. Well, I mean most US Communists, it was the place, if you were truly anti-racist, you would be a communist. Although most of the time people think communism meaning the economics... My parents were economic communists as well, but... But even the way that we were brought up, nobody had private money in our household. Nobody. And it has to do with how my own family functions now. But anyway, so that is that. Then I go to college. College already is the Vietnam War period. I do remember I had a job in the kitchens to help pay for school. And I remember waking up one morning and there was a picket line outside the cafeteria. And again, it was just kind of this memory bank. I did not know what it stood for but I knew I could not cross the picket line. That is just how I was brought up. So I remember going back to my dorm and then trying to find out what it was. And I was a student worker, but this was at Ohio University. Most of the people really were Appalachian poor and I worked with women, uneducated. They were at poverty wages, so was I, but I was a student, so it was not comparable. You know? SM (00:08:16): So you were at the Athens campus for your undergraduate degree? ZE (00:08:18): Yeah. SM (00:08:19): What was your major there? ZE (00:08:21): Political Science. SM (00:08:23): And what years were you there? ZE (00:08:23): I was there (19)64 to (19)68. SM (00:08:27): Unbelievable, my first job was at Ohio University. ZE (00:08:31): Oh, yeah? SM (00:08:31): Yeah, I started in (19)72. I went to Ohio State Grad School, in (19)72 got my master's degree. Then I worked at the Ohio University of Lancaster campus as Assistant Director of Student Affairs. And I know it was one of the most liberal schools in the state of Ohio at the time. And what really got me when I got there was the fact that they had purged many, many students out of that school. And they went from a campus of 18-5 to 13-5 in (19)72. And what saved Ohio University, were the branch campuses, which was at Lancaster. I think they had one at... Oh God, [inaudible]. Well, they had three branch campuses. We had 2000 students, so it had really helped them and they did not go under. After Kent State, I guess all hell broke loose. ZE (00:09:20): Yeah. SM (00:09:21): And I had some unbelievable experiences of being in that conservative community in Lancaster. ZE (00:09:26): Yeah. SM (00:09:27): But I lived in Columbus, I commuted. But... ZE (00:09:30): Well, so anyhow. SM (00:09:31): Yeah. ZE (00:09:34): So that actually, the politics there about the strike, became... I became very involved in the class issues that existed in Athens and worked and was trusted very deeply by many of the real workers as opposed to student workers. And then I was pretty active in anti-war stuff. SM (00:10:02): Did you have Dr. Hunt for any of your classes? Ron Hunt? He was a professor for the science labs. ZE (00:10:07): No. SM (00:10:12): Was there any generation gap with your parents? Because obviously they influenced you and you had the same values in terms... ZE (00:10:18): No. There were not... SM (00:10:19): You did not really have any generation gap issues because you were... ZE (00:10:22): No, I mean we were a real community because of the hostility in which our family existed. But later in my life, when I became a graduate student and was doing my PhD in feminist theory and was also becoming very active in the women's movement, as a socialist feminist but still in the women's movement, I had enormous conflicts with my father who really believed that communism was sufficient, you did not need an autonomous women's movement. So the politics, the political struggles that we went through were within progressive politics, they were not your normal left, right, or whatever. SM (00:11:09): I know that Dr. Johnnetta Cole, who I really know... ZE (00:11:11): Oh, sure. I know her. SM (00:11:12): ...I am a big fan of hers. Her very first book, I think, was Sister President. And in that book, I remember reading years ago that she had a conflict there when she was in college because she was first of all, an African American. And second, well, she knew she was a female too, but there was a lot of pressure where she was going to school that you concentrated on race first and gender second. ZE (00:11:36): Right? Yeah. SM (00:11:37): Did you see a lot of that within the African American community during the times you were at... (19)64 to (19)68 in your PhD, that in the women's issues, that it was more dominated by white... ZE (00:11:51): A lot of them were. I mean, the mainstream women's movement, clearly white dominated. I became very involved in the early parts... When was it? I think it was maybe around (19)76 actually. Angela Davis, me, and Bell Hooks, the three of us did a big event at Haverford College. Hortense Spillers was the provost there then, and it was called Racism and the Women's Movement. Clearly, that was just huge conflicts that existed because the assumption about the whiteness of women or even the language that Blacks and women, Blacks are men, women are white. And then of course, Black women would say, "And we are just supposed to be brave." Okay? SM (00:12:40): Right. ZE (00:12:42): That is my whole life. I mean, all of my books, everything is about this question. So it is like I cannot really do it quick. SM (00:12:53): That is what is great about the interview process. We had asked questions I never expected to ask. We had JL Chestnut, the great lawyer who wrote Black and Selma on our campus many years back, 1990s, mid 1990s. We had the Black student union in that room. And the question I am asking is this, he started his lecture to talk about Selma and he looked over in the room and he says... Looked at the African American women and said, "I am very proud of you. You are doing great things." And then he looked at the men and he went after them. And it was almost as if the African American female in mid-1990s was very successful in life, whereas the black male is still having major issues because... Be in prisons and everything. And obviously, these males were going to be successful because they were in college and the... But they were a little shocked by it, and it was a great learning lesson. And to me, when you are talking about women's issues, that African-American women in the mid-(19)90s compared to African-American men in the mid (19)90s, obviously they were way ahead. In this man's eyes. ZE (00:14:03): Yeah. But I mean, we cannot... There is not time to... SM (00:14:05): Right. ZE (00:14:08): That is just also post-Reganism, it is the whole restructuring of the penal system. There is a whole new Jim Crow here and Jane Crow as well. So, I mean a lot of it is structural transformations and repositioning of women's labor, and particularly Black women's labor in the whole global system. I mean late (19)90s already. So the idea that you blame black men or that black men are the way that Cosby talks about it, or even Skip Gates, it is really, I think of incredibly retro politic. What you were asking is about black women, did they see a hierarchy of relationships between gender and race? And Barbara Smith, a well-known black feminist that I often have done stints with years ago. One time she was asked by a kid in the audience, which has been more difficult for you being black or being a woman? And Barbara said, "I am always both. So cannot answer that." SM (00:15:21): Wow. How has the relationship between men and women changed since 1946? Now, this is a broad question here, but we are looking at the boomer generation and I am trying to see what the women of the boomer generation, can you describe some of the changes that have taken place since 1946 with respect to some of the laws that were not in the books at that period after World War II, maybe even the activism, the movements, the creation of organizations, the sexual revolution of just some of the things that kind of define the women that were not born until after World War II? ZE (00:16:08): Well, again, I mean, I just actually started writing a new talk for this keynote that I am doing in Australia in about four weeks. And the question really is, for me, you need new feminisms just always need new politics because the structures of power are always changing. So on the one hand, it looks like everything has changed and everything has changed and nothing has changed. And both of those things are simultaneously true, I think. So mean, again, my answer would be different if we talked just even a year ago, but today, majority of women in the labor force, there are more women in the labor force in the US right now than there are men, first time ever historically. So the fact that there was in the early (19)70s through the (19)80s, enormous access to abortion. Right now, there is much less access to abortion. There are something like 80 percent of counties have no federally funded clinics at all. I have a daughter in medical school right now. In most medical schools, abortion is not being taught. Legally, totally the same. Okay. Roe v Wade, (19)73. SM (00:17:36): (19)73, yep. ZE (00:17:37): All right. But then there have been, and I did a whole book about this. There have been a series of about six different huge decisions that have whittled away at abortion, particularly for younger women, and that you need more consent, etcetera, from parents, doctors, etcetera. But the biggest issue right now is that although, and this is what I would say is abortion remains legal. So women in the US have the right to abortion, but they get to choose to have an abortion, but they do not get to have one. In other words, the access. And that is really. As we have become a much more unequal society since World War II. I mean post-World War II, it was a bit of a boom. And then we have been moving to now where we are one of the most economically unequal, I think one of the top five countries in the world. And what is his name? Jude, what is his first name? He has been writing all this stuff in the New York review of books. He was actually saying that inequality is much more devastating a problem for a society than even poverty is meaning the extremes of wealth and poverty. SM (00:19:00): And women still only make, and was it 80 percent of what a man's salary is? ZE (00:19:07): Anywhere between.72 to.77 cents on the dollar. But then of course, you still have sexual ghettos in the labor force, then you have, where you have women in the labor force in areas that did not used to be the case. You are still.77 cents to the dollar. So the sexual hierarchy of the labor force exists. But again, change. Well, 1971, you have a law that says sexual harassment on the job is illegal, did not exist before (19)71. You have all kinds of, again, laws that have changed the ability to bring charges of rape. You have even date rape law. I mean, all of that is new. Yeah, okay. A lot of the domestic violence law, new. And that all comes from technically a radical feminism that argued that the personal is political. And therefore that really is, I think, just one of the most revolutionary ideas of the last century. That idea has transformed politics every which way, including Bill Clinton and his penis. So... SM (00:20:45): What do you think of, I interviewed Phyllis Schlafly, and she was very nice, and we got her on her campus. She is a distinguished lawyer and she has not changed one iota from the Phyllis Schlafly from the (19)50s in terms of a couple of things she said. "The troublemakers of the (19)60s are now running the universities, and they run the departments." And she was, I think, referring to women's studies and some of the other areas. And then she said she was wanted to run for political office, but she asked her husband, her husband said, "Please do not run." And so she did not run because she was one to please her husband. That was the most important thing, was pleasing her husband and not pleasing her. ZE (00:21:30): Oh, I mean, I have written on her. I spoke with her one night. She was disgusting. She comes out and she says, I want to thank, I forget his name, for letting me be here. And when I stood up, I said, I want, I am really happy to say I did not have to thank anyone for being here. SM (00:21:48): The second wave is what happened in the late (19)60s of feminism. One of the things that I have noticed in all the interviews is the amount of sexism that was really prevalent in just about all the movements. The anti-war movement was well known for being sexist in the civil rights movement too. In fact, I remember we had a program once where we had a speaker that said of Dr. King, were alive today and be embarrassed when he was talking about not having very many women. There were Dorothy Heights. You look at 1963 in the march on white, you see Dorothy Height over the right and Mahalia Jackson singing, but very few females. And even in the Native American movement there was sexism, in the gay and lesbian movement there was there is sexism. I could not believe it. It is prevalent in all these central movements. Was that the major thrust as to why women left some of those movements and really started that second wave was because of the sexism and the movements of the late (19)50s and (19)60s? ZE (00:22:49): Well, I mean, clearly, I mean, there is just many, many different ideas about that. But on the whole, for women who were political activists, many of them did feel as though they needed to really make their own autonomous space. And there was even a big difference between saying that they were not separatists, they believed in coalition, but that they really needed autonomy to be able to give voice to themselves within larger communities. And I am a little on the young cusp here in that, I mean, I was very involved in the anti-war movement, but really it was not sexism that took me in that movement that took me to the women's movement. It was actually the intellectual work I was doing. And also given my own upbringing in terms of communism and realizing that there was a system of patriarchy and masculinist privilege that no politics theorizes or addresses. And even today, what is so interesting is the minute you talk about anything that is related to sex or gender, none of the normal political categories work. So you can have right-wingers and even feminists coming together on particular issues because the issue's related to the body. And it has no place in any political theory. SM (00:24:47): I remember that going back to the movie, The Way We Were. I remember the scene where she is out there speaking, and of course people were throwing all these words to toward Barbara Streisand, but it was like they were negative, so to speak. And of course, Robert Redford was fascinated by her in the end, but because she was so different. ZE (00:25:10): Right, exactly. Well, that is what this guy says about my mom. SM (00:25:15): What I said here, the describe the second wave of what were the forces that made it happen and describe the boomer women and the roles they played. One of the things that is been interesting in the people I have talked to is in respect to the Civil Rights Movement, they said, this is not a boomer movement. The Civil Rights Movement was already well established, and the youngest boomers were probably 18 years old when all these things were happening. Although they did Freedom Summer in (19)64, we all know about the white students, predominantly Jewish students who went down with African American students. And so you cannot deny that. And that many of the people of the free speech movement had the experiences of being there and Freedom Summer, even. Abbie Hoffman and some of the hippies were down there at that time, but they were a little older than the boomers. They were like the pre-boomers. And then the other thing in development on the women's studies on college campuses, would you say that is a big plus that boomer women have... ZE (00:26:15): So what are you defining as boomer women kind of starting when? SM (00:26:20): Boomers are born between 1946 and 1964. But I have had issues just about everybody has the issue with, they do not like the term boomers. They do not like defining generations. And many of them do not even like Tom Brokaw. Greatest generation, come on. They do not like these generational things. They talk about events, they talk about periods, not about generations. But when we are defining that young boomer women of the (19)60s and the (19)70s and right into the Reagan period there... ZE (00:27:00): Well, I guess to me, it would make more sense to actually call those particular women. They were feminists at that time. So the most significant movement of my lifetime, for me, was the women's movement. It nurtured me, it gave me strength, it made me very brave. And that is where I got my sustenance. I was in an all-male program, all male professors for my PhD, and I was doing work, it was actually on the relationship between Marxism and feminism and political science, which was for most of my professional life, an enormously male dominated field, when my husband would sometimes go with me to the national meetings, he would say, "This is worse than lawyers." I mean, it is like all men. And now that is changed some, but I did not care. I was fascinated by political theory. It still fascinates me. But I am a political theorist who is an activist as well. I do not think theory, if theory cannot be used, it is not, to me, theory. Theory has to really articulate the presence and movement of your own being. So it is not something that is foreign and disparate. And that is, of course, how I try to get my students to think about it. So the point here though is that these feminists did, many of them fought very hard for women's studies. Now, I would argue that a lot of women's studies programs today no longer have the clarity of politics that they had initially. And I was part of some of the earliest fights at the University of Massachusetts, actually. Some people wanted to call it women's studies and others, including myself, wanted to call it feminist studies. And there was a huge debate about whether women, I women itself is a term that already authorizes a system. And what we were saying is, we do not want to be part of the university as it exists, as feminists. We want to change the university, we want to change the base of knowledge, we want there to be new things to be studied. And there has been, I think that the struggle no longer exists, but through the (19)80s and early (19)90s, it was a fabulous struggle on college campuses, I think. About really whether you wanted to be mainstreamed as a women's studies program or feminist studies or gender studies as it is called more often now, or whether you really wanted to be a dissident location in the university. In other words, that you were trying to... That there is just a contradiction in terms that you cannot really create the kind of knowledge base that you want. Meaning here, again, if the personal is political that no academic discipline is set up without the parameters of those really the borders between those realms in economics, it would have to be that the family is an economic unit, not that the economy exists outside of. So the point here was that it was just huge conflict and that the conflict was good and that, you know, you really wanted to bring that conflict onto your campus. That does not exist today. SM (00:31:20): But where would you put that political correctness? Would that be part of that debate too? The PC thing that was so big in the Chronicle higher education that was books have been written out. ZE (00:31:30): Well, the PC thing, I think, was just really, it was a right wing part of progressive politics, and it was just a way of trying to, again, be able to contain and authorize as though there are only certain answers are acceptable. Whereas I remember a few times in my own classroom where someone would say something and say, "Well, I do not know if this is politically correct." And I said, "No, actually there is no correct. That is the point here." Now think, okay, but the idea that you want to take when people are trying to get you to think openly and then you come back with what the old stuff, which is just to say that there is only one way to think. So to me, that was not even interesting. SM (00:32:36): But what you are talking on basically about this debate over women's studies is like the (19)60s, the debate over the war in Vietnam, the movements and all the issues within the movements, it is a continuation, which is a sign of activism. And activism is continuing. Whereas some people are saying that a lot of those people just went off to make a lot of money, raise their families, and they realized at a certain point that idealism goes by the wayside. Do you believe a lot of people within that generation continue today to believe in the ideals that they had is when they were young? Because one of the critiques of that period is that, it was a period, and it was a unique time, not a unique generation, but a unique and different time that allowed them to have the freedoms that today's students do not have. because they have to work. And so... ZE (00:33:33): Oh, that is just bullshit. SM (00:33:34): Yeah. But how do you feel about your generation or the boomers? ZE (00:33:40): Well, again, the people that I who had been involved with, then none of them went off to make a lot of money. Are there people of the boomer generation who were completely self-centered? Yeah, but that is part of the problem with this phrase, boomer generation. Okay. So I mean, the point here is that you just, I mean, it is kind of a false construction. The boomer generation is just these people who by accident, happen to share a historical moment. Okay. But that accidental or random sharing gives them nothing in common other than the shared historical moment. Yeah. So if you want to say that historical moment was one of opportunity, etcetera, that existed, but simultaneously with that was existing struggles against the Vietnam War, struggles against racism, and then the real struggles against patriarchy and sexism. But those are not... SM (00:35:01): You raised a good point. If you were pressed, and only if you would not even do it if you were not pressed. But if you were pressed and you do not want to use that term boomer, would there be another term? The other terms that have come out is that the Woodstock generation, the Vietnam generation, the protest generation, the movement generation, knowing that when, another thing is one of the criticisms of the generation of (19)74 to (19)78, I do not even know the exact numbers here, is that only really five percent to 15 percent, depending on whatever person you are talking to or book you have read, were involved in any sort of activism. Anyways, the 85 percent to 90 percent, 95 percent people just went on with their lives and were influenced by the times. But we were not out there protesting, and we were talking both conservative and liberals here now were not inbound in any of the movements, but we were still talking about a large number. If we were talking 74 million, even 5 percent to 15 percent is a large number. So yeah, you raise a really good point here, because so many of the people I have talked to cannot stand these terms. ZE (00:36:15): Who, well, I mean, can understand. I think that one can take a term and use it and say that the term itself is, it is important because it creates a continuity of your thought, but that at the same time that continuity is false or I do not like false. The continuity is much more complex than unity. There is no unity here, although there might be continuity. And then the real issue is that within the boomer generation, if you want to give that as the, or Vietnam, I would call them movements, Vietnam, the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, that there were movements and that some people were in multiple movements who also happen to exist in this period called or identified as the boomer generation. But that really, on some level, the problem with the term boomer is the idea that was these were the ones who actually made it, right? But in a lot these movements, nobody was interested in making it. SM (00:37:43): Do you remember that moment where you have already mentioned how important the women's movement was in shaping you, inspiring you, being the force that drove you in your life. Do you remember the moment when you left the anti-war movement or any of the other movements and said, "This is the movement that I most identify with?" ZE (00:38:04): No, because I have always been more, I mean, because the civil rights movement is like when I was five. And I mean, even the work that I do, I have always worked with more black feminists than white feminists. And it is so much of the work that I am recognized for, and the rest of the world is the intersections of political struggles. So when I went to Bosnia or Cuba, I mean, it is always because I refuse to... It is not the problem with seeing the women's movement, even as a singular movement, okay, it is made up of just cacophonous differences. SM (00:39:00): Worldwide. Yeah, global. Look, that is the question I have later on. I will ask it now. And that is, when did the women's movement become global? Because when you talk about the second wave, you know, read the first wave, you talk about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and then you about the period in the early part of the 20th century, and then the suffrage movement. And then you have the second wave movement of the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, but it was the United States movement. It seemed like the only person that seemed to be global was Eleanor Roosevelt who worked... ZE (00:39:41): But there were movements everywhere. I mean, and my newest in my book, Against Empire, one of the problems here is the idea that feminism is western and feminism is the United States. There were Egyptian feminists doing incredible things in the 19th century, you know, you have feminisms everywhere. The idea that now there are some countries that they have not used that term feminism, they will talk about women's movements. That is a much more encompassing concept. But that really what you are, if I can be so bold, what you are really saying is when you say, when did feminism become global? It is really... SM (00:40:37): It has always been? ZE (00:40:38): Yeah. When did the United States begin to recognize, when did the West begin to recognize other feminisms across the globe? All right. And even a lot of people talk about global feminism, and that is a way that they try to, it really means the women's movement in the US across the globe. And in my writing, I always talk about feminisms across the globe rather than global feminism. But if what you are also asking, early 1970s is really the beginning of the global economy. I mean, the modern global economy, and again, working with women of color, given the slave trade, okay, capitalism has always been global, so you got to be careful even about what, but the new modern, cyber, global, early 1970s. And is it interesting that, of course, that is when you start to have much more publicness and public viewing of the feminisms across the globe. SM (00:41:47): Where does Eleanor Roosevelt come into this? Because Eleanor, she was such an exception of a First Lady. To me, FDR was racist in some respects. And well, she put him in his place many times and she protected her husband. But obviously we all know about the incident at the Lincoln Memorial with Marian Anderson and her quitting the daughters American Revolution, the Declaration of Human Rights that she was found in the United Nations. She seemed to be in the 1950s, a female that was so at the forefront of everything. I find it interesting also, it is just a commentary here that the three people that had the biggest FBI records in American history are Martin Luther King Jr. Eleanor Roosevelt, and John Lennon. Eleanor Roosevelt? They must have worried about her because she was saying things that... Does she play in your thoughts, does she play any role at all in terms of an inspiration to those that found she died in 1962? ZE (00:42:53): Well, I think she was an inspiration to what you would call, I mean, of course, Blanche Cook, who... SM (00:42:58): Oh yes. ZE (00:42:58): She thinks... SM (00:42:58): Cook, yes. ZE (00:43:02): Me? No, she was not an inspiration for me and personally. And politically, I think that she is an inspiration within a kind of notion of liberal feminism. SM (00:43:15): I got to turn... ZE (00:43:21): And I do use these terms pretty technically, but liberal feminism here, and I mean that very much in terms of women who basically did believe that women should be given the same chances as men in our capitalist society. There was no criticism of capitalism as needing a system of patriarchy that could never give women equality. And Eleanor Roosevelt, on the whole, she was a liberal feminist, and liberal feminism is imperial. And it is used to, I mean, in my most recent political and intellectual work, I have really argued the way that feminism has been ill used by the United States to justify the wars, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the idea here of women's rights and fighting against the Taliban, etcetera, etcetera. Whereas the United States does not care about women's rights, not there or here. SM (00:44:33): Wow. ZE (00:44:36): But the argument, again, though, I am at this point in my life, I am uncompromising in the importance of the politics of every different form of feminism on this globe. And how could you not think that this is not the most central political struggle when everybody just, they need to wrap up, women not let you see their face need to [inaudible] their bodies to why is it that we have a medical plan? The one thing that could not be agreed on was abortion politics, East/West Germany, when they are trying to come together and unify, the only thing they could not agree on for a united constitution was abortion rights. Hello. So the point here, all right, and this has just been in really recent stuff with all of the issues around immigration, and the silence always is about the female in those dialogues. SM (00:45:50): I find it interesting too, my niece had a baby and she is finding all kinds of issues because of the fact that where she works, they have no place for privacy and this is an un... I have now read that this is a problem all over the country. When they want to nurse their child at work, there is no place for privacy they have to do in the lady's room. And then there is also the thing about the three month of the six weeks or three months, everybody agrees it should be three months of leave. And then it is, well, there has been a lot. ZE (00:46:26): But all I am saying is, how could anyone, right now, with more women in the labor force than men, how could anybody not think that there should be a daycare plan in this country? Yet, not a word. Now, my thing is the more silent something is, the more important it is politically. The noise... SM (00:46:48): Why are not there more people like you? Because of the fact we are talking about, okay, I am overuse this term. We are talking about boomer women who were in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, got involved in the women's movement. Many of them gone on to become corporate leaders and so forth. Where are, are the women who we are talking about... ZE (00:47:08): Those are your boomers who, or someone like Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice. I mean, the point here is, and we have not even gone there, that part of when you asked what has changed, and I said, well, everything has and nothing. So, just the fact that Hillary Clinton is flying around the Secretary of State. But also what is interesting is that she lost her campaign because she could not get it right. She really just screwed herself royally, I think by running as his wife. And that just was not going to do it. She either had to run as her own self and maybe she could have won that way. SM (00:47:56): Some people even said if she had divorced him after his presidency that she may have won. I read that. ZE (00:48:01): Well, no, but she wanted it every which way. But what is interesting is that in the end here, she was radicalized by the people who did support her in the end, which were older white women. That is who supported her. They were probably a lot of your boomer people actually. All right. But everybody else hung her out to dry. So is not it interesting that now that she is Secretary of State, she and Obama have said that women's rights have to be central to the US foreign policy. So I am just, now that is new and different. Okay. That is never been said before. Okay. Now whether that means anything is just something totally different. SM (00:48:53): The great writers of that period, obviously you are really into books and reading and ideas. The free speech movement, to me, I think it is one of the greatest things that ever happened in higher ed. I, that is my degrees and Mario Samuel and Bettina Abigail and all those people, I just love them because it was about ideas. The university is supposed to be about ideas and debate. And so have we gone back in the university, the university, I interviewed Arthur Chickering, who was the great educator education identity, and he was surprised that I asked him to be interviewed, but he is retired now. And he said the biggest problem today on university campuses that he is really upset with is we have gone back to corporate control of universities. And when you look at the free speech movement back in the (19)64-(19)65 of Berkeley, that was one of the reasons they were attacking the university. It was what Clark Kerr was saying about the multi diversity, the corporate takeover. And he said the knowledge factory, just that term factory turned students off. Seems like we are going back to that again. ZE (00:50:05): Oh yeah. SM (00:50:06): And I think that might be part of the problem with the attacks on women's studies, black studies, gay and lesbian studies, is that whenever there is a threat to the bottom line, things seem to disappear. Are you worried what is happening on universities today? What I am getting at is that the lot of the people that are running today's universities are those boomers that experienced what we went through in college, but now they are running universities and they are using the experiences maybe in not so good a good way or whatever. ZE (00:50:41): Oh, I think that the university system in this country is in total crisis, total ethical, political, financial. SM (00:50:54): I am sensing the corporate takeover again. Decisions being made... ZE (00:50:58): Well, yeah, I mean there is... SM (00:51:00): Especially in that tough economic times too. ZE (00:51:02): Well, but I think also what is being done is that the tough economic times is also being used to justify political shifts that, and I mean, I said that straight out to our provost. I said, "Look, if you want to make changes, say what you want, those changes. But do not say that it is for the economic crisis because what you are trying to do here has nothing to do with the economic crisis." SM (00:51:30): I think there is the fear of controversy again, and whenever there is controversy, but debate is controversy. ZE (00:51:37): But the other thing that is also difficult is that so many of the junior people now, they really, they have been educated and have moved through and become professionals, and all they know is neoliberalism. SM (00:51:55): How important, what I was getting at here was the books, the writers of the period when you were in undergrad and graduate school, the Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, certainly Gloria Steinem and what she did, the political powerhouse of Bella Abzug. She was from New York and I was from New York. So they were powerful voices, very powerful voices. And Mauricia, I am going to actually be interviewing Susan Brown Miller in a couple of weeks in New York City, and I heard she had some issues with Betty Friedan or debating him or something, but she was also in that group who was also in Freedom Summer and also wrote a book, a children's book on Shirley Chisholm. And it was really involved. Were there any influences? Were any of those people in Kate Millett? ZE (00:52:48): Yeah. No, these are not my people. SM (00:52:50): Those are not your people. ZE (00:52:52): I knew them. I worked with some of them. Bella Abzug actually asked me to, when Carter was president, he held a forum in, actually it was in Texas, and it was, what do women want? And Bella Abzug called me and asked if I would come to the meeting and I said, "No, I will not come." And she said, "Why not?" And I said, "Well, that bullshit. They know what we want. We are supposed to tell them and they are going to give us what we want? No, I will not come." So she actually talked to some other people and they called me about that. And they said, Zillah, go and try to get them to think in the terms that you are talking about. And I said, straight out, "The work I have done is I have tried to get Marxist to become feminists. I do not know how to talk to liberals, why they should become feminists." And so they said, "Well, do it. Try to do it." So I said, "Okay." And that was the beginning of a whole new, I mean, actually the politics that I have done, it is not like I sit in a cubby hole and think about it. That was the next stage of my life. I mean, my earliest work when I was in my 20s was Marxism and feminism, given what I came out of then this was happening in our country, the Betty Friedan's, etcetera, which I just thought, "Okay." But look, who was she writing about? She was writing about white middle class women in the suburbs. Okay. That is not really interesting to me. I mean, definitely not what the age I was, the politics I came from, get a life. So anyhow, so the next stage really was, so why should liberals? And I still remember I was on a run and I thought, "Okay, so what would you say to someone like that? Okay, you want equality with men. Okay, now, okay, as a Marxist sealer, what would you say? Well, which men do you want equality with? Everyone of who you want equality with rich men, right? Rich white men. But how about the working class man? You want equality with him, well we already kind of got that." But anyhow, and then out of that politics came a book that made me pretty well known in a lot of... It is called The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism. People there were so open to becoming radicalized as feminists. And therefore, my whole argument was in that stage of my life that if you become a radical feminist, you cannot remain liberal. SM (00:55:49): Wow. ZE (00:55:50): Okay. It is just a conflict in terms. SM (00:55:53): What is a liberal feminist? ZE (00:55:54): A liberal feminist is someone who believes that you can attain equality and freedom for women like men in capitalist, patriarchal society. SM (00:56:07): Is that Gloria Steinem? Is that what... ZE (00:56:08): Mm-hmm. SM (00:56:08): That is And Ms. Magazine and Mary Tom and all that group? ZE (00:56:12): Yeah. Although it is interesting. I mean, Ms. just recently, I mean, I have been doing this work for, what, 35 years? Just recently has really started to say, "Zillah, will you do a block for us?" SM (00:56:24): Oh wow. ZE (00:56:25): So, things change. And politics does get more com, but Gloria Steinem? SM (00:56:37): I think another one was Caroline Bird. You, she wrote some books too. ZE (00:56:40): I do not know that. SM (00:56:41): Yeah, I think we have already gone over this. Where have the women made the greatest gains? I think we have already talked. Where is there still needs, where are the needs still today? What is the goal? We are talking global here now, we are not talking to the United States. What this book is about is mostly about the US. Although I am interviewing a professor at Harvard who teaches Vietnamese history when I am up there, and I am going to talk about boomer generation from the Vietnamese perspective, 3 million that died, which now only the people that survive will make up only 15 percent of the Vietnamese population. But I can really now try to get the other side of those who died. And where do you see, I will say this country, and where do you see the world in terms of things that women need that still have not been achieved? Is there one thing you would like to see in your lifetime that would happened? ZE (00:57:55): No, I mean, if we are, let us just talk about the United States. There is horrible poverty among women in this country. Horrible poverty right now. And there is also less, I mean, when you ask that, what do women... I mean, first of all, I do not really think that there are particular things that women need, but so much of what women need as human beings, they share with men. So, I mean, I have always deeply argued and believed that when people talk about women, you know, you think you are talking about something specific. And when you are talking about men and human, you are talking about the universal and the general. Well, if we look historically, what has happened is that we say that we are talking universally, and we would never get to the specific needs of what women need in terms of what makes us particular, like abortion, like reproductive rights, like prenatal care. I mean, the things that are particular to women. Well, the truth is, if we actually met women's needs, all of their needs, economic, sexual, racial, etcetera, well then everyone's needs would be met. Got to flip it. In other words, the more specific you get here, the more universal and human you become. So when you asked me what is it that women need? Well, what we need is we need a different economic system that does not racially profile, sexually profile, and exploit on that basis. People need to have what they need as human beings. And that does mean food, shelter, clothing, education, dreams, hopes. We are so far away from that in our country right now. SM (00:59:56): Do you feel though that universities are, that professors are sometimes still part of the problem? Because I have actually asked a couple of my fellow students to go into a class where they are talking about poverty, and the professor will always say, "There is the poor, there is the middle income, and there is the rich. And then raise your hand." Why does the professor always have to say that there will always be the poor, the middle class, the rich, and they one actually did. And basically tellable history has shown that there is always poor. So he did not get, it is forever. Itis part of the human condition. It will always be, maybe we need to be asking the question that it does not always have to be. That there is the ultimate, but we still we are always striving for something. ZE (01:00:54): But I just, at this particular moment that I think that our society has become, for your boomers, driven, isolated, competitive, and selfish. SM (01:01:10): How about the criticism of the women's movement, and this may be a right-wing thing, but it is all about identity politics. When the movements took place in the late (19)60s, we are not just talking about the women or all the movement, Civil Rights, the environmental movement, the gay legend, everything. It seemed to be, there seemed to be a unity. Now, whenever there was a rally, a women's issues event, you would see the anti-war people there. You would see the Civil Rights people there. You would see the, they would all be there. Now when you see protests, you see a single issue. It is kind of like the criticism is that it is identity politics now. It is not the, it is single issue, it is women's issues, it is Native American issues. Native American issues are not going to be at an anti-war rallying. Whereas in the late (19)60s, a lot of the movements were together. There was more of a sense of togetherness. And now there seems to be a separateness. You see it on college campuses where self-segregation is very common amongst college students. And when you ask the people who run the Affirmative Action Office or multicultural affairs, who I am very close to, they will say, "Steve, it is their choice. It is a different time. It is their choice. They still believe in working together, but they like to close their doors. They like to be around people of their own kind." When we were hearing that back in the (19)60s. So where has the progress been made? So I am, what I am getting at is, has identity politics really hurt each of the causes that we are talking about here? That when you talk about women's issues around the world, I think you can really identify if it is the United States. But when you are talking about what is going on with the way women are treated in the Middle East, I mean, I cannot even really identify with that. That is just plain wrong. And I would like to see groups coming together again that identify with a certain cause, but then they also care about this cause and so they are going to be over there fighting so that when you have the issues you are talking about that you have the environmental movement saying the what is happening to women here effect directly affects the environment, civil rights, Native American, gay and lesbian rights, you name it, they are all together. ZE (01:03:43): Well, I do think though, that there are, at this point, through some of the environmental work going on and related to actually issues around food and sustainability, that there is more and more, I think there is kind of less identity politics than there was for sure in the (19)90s. But I also think that what we are seeing is the incompleteness of some of what started to happen with what got called as identity politics, specifying particular needs within the larger community, which clearly needed to happen given that the specific needs were not being articulated. Then just as you are ready for some of that to really start to build interesting coalitions, you also have some of the most right-wing politics in this country that really starts to destroy the possibility of some of that unification. And so I think that oftentimes that term identity politics confuses the who really is at the helm here and really how the politics emerged. And I think that identity politics did, I mean, if we are going to use that phrase that it became pretty conservative, but that a lot of the conservatism of it was not about the identity politics or the particular politics, but really had to do with the way that then they were re splintered by the Reagan period, by the Bush administrations that really were, and even Clinton, I mean, Clinton was pretty bad on a lot of these issues. SM (01:05:53): See, when you had the Three-Mile Island situation, there was a perfect example over the environmental movement in the women's world should be united because it was affecting children and their futures. The same thing on the tragedy down in the Gulf right now. I see that directly as a women's issue. Why are you saying the women's issues? Because that is, we are talking about food, we are talking about reproduction, we are talking about a lot of issues here. I mean, the environment in the women's movement to me, seem like a great mix in so many different areas because it is about the future of the human race. ZE (01:06:26): Well, I mean, in Africa, most of the leaders of the environmental movement are women and women's activists. SM (01:06:35): It is interesting that one of the questions I have asked everyone is the blame game that is often that I got to be unbiased here and saying it, but that when Newt Gingrich, I asked him to be interviewed. And, of course, I have asked him twice to the interview and he said, "No." But in (19)94, when he came into power, he along with other Republicans or conservatives, make comments that [inaudible 01:07:00] another one in many of his books, that a lot of the problems we have in the world today and in society today goes right back to that (19)60s and that (19)60s generation, that is a term they do not call them the boomers, the (19)60s, generation, (19)70s, that the sexual revolution, the drug culture, the breakup of the family, the divorce rate, the lack of respect for authority, the beginning of the isms, it is all about me, me, me, me, and not about we, we, we. And then Dr. King was always talking about, we-we. He always preached we, but they are very critical of everybody that was involved in that timeframe. And how do you respond when you hear, even Mike Huckabee has this TV show, I will not even watch it. There is a constant little jabs in there. I do not dislike him as a human being, but I do not like the jabs. And certainly even John McCain, when he was running for president or when Hillary was running before she had to drop out, he made comments about her too, being within that generation, even though he was a close friend of her. Those little snide remarks. And we knew what he was saying. How do you respond to people like McCain, Huckabee, Gingrich, who is a boomer, and George Will, and people like that. I know they probably sue me if I put them in. So that is part of the question. And so. ZE (01:08:34): You mean about their... SM (01:08:34): How do you respond when they say that the reasons why we have problems in our society, the breakup of the family, which could be a women's issue, lack of respect for authority, the marriage does not mean that much. A lot of them do not believe in same sex marriage either the man and a woman, either it is like Beck, the Beck Show or O'Reilly or Hannity and Home Hannity, that group. They are powerful influences on the conservative side, Rush Limbaugh being another. And when people listen to them, oftentimes they believe itis fact what they are saying. They have that much of an influence over people's thinking. ZE (01:09:20): Well, their depictions, I think are just totally faulty. They are historically inaccurate and they are politically pretty naive. I do not see the so much of what it is that they are saying as valid. And again, the whole issue of the me generation and the self-centeredness, of course, people said that about feminism from the start. It was the idea that women were selfish about their own needs and not concerned enough about family needs and children. SM (01:10:15): If you were asked, and this is again a very general question, but you have known a lot of boomers in your life. You have probably taught boomers and you have had friends who are boomers. What are their strengths and weaknesses? Can you generalize? We are talking about a generation now that might be different than the World War II generation that is certainly different than millennials of today that are on college campuses. And certainly that Generation X group, which really despising boomers, we had programs on them. Were those born from (19)65 to about (19)80. They did not like boomers. ZE (01:10:56): Well, again, I mean, for me, given what we have kind of covered today, to me, the boomer generation is really, it was one of the last periods of successful and multiple political movements in this country. I think the richness of anyone living in this particular boomer generation is that they have been nurtured by the sense of possibility that can exist through collective action. And I think that in the post boomer period, that has not existed in the same way. The anti-Iraq war stuff, it never got mobilized at the level of the Vietnam War. Now there are real reasons for that. There was a draft, it was a whole different economy. The way that we were at war with people so disconnected from that war at this moment. But to me, the roots that I have in the movements I was a part of have enriched me exponentially. SM (01:12:34): Who are some of the people that, you mentioned [inaudible], but who are some of the people that your parents or your brothers or your sisters and brothers and you actually worked with or met during the time of your activism prior to getting your PhD? ZE (01:12:53): Well, when I was little, [inaudible] was a friend of my father's, and then there were just lots of people in, I was really such a kid. I mean, I do not know all the names of... Many of them were famous people at the time when I was really young. Our house was always filled with activists. I mean the people like Martin Luther King, that whole generation, I do not know who, I mean Julian, I think it was Julian Bond actually, who was the lawyer for my parents when they tried to take us away from my parents because of the time when Gia and Julian were in detention. They were challenged in the courts for being... It does not make sense. I would need to be more careful about people's names for... SM (01:14:10): Well, I know Julian, so I interviewed him early on in my project. ZE (01:14:17): I am pretty sure he was the lawyer who, and then people in Atlanta, like Asa Yancey, and they were part of the Civil rights movement. Of course, in terms of my own life, Angela Davis, Jeanette Cole, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Barbara Smith. I mean, these are all people, again, very well known in certain arenas. SM (01:14:49): Do you remember also some of the specific protests you were at? Some people were in 1967 at the Pentagon when they levitated the Pentagon or some people were at People's Park Berkeley in (19)69. ZE (01:15:06): The first one I remember is 1971, and it was the first all-women’s March against the Pentagon for the Vietnam War. And actually in my house, I have framed one of the incredible posters, I carried it then. But that I remember as kind of really a first kind of autonomously, meaning as myself, as opposed to just my parents, my sisters, stuff like that. SM (01:15:41): See how we are doing here, we still good. One of the questions I have been asking two things. The issue of trust and the issue of healing. We took a group of students, I have said this, that I have asked this question to every single person we have interviewed, 170. But it was partially because the students came up with a question. In 1995, we took a group of students to Washington to meet Senator Edmond Musky, and that was part of our leadership on the road programs. And he had just gotten out of the hospital. I did not know that when he arrived, but he had been ill. And the question was this, due to all the divisions that took part in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, divisions between black and white, male and female, those who supported the war, those who were against the war, those who supported the troops, those who did not at all, with all the assassinations that took place during that timeframe in (19)68 and the riots and the cities and the burnings and all these things that the current generation of students that I was bringing had only read about the history books. Do you think this was the beginning of another civil war? Did we come close to another civil war where the divisions, and secondly, do you feel that this generation, this boomer generation, is going to go to its grave comparable to the Civil War generation not truly healing from the war and all the divisions that took place? It was a broad question. It is about healing. I will tell you what Senator Musky said after you respond. But do you think, and then this is why I am going to be meeting with Robert J Lifton because I want to get his thoughts on the psyche and his thoughts on not just those who were in the war and protested the war, but the whole generation. Do you think there is an issue of healing here that even the divisions that you have had as you have gotten older, something really still stirs you when you are going to go to your grave really upset with like Susan Brown Miller, she was upset with, she had the division between her and Betty Friedan. I do not know. I do not know. I will soon find out what that song, but I read about it. So I heard it was pretty intense. ZE (01:18:06): Well, I do not know. I think that that question is maybe works better for people who had an identity and a political life during the Vietnam War and do not feel like they do anymore. I mean, for me, you heal and you re heal and you are scarred again and you heal again. And so, I mean, I have been through the stuff with the Bosnian war, particularly with women. I have been very involved with the Afghan and Iraq wars. So Vietnam was very significant at one moment in my life. But that is in the past. And I live in the present. And I think we have to remake our present all the time. So I do not know, life is, I have had a lot of pain in my life that has nothing to do with politics. I have lost my sisters to cancer when they were very young. I have struggled myself with cancer. I have a fabulous daughter who I [inaudible] the world that she is entering. So I mean to me, I do not get to not heal. I have had to heal. SM (01:19:40): That is brilliant what you just said because Senator Musky, I think the students are hoping that he would talk about 1968 because of the convention and all. He did not even mention it. It was to me, the whole question we were asking was about that. He said that we have not healed as a nation in the issue of race. And then he went, as we saw back in when he said he could not run for president, where he might show a tear in his eye. Well, he did show it. We had this on tape. He did not answer for about a minute. The students are looking at each other. What did we just do here? And we saw the tear. He said, "I have just spent the time in the hospital. I have been very sick." And he died sick within six months after this. And he said that, "I just saw the Ken Burns series and touched my life. 430,000 men died in that war. The south almost lost an entire generation. Now that is hard to heal from." And so he said, "The issue of race." And then he went on explain Why? ZE (01:20:55): Yeah, but I mean for me, what is going on in Rwanda, the way that people have had to repair themselves, the incredible atrocities in the Congo right now, I mean as a woman on this earth. But the point here is that you just do, I mean, do not know. SM (01:21:29): The other, just a good question of trust because a lot of the things that I have read state that this generation as a whole did not really trust a lot of people. And of course I can remember that experience as a college student where not trust. A lot of the people in this generation and particularly in the new left, did not trust anyone who was in a position of authority or responsibility, whether it be a university president, a United States Congressman or President, even a rabbi or a minister or a corporate leader. Anyone, you just cannot trust your leaders. And a lot of it was because they had witnessed political leaders lying, whether it be the Gulf of Tonkin, Watergate, other experiences. Do you see this as an issue within, even in the women's movement, the issue of trust that eventually, I remember what a professor said in my Psych 101 at Binghamton University once. He said, "If you cannot trust other people, you are never going to be a success in life." So there comes a point when you have got to trust others. And I do not know what your thought on thoughts are on the issue of trust, if that is an issue within the generation. ZE (01:22:47): Well, again, it is a made-up issue. I mean, do not trust anyone over 30. I mean clearly, all of that. For me, given my own childhood, just generational stuff, just has not really been much of an issue. And the question of I believe in people. I believe deeply in people. And if that means trust, I mean, fine. But I just think that the greatest challenge is as that the burdens that are created in this world that if you have no other choice but to believe that you can make an imprint and a difference. And that also my own, again, in my own life, people have always been there to help me through. And in my most recent book that is, it is about the Obama election. I mean... SM (01:24:18): When's that coming out? ZE (01:24:20): It is just out. It is called, The Audacity of Races and Genders. And then the subtitle is, A Personal and Global Story of the Obama Election. But there is one, it is made of 25 frames just, and it kind of goes all over the map, all over the globe, all over personal. And I actually, I was diagnosed with a rare and difficult form of cancer. And I had had surgery and then was coming through chemotherapy. And the election was, I mean this was during the primaries and there was this real tension that was developing between Obama and Clinton. And it was the issue here of he was a black man. She was a woman. He was black. She was a woman. And once again, in a lot of circles, the discussion was that feminism was going to get pitted against race. So several people who were working in the Obama campaign and friends of mine from who knew them etcetera, said, "Will you write something on this?" And I wrote this piece, which is in the book, it is called Hillary is White. And with the internet the way it is, it just went viral and it was translated into a gazillion languages, went throughout Africa. I mean, it was just unbelievable. And it was that into the campaign into, but I was really up. (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. Zillah Eisenstein Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Eisenstein, Zillah R. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Scholars; Political activists--United States; College teachers; Eisenstein, Zillah R.--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Zillah Eisenstein is a scholar, political activist and Emerita Professor of Political Science at Ithaca College. Her work focuses primarily on political struggles for social justice. She was able to document issues such as the rise of neoliberalism (both within the U.S. and across the globe), the growth of imperial and militarist globalization, injustices of racial laws, diseases and affirmative action in the U.S. 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 2010-05-26 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.10.2016.47 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. 86:35 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/30994d02e6875d72713dff14b60d6c00.jpg a9d67373b3936d15690bfde83bb7f256 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/f74a1e0d5f279f93122ea3d56e585f5c.mp3 0cfde04994fa806bbb2d71f383e508cb 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 2010-06-05 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Michael Simmons 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.) 142:16 Keywords Baby boom generation; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; TV in the Nineteen fifties; Segregation; Civil Rights Movement; Vietnam Memorial; Kent State; Jackson State; Watergate; Summer of Love. Subject LCSH Simmons, Michael--Interviews Biographical Text <span>Musician, writer, filmmaker and activist Michael Simmons was dubbed “The Father Of Country Punk” by&nbsp;<i>Creem</i>&nbsp;magazine in the 1970s. He was an editor of the&nbsp;<i>National Lampoon</i>&nbsp;in the ’80s where he wrote the popular column “Drinking Tips And Other War Stories” and won an LA Press Club Award in the ’90s for his investigative journalism for the&nbsp;<i>LA Weekly</i>. He&nbsp;has written for&nbsp;<i>MOJO</i>,&nbsp;<i>Rolling Stone</i>,&nbsp;<i>Penthouse</i>,&nbsp;</span><span><i>LA Weekly</i></span><span>,&nbsp;</span><span><i>The New York Times</i>,&nbsp;<i>LA Times</i>,&nbsp;<i>High Times</i>,&nbsp;<i>Artillery</i>,&nbsp;<i>CounterPunch</i>,&nbsp;<i>The Rag Blog</i>,&nbsp;<i>The Progressive</i>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<i>Dangerous Minds</i>&nbsp;and has scribed liner notes for Bob Dylan, Michael Bloomfield, Phil Ochs, Kris Kristofferson, Mose Allison, Kinky Friedman,&nbsp;</span><span>Arthur Lee &amp; Love</span><span>&nbsp;</span><span>and Paul Krassner</span><span>. He wrote and co-produced the documentary&nbsp;<i>The Real Rocky</i>&nbsp;about boxer Chuck Wepner.</span> 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: Michael Simmons Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 5 June 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) MS (00:00:03): Michael Simmons. SM (00:00:08): Michael, could you give me a little bit, just like in the interview you had with, I think Light in the Attic there, a little bit on your background. Where you grew up, who your mentors were in those first... Say you are in high school, the influences early in your life, maybe a little bit about your parents and your schooling before you really got into music? MS (00:00:35): Well, I was born in New York City in 1955. I am the oldest son of two basically, secular Jewish liberal Democrats, Stevenson, Kennedy liberal democrats from New York. most of my childhood, beginning of my teen years were in the (19)60s. Okay, you asked me a lot of questions at once, so why do not we take each one at one at a time? SM (00:01:22): Okay. MS (00:01:22): What do you want to know? SM (00:01:24): Your beginning years when you were in junior high school and high school? What was going to school like? MS (00:01:29): I would not say those were my beginning years, but my consciousness started to form way before then. Well, I will tell you something. I always knew that I was different, And it just so happens that I was born into that generation. And of course it meant a lot to me that I came of age in the (19)60s. But I would have been an outsider if I had been born 20 years earlier, 20 years later. I will tell you a funny story. My early heroes, when I was a little kid, aside from Bug's Bunny, because he was a troublemaker and he was funny, were, I loved juvenile delinquent movies. And I am talking about when I was four or five years old, I used to watch them on TV. I adored anything about juvenile delinquents. My first week of first grade, there was a cute little blonde girl in my class, and she became my girlfriend of sorts. As much as, I do not know how old a first-grader is, 5, 6, 7 years old, something like that? And she and I planned a bank heist. Here are these two first-graders planning on knocking over a bank. I was enamored with criminals. Because they were the first people who represented people that did not want to be part of, had no interest in being part of the square world, the society in general. And from there, being raised in New York, I grew up very quickly. And I was thinking about this the other day, because I was looking on the Village Voice website, and they have some things archived from the (19)60s, the (19)50s and (19)60s on the site. I started reading the Village Voice, I think, in 1965 or (19)66, when I was either 10 or 11. I mean every week. And so I did not know who these people were, all these painters and poets, but they fascinated me and I got it. I got that, again, they were outsiders, and that the Village Voice was the newspaper for outsiders. Within a year or two, the East Village Other would begin publishing. Or actually it may have started (19)65, I do not remember exactly, and they were even edgier. But I was always drawn to Bohemians. I remember being at camp in the mid (19)60s, summer camp, and at the end of every year in summer camp, we would have something called Color War, which was they would divide the camp up into different colors and they would have different competitions. There was one group of counselors, one of whom I remember in retrospect, I had no idea at the time. But in retrospect, I know that he was gay. And another counselor, a woman was the arts and crafts teacher. And so there was this little crew of counselors who really vocally disliked this concept of color war. Now, what I figured out later is that this little group were beatniks, basically. I mean, we are talking before hippies. By a couple of years, not long, but you know what I mean. There were hippies, but they were not called hippies yet by the media. And I loved them, they were my favorite counselors. So I have always been drawn to the outsiders. I have always been drawn to the Bohemian, and I have always been drawn to the artsy people. Did that answer your question? SM (00:06:08): Yeah. Were you fans of the Kerouac's? The Cassidy's? The Ginsburg's? MS (00:06:13): Well, yeah, but that came later. SM (00:06:14): That came later. Yeah. MS (00:06:17): I am trying to think. I do not remember when I first read On the Road. I began learning who they were. One of my first heroes was Ginsburg. Now, I did buy Howl at a precociously early age, like 11 or something, which would have been (19)66. SM (00:06:35): And that came out in (19)55. MS (00:06:37): Right. No, but I was born in (19)55. SM (00:06:42): So you probably were an Elliot Ness TV fan then, right? On television, because he was... MS (00:06:47): Robert Stack. SM (00:06:48): Yes. MS (00:06:49): That show you mean? SM (00:06:50): Yes. MS (00:06:51): Sure, used to watch that. SM (00:06:53): But that was real big in the (19)60s. And of course, the Cosa Nostra was big in the (19)50s, the underworld. One of the things, I was looking, and I have got a lot of questions from some of the interviews and some background information I have on you, is you have been a musician most of your life, and of course a writer as well. And you call yourself oftentimes a hippie, but you love Country and Western. Could you define what a Country and Western hippie is? MS (00:07:21): Well, these are just words used to give a people a general idea of who I am. I mean, there is no such thing as a Country and Western hippie per se. I guess a Country and Western hippie is somebody with hippie values and perhaps appearance who digs Country music or plays Country music or both. I mean, there is no hard and fast. For instance, I was reading some of your questions that you had sent to Pete Seeger. And I do not know if you saw some guy wrote after that interview I gave for Light in the Attic, criticizing me for being "a Boomer exceptional." SM (00:08:16): Yeah, in fact, I have that right here. MS (00:08:17): And my attitude is I am not a Boomer, nothing. Yeah, technically I am a Baby Boomer according to sociological demarcation. But I do not want to be stuck in a box like that. It is kind of uncomfortable. Well, we can get into the (19)60s later, but Country and Western hippie. In the late (19)60s, I was already a musician. I started playing guitar. I was one of these kids who fell in love with the Beatles in 1963, 64. And I wanted to be a Beatle. I wanted to be a rock and roll musician. And I got a guitar for my 10th birthday, and learned how to play it and started a rock and roll band at a very young age. And by the late (19)60s, a friend of mine was into hardcore Country music like Hank Williams and Merle Haggard, people like that. And he turned me onto it, and I loved it. And I knew that this is what Dylan and the Byrds and people like that were listening to. And hence, certain albums like Nashville Skyline by Dylan or Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the Byrds, the Country was influencing rock. SM (00:09:48): Well, what is interesting is through all these interviews that I have done, different angles, different perspectives, and I have had no one talk about Country and Western, because everybody talks about rock and Motown and folk music and pop vocals. And I have a question here. When we define the music of the (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s and beyond, we think of rock, Motown, folk, protest music and music with messages, pop vocals, but rarely Country unless one mentions the big names like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn. However, there is a history of Country and Western, as you explain via your connections with Kris Kristofferson. Explain the linkage to the (19)60s and (19)70s mentality that was present in Boomer youth, even in Country during this time? Because you made some great observations in the interview when you talked about Kris Kristofferson, but then you were talking about the music as a whole. MS (00:10:53): Yeah. Well, I am not sure exactly what your question is, but... SM (00:11:03): What was Country and Western going through during this timeframe? MS (00:11:07): Oh, I see what you are saying. Well, Country was the music originally of the South and of working class southerners, and hence reflecting them. It was basically politically a fairly conservative music. What happened in the late (19)60s, mid to late (19)60s is that these cats started showing up in Nashville, like Kristofferson and others who were more literate. Some of them had college educations. They would read Shakespeare and William Blake, and at the same time, being younger, they also were not afraid of long hair and the counterculture and rock and roll, they dug that. Because that was also part of their world. Cats like Kristofferson being the most notable, obviously. And so Kris helped loosen up Nashville, and he dragged it kicking and screaming, I should say, into the (19)60s. SM (00:12:30): Would Willie Nelson be part of that too? MS (00:12:32): Well, yeah, Willie, he was, but quietly. Willie was not nationally known until the (19)70s, probably early to mid-(19)70s. So he came a little bit later. I mean, he was in Nashville in the early (19)60s writing songs. He wrote Crazy for Patsy Cline, for instance. And he was smoking grass, and he was definitely his own man. He thought for himself, he was an individual. But very few people outside of Nashville or Texas knew who he was. So he did not have an effect on the larger culture until later on. SM (00:13:25): But Kristofferson and Johnny Cash did, because they were pretty big names. MS (00:13:31): Well, Cash had been a big name since the- I guess, earlier to mid-(19)60s or so, or actually since the (19)50s, I am sorry. Folsom Prison Blues. And I Walk the Line and stuff like that. Johnny Cash in many ways came up with the Sun Records, early Rock and Rollers, like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison, people like that. So Cash had always been a little bit hipper than a lot of the Country artists. SM (00:14:10): He wrote some great protest songs too, against the Vietnam War. Some classic ones. MS (00:14:16): Yeah, he did a whole album of protest songs about the plight of the American Indian, actually. Which was a pretty bold thing to do in Nashville in the (19)60s, given how conservative the town was. And he got shit for it, too. People claimed that his wife at the time, before June Carter, was part black. And they spread all these rumors about her and him. And so some of the more conservative elements went after him for being a free thinker. But he did not let it affect him. But Cash was definitely, he was one of the early ones. SM (00:15:13): Where would you place Buffy Sainte-Marie in here too, because of her music, as part native? She is Native American, but she is from Canada, I believe. MS (00:15:24): Yeah, she is Canadian. SM (00:15:24): Yeah. And in recent years, particularly in the (19)80s, Bill Miller, who is a pretty good entertainer as well, he is Native American. There are not too many Native American singers. MS (00:15:36): Right, right. Well, Buffy Sainte-Marie, although she did record a Country album, I think it is called, I Want to Be a Country Girl Again or something. What? Hold on one second. I have a Buffy Sainte-Marie Best of sitting right here. Where is that? Anyway. Oh, here it is, it was called, I am Going to Be a Country Girl Again was the name of the song and the album. But that she recorded in Nashville. I think it was, let us see, 1968, pretty early. But she was really more of a folkie. She was part of the folk boom. SM (00:16:18): Could you describe a little bit more of the culture you identify with? Were you part of the counterculture? A lot of people have given me a lot of different definitions of the counterculture. In your words, what is it? MS (00:16:33): Oh God. Well, first of all, there is more than one counterculture. There are all kinds of countercultures. But for the purposes of what we are talking about here, the counterculture... It is so difficult to try to cram into a box. The Beats were a counterculture. The hippies were a counterculture. Counterculture is the term used to describe any form of culture that is outside the mainstream. Now, the so-called (19)60s' counterculture, it has got all the clichés and long hair and leftist politics and rock and roll and communal living and things like that. The (19)60s counter culture has its own identifying markers. But there are many countercultures. Some would argue that, for instance, the Tea Party, which is the polar opposite of anything that I would ever be a part of, is a counterculture of a kind as well. Now, in terms of me being part of a counterculture, yeah, I was more or less what people refer to as a hippie. In fact, I still am. SM (00:18:07): But a lot of people, when they talk about the Boomer generation, of course, is defined as people born between 1946 and 1964. And even Todd Gitlin, when I interviewed him, he hates the term Boomer generation, and there are others who do not like it. And he said, the people in the Boomer generation between (19)46 and (19)56 are totally different than the Boomers between say, (19)56 and (19)64, because they did not have the same experiences. MS (00:18:39): Well, the big one being, I will tell you, because when I did look at some of those questions you sent to Pete Seeger, the big one that separates those two halves, and I am the tail end of the first half, is that we experienced the Kennedy assassination. Whereas of course, the younger ones did not. Either did not, or they were too young to know what was going on, really. And the Kennedy assassination, of course, was a one of the most powerful events that the country lived through in that time in the early (19)60s. So in terms of being a young person in that time and living through, I mean, all the clichés, the loss of a young vital president who represented change and youth and vitality and all that. It was like enduring a punch in the stomach, a blow to the solar plexus. It took the air out of an entire generation. And it kind of sets people of my age and slightly older up for a change, we wanted a change after that. We did not want the same old death culture that America seemed to represent to us. Does that make sense? SM (00:20:19): Yeah, that is very good. Would you say in your life, that is the one event that shaped you more than any other? MS (00:20:27): I do not think I can say that one event shaped me more than any other, I do not think I can choose just one. But I think it was the first event outside of my personal experience that had a profound impact. SM (00:20:49): Do you remember the exact moment where you were when you... MS (00:20:51): Absolutely. SM (00:20:52): Could you explain that moment? MS (00:20:55): Yeah. I was in, I do not know, third grade, second grade, something like that? And it was the end of the school day. So it was around 2:30, three o'clock in the afternoon. And I was walking out of the school yard, and some girl came up to me and said, "Somebody shot President Kennedy." And I went, "What?" I was surprised. I was shocked. I loved President Kennedy. About a year or so before then, my mother had bought me Profiles in Courage and I would read it. And I was reading at a very young age, I think my father said I I was reading by the time I was four, basically. SM (00:21:46): Oh, that is excellent. MS (00:21:47): And I read Profiles in Courage. I idolized JFK. And I remember walking home, and we lived around the corner from my elementary school, in an apartment building in New York, and there was an elevator operator, and his name was Johnny. I remember this. And I said, "I heard President Kennedy was shot." And he said, "Yeah, but he is going to be okay. He is just wounded." And I went upstairs and my mother was not home yet. And I went and I turned the TV set on. And at some point I saw Walter Cronkite come on and give that announcement, where he looked up at the clock and he said what time JFK was pronounced dead. And I obviously was shocked. And I heard the key come in the door and I heard the lock turn, and I saw the door open, and my mother walked in and looked at me, and she just started to sob. And, wow- SM (00:23:07): But did your family- MS (00:23:09): ...To think of it. SM (00:23:09): ...Spend the next four days around the TV, like so many? MS (00:23:12): Oh, yeah. We saw the Oswald assassination as well. We saw the funeral. It was nonstop for four days. And then, I believe the assassination was on a Thursday, they suspended school on Friday. We went back to school on Monday. And the first thing, they had an assembly to try to... I was like a little kid, you have to remember. And I was in elementary school, so they held an assembly to try to explain to the kids what had happened. My parents were very forthright in trying to explain to me the context. So plus I was already a daily newspaper reader. Had been reading the New York Times since I was a little kid. But yeah, that was a heavy-heavy-heavy-heavy-heavy... SM (00:24:16): Getting back to the music, when we are looking at the Boomer generation, we are talking about any time from 1946 through today, because the oldest Boomers are now 63, and the youngest are 47. And so I have got a question here about the music, because music has been so much a part of your life, not only as a performer with your own group and all the experiences you have had as a writer and the people you have met and worked with. I am breaking it right down here, into the decades. What did you like about the music of the (19)50s, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the (19)80s, and the nineties and beyond? There had to be something in those decades that you liked? MS (00:25:07): Well, I mean, (19)50s, obviously. I remain a lifelong fan of Rock and Roll, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, people like that. But even though we kind of rebelled against it, I also always dug my parents' music, meaning Sinatra and jazz, and Mel Torme and Ella Fitzgerald, and people like that. By the (19)60s, obviously, to this day, my favorite music is the holy trinity of Rock and Roll, which is The Beatles, and Dylan and The Rolling Stones. And then all the other (19)60s groups like Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, the Band, the Byrds, and so on. I could go on and on, Hendrix, obviously. I could go on and on and on. That is the stuff that really is meaningful to me. Although I love all kinds of music, and all different eras. (19)70s for me, a lot of it was Country, really. And I also got into old rhythm and blues, old jump blues stuff like Louis Jordan, things like that. But really, the (19)70s was my Country decade, I should say. Now, after that, from the (19)80s on, there is music that I like, and there are singers that I like and musicians that I like and songwriters that I like. But I cannot say that I have a passion for post 1980 pop music the way I did for pre-1980 pop music. SM (00:27:26): How about that music from the mid-(19)70s, disco, which is Saturday Night Fever, seemed to be the line of demarcation? MS (00:27:33): Yeah. Actually, at the time, I was not a disco fan, and some of it is atrocious. But recently I have been hearing old disco songs from the (19)70s, I do not know, on radio or here and there. And some of it is not bad. It was that mechanized beat that used to drive me crazy that, "dint-dint-dint", was something a little same about it, kind of. By definition, it is repetitive, but it has its charm. SM (00:28:20): Yeah, and then my next question is a direct response that you gave to this interview, which I think was an unbelievable response, and I would like it clarified even a little further. This was a question, you remember this, "What about Kristofferson appeals to you? What makes him such a timeless artist?" And your response is "You have to understand the mindset of the (19)60s America, it was an us versus them dynamic. On one side, we were freaks, hippies, troublemakers, and activists. On the other side was the rest of America. At the same time, I had gotten into hardcore Country music, while not shedding my hippie heart. The great thing about Kris, he was one of the first people who was all..." SM (00:29:03): Great thing about Chris, he was one of the first people who was authentically country, but at the same time spoke to hippies. And you mentioned a couple of songs like Billy D and the Pilgrim songs about us, my generation and my world at the same time. It was authentic country music. He was ours, he represented our side. He also bridged the gap. He is in arguably one of the greatest living American songwriters. When you put that together, you by saying that, that is very prophetic in my view. Could you ex explain it even a little further? Because I have been a big fan of Kris Kristofferson, but I have never thought of him in the terms like you explain in this question. MS (00:29:46): Well, I mean, for instance, his most famous song is Me and Bobby McGee. If one listens to the lyrics, it is basically the story of a young hippie couple guy and a girl traveling around the country. It captures that kind of wanderlust that young people engage in general, but particularly members of my generation in that time period, you know. People still hitchhiked in the (19)60s. I do not know if they hitchhike anymore. SM (00:30:18): If they do, they are arrested. MS (00:30:21): Huh? SM (00:30:22): If they do, they are arrested and picked up. MS (00:30:24): Yeah. Yeah. You know, the interesting thing is, for all the complaining we did in the (19)60s, America was a much freer place back then. I mean, it was not free enough for us. But the irony is it got less free, particularly post 1980, which is when Reagan was elected, and that was the beginning of the end, as far as I am concerned. SM (00:30:50): What does less free mean? You say, "Less free." MS (00:30:54): Well, there used to be fewer rules. It works both ways. In some respects. There are things have improved, certainly things have improved since the (19)60s for Black people, and for minorities in general, for women, things like that. I mean, as Hunter Thompson used to say, "The (19)60s was a time when you could roam around the country and not worry about some cop inputting your name in a computer and finding out you had 20 parking tickets in California." Let me see if I can rephrase this, I think Orwell's prophecy came true. I think we are living in an Orwellian police state. I think there is a Big Brother. I think the internet is contributing to that. I mean, I think there are good things about the internet too, but I think one of the negative things about it is a lot of these things like Facebook and other things are means to collect information about people. And it is scary. SM (00:32:22): Yeah. We have been telling students for years about, "Be careful what you put on your Facebook because employers can somehow get access to it, and they can even determine your politics based on what you say about a certain thing that is happening in the news." MS (00:32:38): Sure. SM (00:32:39): Is a follow-up to that question, you said some unbelievable things also about his music, and some of the songs and how relevant they are. And you said music that really influenced you and that you loved, or that was that kind of music that had what you said, "Writing hooks." Great melodies, songs that stay in your mind, lyrics that are beautifully honest and songs on of the times. I would like you to maybe mention some of the music from the either (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s in particular, that you feel were fallen there, not just Kris Kristofferson. And I wrote down 10 songs here that I felt fit, that quality, and I would like your opinion. Marvin Gaye's, What's Going On? Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water. John Lennon, Imagine. Barbara Streisand, The Way We Were. The Chambers Brothers, In Time, Mamas and Papas, California Dreamin, Michael Murphy's Wildfire. Sonny and Cher, The Beat Goes On. Barry White, Let the Music Play. Frank Sinatra, My Way. Richie Havens, Freedom. And Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone. And I think I got one other one here, if I can find it here. Well, that is basically the group. Yeah. Is that what is you are talking about here? Because those are continually in my head, 30 years after they were performed. MS (00:34:17): Yeah. Well, in terms of songwriting, there is a certain craft to writing a great song to writing what, what is called a hook. I mean, a hook is really just a melodic and/or lyrical line that for whatever reason, stays in people's heads. There is something memorable about it, either musically, lyrically, or both, hopefully both. And those songs, I would not necessarily agree with everyone, but as I said, that is what makes horse races. It is just a matter of taste. But yeah, most of the songs are extraordinary songs, they are memorable songs. They have hooks, they have great hooks. Those are all well-written songs. Whether I personally love them or not, it is immaterial. Those are all well-written songs. Well, I have some theories about why, and I will discuss those in a second. I mean, there are still people writing good songs, not many. And I do not ask me who they are because I mean, I could tell you a few names. But the art of writing great hooks, and which ultimately means writing great songs kind of has been lost. And part of it is with the popularity rather of hip hop and punk rock, two primary influences on contemporary pop music and rock music, rhythm became more important than melody. Punk and hip hop are rhythm driven, they are not melody driven. And the concept of the hook is largely about melody. So if there is no melody or no identifiable melody, your chances of having a powerful hook that people are going to remember is diminished. Does that make sense? Now, whether there are people who disagree with me about this, but it is just my take on it. I saw the rise of hip-hop and punk rock, and at the same time I noticed that fewer people were writing memorable songs. So I tried to figure out, "Why is this?" And all I could figure out is rhythm over melody, rhythm over melody. SM (00:37:30): The people who really love rap, I have been in the university for quite a few years. Some of them are fair, some of the music is halfway decent. But the one comparison where you might see a comparison between the (19)60s and early (19)70s' music, which is music with messages and strong ethics and strong things for people to think about. That is what a lot of rap music is about. The poverty within the inner city, the plight of Black people that Marvin Gaye sang about it in 1971, but now this is a new way of expressing it. Sure. Any thoughts on the messages? Because the message is a very important part of a song. Kris Kristofferson songs had messages to them. If you listen to them, the problem with a lot of the loud music today is you cannot listen to the message, even though the words are there. The problem I have with it, sometimes. MS (00:38:33): I agree with you and I will give hip hop credit for bringing back lyricism and storytelling. Whether I think personally like it or not, is immaterial for the most part. I do not care for it. I mean, I do not hate it or anything, it is just it is not my thing. But I will give rap artists credit for bringing back spoken word. Or I should say the power of the word. It is not just that it is spoken, but the word that these are story songs, essentially. SM (00:39:10): Which- MS (00:39:10): And often as you point out with messages- SM (00:39:12): ...which seemed to maybe have died in the mid (19)70s when disco came. Yeah. Cause that was all about dancing and everything. Could you define something? I think you are working on something called Outlaw Country Vein, is it is a- MS (00:39:29): Outlaw Country, what? SM (00:39:30): You can call it the Outlaw Country Vein, V-E-I-N. You talk about the music. Kristoffer Kristofferson used to say, as you said in the quote from him, "Do not let the bastards get you down." MS (00:39:45): Oh. Oh- SM (00:39:46): The kind of rebellion streak in American spirit. MS (00:39:48): You are referencing that other interview. SM (00:39:51): Yeah. And also what I love it here, when you say, "The rebellious streak in the American spirit", which was so prevalent in the (19)60s and mid to the mid (19)70s. MS (00:40:03): Yeah. So, I am sorry, what is your question? SM (00:40:06): The question is, how do you define outlaw country music? MS (00:40:11): Well, very specific. It was a very specific music of a time. It was these artists in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, notably Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kristoffer Kristofferson, and then some lesser known people like Kinky Friedman and others. A lot of them from Texas. Steven? SM (00:40:40): I am here. MS (00:40:41): Oh. I thought you dropped out for a sec. SM (00:40:43): No. MS (00:40:43): Sorry. SM (00:40:43): Yep. MS (00:40:48): They grew their hair along. They did not dress like the older country singers. They looked like they were hippies basically. And they were singing music, it was a little bit closer to rock music. It was stark, it was less produced. I should say it was just as produced, but it had kind of a realistic ethos to it. Very earthy, very down to earth. Not necessarily commercial. The irony is that a lot of these artists ended up being wildly popular, like Willie and Waylon. And so people did find it commercial ultimately. But their idea was to break away from Nashville's concept of what was commercial. Hence, this kind of silly phrase, Outlaws, which was a phrase somebody chose to market them. It was a romantic thing. I mean, Americans always had a romance with the West from Manifest Destiny and founding of the United States. You know, we love stories about cowboys. And so these cats kind of adopted that look and that a lot of that sensibility and called themselves outlaws. But what they were rebelling against, they were not knocking over banks or whoever, or Billy the Kid or whoever, but they were knocking over record companies. SM (00:42:46): Let me change the [inaudible]. Okay. I am back. I had an interview with a very powerful Vietnam veteran, and he is actually back in school teaching at a prestigious school outside Philadelphia. And he has a picture on the back of his wall of a musician from the (19)60s who did not sell out. And because somebody wanted to buy his music, so that could be on a serial or something like that. And the basic premise of the article that he had on the back wall for students to see is that many of the (19)60s rock performers are now making lots of money on their music, but through commercial advertisements linked to corporations. So they are not living their idealism of the (19)60s now. It is all about making money. Your thoughts on that, because you have seen a lot of the rock music that is being played every day on television advertisements. MS (00:43:49): Well, there are many musicians and songwriter who have, "Sold out." I do not cast dispersion on anybody who needs to do something, or chooses to do something for money. I find it distasteful, but I cannot judge. I cannot stand in another man's shoes and tell him what to do. However, I do applaud people like Neil Young and Springsteen, by the way, who refuses to allow his music to be sold for advertisements. So there are musicians who will not. Dylan interestingly will, Neil Young Springfield will not. Others will, The Who will. Again, with some of these people, with Dylan, he does control his publishing. So he is allowing it to happen. But a lot of the musicians yet remember, do not control their song publishing anymore. I would have judge it by a case on a case by case basis, because I do not know who owns what songs. SM (00:45:08): Now, you have been a writer for- MS (00:45:12): I am sorry, Steven, I do not mean to interrupt you. But for instance, the Beatles and John, or Yoko I guess, or somebody, got a lot of when Nike began using the song Revolution- SM (00:45:26): Oh. Yes. MS (00:45:27): ...for a commercial. SM (00:45:27): Yes. MS (00:45:27): And they were saying, "How could Yoko do this," and blah, blah, blah. Well, it turned out that Michael Jackson had bought the Beatles song catalog from that period. And it was either he or his business managers who made that decision. Not Yoko Ono, not John Lennon, because he was dead. SM (00:45:48): Well, he is probably turning over in his grave if he knew about it. MS (00:45:48): Probably. SM (00:45:54): You have been a writer for a long time, looking at all the magazines that you have written for and of course you were with Linked with National Lampoon. I mentioned that your dad ran the National Lampoon? MS (00:46:09): He was the head of the company. Yeah. SM (00:46:12): Wow. How important was the National Lampoon as a magazine during that period? The influence that itself had on boomers? MS (00:46:26): Well, huge. Boomers when they were younger read Mad. But as they were coming into adulthood, they required something that was more adult, and something that was hipper, that was more risqué, that was geared for people who were not little kids anymore. And that is what the Lampoon was. The Lampoon was basically Mad magazine for grownups. Admittedly young grownups, but nonetheless grownups. SM (00:47:03): Would you put the National Lampoon and Rolling Stone as probably the Mount Rushmore of magazines that influenced the boomer generation growing up. MS (00:47:13): Well, I do not necessarily buy concepts like Mount Rushmore. I am not comfortable with the metaphor, but I would say the Rolling Stone and the National Lampoon were two of the most important magazines to pick. SM (00:47:28): You obviously have written so many pieces, even in recent years. I read some of your pieces before the interview today, the one you wrote on The Grateful Dead without Jerry. That was very well written. Are there any pieces you wrote during those years in the (19)80s when you were a younger writer that stick out more than any other, that you had really a lot of fun writing it, and doing research on it, and you got pretty good feedback on it? Are there some articles of throughout the years that have stood out above the others? MS (00:48:02): Well, in the (19)80s, the stuff that I wrote that I am fond of looking back- SM (00:48:10): Yes. MS (00:48:12): ...I wrote a column for the national anthem-anthem called Drinking Tips and Other War Stories, which basically was a monthly column about just saying yes. Meaning, that it was about my experiences with drugs and alcohol. And it was written partly because I was quite frankly fucked up through most of the 1980s. And that is what I had to write about. But it was also, I was consciously making a political statement in an era in America, got more conservative. And Nancy Reagan was pleading to asking, pleading for young people to just say no. I was screaming, "Do what you want, but I am saying yes." Whether that was responsible or not, is another story. But I enjoy doing it and I enjoy reading those pieces from that time. I do not think any of them are on the internet. SM (00:49:25): Have you ever thought of having a book done of your writings? MS (00:49:30): Oh yeah. SM (00:49:30): Just your writings? MS (00:49:31): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There will be simple. SM (00:49:35): Very good. How about anything you have written and say the last 15 years, or even for the Huffington Post, something on an article that stands out? MS (00:49:49): Well, there is all kinds of things in the way. I mean, not probably, I know I have, I have written more in the last 15 years than I wrote in the 40 years before that, 55 now. So yeah. I mean, because I was not primarily a writer before then. Most of my life, I have been a musician. You know, I wrote for the Lampoon in the (19)80s, did some writing, music, journalism in the (19)70s, very little though. I did the Lampoon stuff in the (19)80s, and then went into journalism in the mid (19)90s. And most of my writing was written between say (19)95 and now. What stuff that I liked from this period? Is that what you are asking? SM (00:50:54): Yeah. And a lot of it you have reflections back to that period of the (19)60s and (19)70s, because you wrote- MS (00:50:59): Yeah. I mean, I am still trying to figure it all out. SM (00:51:06): Yeah. How do you feel? You are younger than I am. I am seven years older than you, but how does it feel as time passes on the farther and farther we get away from that period and the older we get, we feel like a lot of the boomers when they were young, felt they never feel like that we are mortal, that we are just part of a continuation in a process of whatever, that we just happened to be living in a very unique time. Do you ever reflect on that as time passes? MS (00:51:45): Sure. Like constantly. I mean, when I say constantly, I do not mean every waking minute, but yeah, it is something that, it is some, it is definitely something I think about it. And mortality, I am sure to some degree your experience has been the same. You may have noticed that as you have gotten older, more dead people. In the last two months alone, I have lost five friends, including an ex-girlfriend, and I have a lot of dead friends. SM (00:52:23): What is amazing, I remember, I do not know if you felt the same way with your parents, but as they were getting older, they would read the obituary columns and there would be people dying that were movie stars in the thirties, and the forties, and the early fifties and everything. Now we read the news today or in the last 10, 15 years, just in the last week or so, individuals have passed on. Dennis Hopper, who we all know from Easy Writer, and all the things that he did throughout the years. Even Arthur Linkletter. Yeah. House Party. I mean, these are all people, does not matter the age, they were all influences on boomers. MS (00:53:03): A little side note footnote here. Oh. How old was I? I do not know, seven or eight or something like that. My father edited the magazine called Signature, which was the house organ of the Diner's Club, the credit card. And for the Christmas issue, one year we did a shot of my brother who was five years younger than me. Well, anyway, I do not want to confuse you. I have a brother who's five years younger, and I have a sister who is two and a half years younger, and the three of us were on the cover of Signature with Art Linkletter dressed as Santa Claus. I remember the shoot, I am the- SM (00:54:03): Oh. My gosh. MS (00:54:03): ...I am the oldest kid. So I remember spending the day with Art Linkletter. Oh. Wait, you know what? That was not Art Linkletter. That was another shoot. That was another photo. But I did do something. I was photographed as a kid for a magazine cover with Art Linkletter dressed as Santa Claus. I am confusing two different covers, and I remember spending the day with Art Linkletter around 1962, somewhere in there. SM (00:54:41): Of course, he lost his daughter, I believe, to suicide in later years. And- MS (00:54:44): She killed herself. SM (00:54:46): Yeah. And of course he lived in the (19)90s and he was always very positive. One of the things in that is happened a lot in these recent years is that politicians or individuals had a love to attack the period as the era where we began, the creation of all the problems we have in America, which is the divorce rate, the breakup of the family, the drug culture, the sexual revolution, lack of respect for authority, the beginning of all the isms. People not working as hard as they used to, all the attacks and the attacks are usually leveled against the (19)60s and the early (19)70s and the generation that grew up during that time. In fact, today you can hear it on the Huckabee Show almost on a regular basis. And whether it be Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich, or even columns written by George Will, we are talking conservatives here now, but a lot of average Americans say this too. So your thoughts on the condemnation of the era and the problems that have faced America since that time. And I want to add one other point. I had data to support the fact that the African American family in the 1950s, even though there was poverty, and Dr. King, and the Civil Rights Movement, families were together in the African American community and it all changed during the (19)60s. MS (00:56:24): It is such a broad question. Books have been written about this. Again, it is hard to nutshell an issue that is as broad as this, but from my point of view, freedom has its own problems, but it is preferable over tyranny and it is preferable over a bunch of nonsensical rules that are only in place so that certain people can maintain power. I mean, there is so many issues that you reference, it is hard to give all them their just due in one sweeping, in a few sweeping sentences. But for the most part, I think what the baby boomers of the (19)60s' generation, or whatever you want to call it, what they brought to this country has ultimately been positive. I mean, when I was a little kid, there were still colored restrooms and water fountains south of the Mason Dixon line. I sat and watched- MS (00:58:03): I sat and watched, I will never forget this. Excellent. I sat and watched the news with my mother when, I guess it was (19)64, (19)65, when the march on Birmingham, Alabama, and the local cops sicced police dogs and water hoses on the nonviolent demonstrators. And all they were, were Black, mostly African Americans, some whites who were trying to desegregate the south. So nobody can tell me that we were better off then because I do not believe it. SM (00:58:44): Well, you were born in (19)55, so you really did not start really recognizing television until say, the late (19)50s, real late (19)50s. But that black and white TV set that we all had with the three channels, and occasionally there was a fourth channel. That was a local channel. You did not see very many people of color on any shows- MS (00:59:07): True. SM (00:59:08): ...In the (19)50s. I am not trying to lead the question here, but I want your response and your impact of, because even in the (19)60s, we know that this was the first war that was truly covered on television, the Vietnam War, and had a lot of influence. But in the (19)50s, the only African Americans that were on TV in the early (19)50s, the slapstick Amos and Andy Show, which was- MS (00:59:32): I remember it. SM (00:59:33): Yeah. Which is kind of a, it was- MS (00:59:34): But I remember it- SM (00:59:38): Everybody watched it, but it made them look like buffoons. And secondly, Nat King Cole had a show that lasted for maybe 12 weeks, and that was it until the early (19)60s when all of a sudden Flip Wilson had his show. Diahann Carroll was on a show on nurses. She played a nurse. MS (00:59:55): I remember that. SM (00:59:57): And then of course, I Spy with Bill Cosby. There was a fourth show, I cannot remember the fourth, but that was the beginning of it. And I am just perceiving this as a person who's not very well schooled. I am just seeing it. What are your thoughts on the television? Was television in the (19)50s masking all the problems we were having? MS (01:00:20): Well, yeah. I mean, television was, there has never been an... I should not say never, but has rarely been an honest reflection of what is really going on. It is a yes and no answer. I mean, on one hand there was less reality back then, and yet in some ways there was more truth. To say... It depends upon the show. I mean, I think, for instance, that television journalism had more integrity in that era. People like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite- SM (01:01:08): Dave Garroway. What is that? MS (01:01:11): Dave Garroway was another good one. Right. Huntley and Brinkley, people like that. You had a sense that these men were journalists and not just entertainers. And notice that I said men and not women, because there were no women. There were very, I mean there were a handful of correspondents, but there were no anchors. Another thing to note, by the way, in terms of how America has changed. SM (01:01:45): The only female correspondent I can remember was Nancy Dickerson, who was on during the Kennedy administration. MS (01:01:51): I went to school with her daughter. SM (01:01:53): Did you? Wow. She was there. And then there was one that was a UN person. I forget. There were very few. The one thing that, the reality that you mentioned too, was the McCarthy hearings were shown on TV in the early (19)50s, and that they were scary. And as a little kid, I did not understand it, but I was scared of that guy. They were scary, but they were being shown on TV. Was there a generation gap in your family? MS (01:02:22): Sure. SM (01:02:24): Explain the gap in your family. MS (01:02:26): Well, it was interesting because my parents, again, as I said earlier, my parents, they were not raving squares. They certainly were not right-wing extremists or anything. They were liberals and fairly open-minded. They had both been in the entertainment world in various capacities. My mother was a singer. My mother's boyfriend before she married my father was Charlie Parker's pianist, Al Hague. SM (01:02:54): Oh, really? MS (01:02:56): So she came up in the jazz world. She had smoked pot before I was born. And so they certainly were not squares, but when the heavy-duty hippies scene came down, they were kind of horrified. It was something that, that kind of openness and that kind of bohemianism was something that was not done in polite company, prior to the late (19)60s. SM (01:03:31): Was there any differences over the Vietnam War? MS (01:03:34): At first, yeah. Although my father, my father is still alive, and he forgets this, but he claims he was always against the war, but he actually supported the war initially. And we had screaming matches because by (19)66, (19)67, I was 11, 12 years old, I had already figured out that I was against the war, largely because people like, well, my heroes like Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsburg were against it. And I would read up on it. I decided I was against it. My parents and I would have arguments, and they would talk about the domino theory. And I would counter that, "This is a civil war in Vietnam, and that all the Vietnamese want is America to go mind its own business." But within a year or two, they were against the war. By (19)68, they were against it. SM (01:04:39): You had already said that there was some good things that came out of that generation. Now remember, this generation is 74 to 78 million. They cannot even figure out the exact number. I am sure the Census Bureau can figure it out. But- MS (01:04:52): Steven, I am sorry, which generation are you referring? SM (01:04:54): The boomer generation. MS (01:04:55): Oh, boomer. SM (01:04:56): Yeah. They were defined as anywhere between 74 and 78 million. And when I asked this question, I have had a lot of different responses as well, is can you state some strengths and weaknesses of the generation? And it is hard to talk for 74 million people, but- MS (01:05:17): Well, that was going to be my... Yeah, I am sorry. Go ahead. SM (01:05:20): The people that you knew that were boomers, it is based on your personal. MS (01:05:24): Well, my friends were hippies so I have a very, to a large degree, I have a limited point of view. My friends all had long hair, smoked dope and dog rock music and dropped acid. And we were the people our parents warned us against, as the famous saying goes. And so that is my perspective. I am the horror show that conservatives talk about to this day. SM (01:06:00): So you say your generation is nothing but strength, and- MS (01:06:04): What is that? SM (01:06:05): So you are saying there are no weaknesses within the- MS (01:06:08): No-no-no. I did not say that. But the problem is that I do not know how to generalize about a generation. I mean, you have to remember, people say, "The baby boomers." People say the (19)60s, and they think that somebody means that every young person had long hair, was at Woodstock. Well, that is not true. Most young people were fairly normal, whatever that means. I mean, they may have had longish hair and everyone loved the Beatles, and they may have smoked pot or not, but they were not raving hippies. Most young people, most boomers. I happened to be one who was. SM (01:06:54): One of the ways that the generation- MS (01:06:54): Sorry, Steven, let me just, I am sorry. Let me just finish this one thought. I did not mean to interrupt you. I am sorry. All I am saying is that to try to stereotype an entire segment, just merely, the only thing they have in common is that they were born at the same time, relatively same time. It cannot be done. They cannot be stereotyped. You know what I am saying? SM (01:07:20): Good points. Because others have said the same thing. And that is, really only between, some people have said only 15 percent of this generation ever got involved in any kind of activism. And 85 percent just went on day after day, may have been subconsciously affected, but did not really act. And then someone told me it is as low as 5 percent. So still, when you are talking about 74 to 78 million, it is a lot of people that did get involved. Your thoughts on this issue of uniqueness? A lot of the people when I was in college felt that they were the most unique generation in American history because there was this feeling, and you may have felt it amongst your peers, no matter what state they were in, that they were going to end war, bring peace, end racism, sexism, homophobia, and change the world. Well, obvious when you look at the world today, some people say, we are in worse shape than we have ever been. And who is in charge? The boomers and the up and coming generation X-ers. So just your thoughts on the uniqueness that many people felt within the generation. MS (01:08:30): Well, did I feel that? Yeah, I definitely felt that at the time. And I did believe in what Abbie Hoffman dubbed Woodstock Nation. I felt that we were going to create a new world, a world without borders based on a kind of hip communism. We were delusional, quite frankly. And also, again, to reiterate what we were talking about earlier, the people who were true believers in that philosophy, including myself, we were relatively speaking, a small percentage of the generation. We were also very loud, and a lot of us were smart, and we knew how to make noise and how to get noticed. SM (01:09:34): Would you also say that, as you say about Chris Kristofferson, a man who has been consistent from the time he was a young man to today with his music, that there is a lot of boomers that were consistent and still are in their lives? MS (01:09:54): Yes, absolutely. It is interesting. There are exceptions, but for the most part, if you look at the people in the (19)60s, and I do not know whether they were technically boomers or not, it would have to be on a case by case basis, because a lot of them were born before (19)45 or (19)46 or whatever the demarcation is. But if you look at the people who were really serious, the leaders, the ones who are still winning, they are still doing the work in one way, shape, or form or another. And I am talking about everybody from the Yippies who are still alive, a la Krassner. SM (01:10:41): Oh, he is great. MS (01:10:41): What is that? SM (01:10:41): He is great. MS (01:10:41): Yeah. Well, I think you got to me through Paul, right? SM (01:10:51): Yeah, I got to... Yeah, Paul. And Paul, man, I wish I had known him when I lived in the West Coast, because he is just a fantastic person. MS (01:10:58): Yeah, he is. SM (01:10:58): And he is an intellect. But he is also funny. MS (01:11:03): He is very, oh, he is one of the funniest men alive. And it is interesting about Paul, Paul really walked the talk. He was not just for a better world, he was for people treating each other in everyday life, he was for people treating each other decently. And it is one thing that Paul has always done is treat his fellow human beings decently. He is one of the truly nicest people I have ever known. In addition to being a great wit and thinker and political commentator and satirist. SM (01:11:48): Really good writer too. MS (01:11:49): Excellent. SM (01:11:53): One of the things too, the Peace Corps people, Peace Corps people that I have known that were in the Peace Corps have gone on with other things in their lives, and they have been consistent in most respects by carrying on that experience beyond the time when they were young. MS (01:12:06): Were you in the Peace Corps? SM (01:12:07): No, but I have interviewed a few people and that philosophy and that feeling of giving back and caring about others beyond oneself and those that are hurting, it has been carried on in their lives wherever they work. So it continues. What are your thoughts? Just basically, because the (19)60s and the (19)70s were all about movements. We had the anti-war movement and obviously the civil rights movement, which was ongoing. And then the women's movement evolved, the gay and lesbian movement, the Chicano movement- MS (01:12:37): Oh, Steven, can you hold just one second? SM (01:12:39): Yes. MS (01:12:39): I am sorry. I just have to go check something. Hold on. SM (01:12:43): Fine. I am back here with the tape now. MS (01:12:45): Sorry, man. SM (01:12:46): Oh, that is okay. I am talking about the movements. There were so many movements. On Earth Day in 1970, I know they worked with groups, the anti-war movement to make sure it was okay, that they would support the event itself. There seemed to be a lot of cooperation within the movements. Now they are being criticized as single-issue groups, rarely coming together with camaraderie. In other words, the gay and lesbians protest certain things, and they do not have the other groups there. The women's groups are the same way. Native American, earth, the environmental groups. You do not see the posters from all the groups. Are you sensing this too, that what was, in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, these movements that were very important for justice, that they were working together? Now they seem to be single issue and kind of segregated. MS (01:13:51): Well, there was something back then that does not exist now, which, there was a powerful left wing. There was a powerful left-wing political movement overall. And in the process, there was solidarity between groups and different causes. There is no left of any... I mean, to speak of. There is no left, left, I guess is the only way to put it. I mean, there is. There are a handful of commentators who are somewhat left wing, but you are talking about a period where a lot of the older people have lived through, our elders had lived through the Depression. In my family alone, there were Trotskyites and anarchists and all kinds of people who had lived through the Depression and decided that capitalism was the culprit. And there were a lot more people who gave credence to the notion of socialism back then. It does not have the kind of widespread respect that I think it once did. I mean, for crying out loud, the word liberal, which to me is almost a meaningless term, is considered a dirty word. That tells you how far this country has gone in 30 years, in my opinion. SM (01:16:04): Yeah. And it is interesting about President Obama who tries to separate himself from the boomer generation, but his critics say he is the reincarnation of the boomers, or that particular kind of- MS (01:16:19): Well, that is ridiculous. I mean, whatever you want to say about Obama, whether one likes him or does not like him, and I have very mixed feelings about him. I mean, I wish him the best, but I am not crazy about him. I am not crazy about what he has done thus far, is what I mean, although he is certainly an improvement. But that is, anyway, but- SM (01:16:42): It is like that one guy that criticized you said, the guy on exceptionalism said, "You only like the music of that particular period and will not listen to the music of today." He said, "Well, you are responsible for the George Bush." MS (01:16:59): I mean, it is so patently absurd. SM (01:17:01): Yeah. MS (01:17:01): I do not even know how to respond, which is why I did not respond to that guy, because his argument is all over the map, and I did not want to waste my time. SM (01:17:11): Two basic questions that I have asked everyone in this process, there are two issues dealing with the issue of healing and the issue of trust. The issue of healing is a simple question that I came up with students when we took them to Washington DC in the mid (19)90s and one of our leadership on the road programs. And we met with former Senator Edmund Muskie, who was the vice-presidential running mate with Humphrey at the (19)68 convention in Chicago. And the question was this, that is the boomer generation going to go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing due to all the divisions that were taking place in the United States at that time. Some say we were even close to a second civil war. The divisions between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war, those who were against it, supported the troops and those who were against it. These students, again, had not seen or were not alive then, but they saw the riots in the (19)60s. They saw the burnings of major cities, they saw the assassinations of two major leaders in (19)68, and Tet, and the president withdraw all these things, tremendous divisions. Your thought on the boomer generation, whether this is an issue or not? MS (01:18:34): Well, I am not entirely sure what your question is. Are you... I am sorry, what? SM (01:18:40): The question is really, do you think the Civil War generation did go to its grave not healing? And the question is, there were so many divisions, and we seem to see them today in politics. They are just like they were back in the (19)60s, but they are older. Is there an issue with the boomer generation with respect to healing? I know a lot of people are not having a problem with this, but some may. MS (01:19:10): One thing I have learned as I have gotten older is that life is a process. It is not necessarily about achieving, it is not necessarily about seeing, reaching a goal, but it is about trying to reach a goal, if you understand what I am saying. And I should say, when I was young, many of my brothers and sisters in the so-called movements, we thought we were going to live to see Woodstock Nation. Well, it certainly did not happen when we thought it was going to happen. Will it ever happen? I do not know. Do I know what is going to happen before I die? I have no idea. But I know that it is important to continue to fight for what one believes. That is the only thing that matters. I do not mean it is the only thing that matters because obviously we want to achieve certain things, but whether we do or do not is not really up to us, except in so much as that we have to do the best job that we can about whatever it is that we were advocating. SM (01:20:35): Edmund Muskie basically responded by saying... He did not even respond about 1968. He said we had not healed since the Civil War in the area of race. And then he went on to talk for about 10 minutes on that issue. And let me change my [inaudible]. In terms of... Make sure this is working right here. Yes. Okay. So the healing, some people have also said, "Why do not you define this better when you ask this question, and simply say, those who supported the war and those who were against the war? Then maybe you can get some more in-depth answers instead of being so general." Because the wall was built, and I like your opinion on the wall, that was built and put up in (19)82 to heal the veterans and their families. And I know that there is still a lot of healing because I go down there every Memorial Day and Veterans Day, so they still have a long way to go. But I have often thought about the anti-war people and whether when they have come to the wall, whether they have second thoughts about their actions or would have done it all over again. So I think I am, some respects thinking more about those who were for and against the war. MS (01:21:55): Well, I mean, I was firmly in the anti-war camp. In fact, I worked, when I was a teenager, I worked for an organization in New York called the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee, which was the primary anti-war group in New York during the Vietnam era. And I spent my weekends volunteering at their office. And when we would do big demonstrations, I would leaflet, go out and pamphleteer, and I almost got my ass kicked, [inaudible]. There were people who objected to some snot-nosed little hippie kid handing out anti-war leaflets. But I went to the wall in DC soon after it was built, and I was very moved by it. It is a very contemplative place, as you know. A very moving place. The thing that I think the anti-war movement gets bad rapped about is that we were the ones who were trying to end the god damn thing and keep people from dying over it. And yet, often, from various quarters, we get the rap that we were not respecting the soldiers. Well, that is not true. I think that we had more respect for the soldiers in their lives and their loved ones, we had more respect for them than the pro-war people. These kids, who by the way, were us, were cannon fodder for politicians and political motives, and there was no reason for them to die. There is no reason for these kids in Iraq and Afghanistan to be dying. SM (01:24:11): Yeah. Even the Vietnamese have stated since the war ended that they knew that the anti-war movement would mean victory for them because the United States would not have the willpower to continue if it is not popular at home in the long run. So they, the Vietnamese say that the war was won in America by those who were against the war, and so they did not go full force. And then that is, a lot of the critics have heard that, and they say, "Well, they prolonged the war, and we did not win the war because of the anti-war people." MS (01:24:56): I do not think we should have won the war. I was against us winning the war, whatever that means. I mean, we were on the wrong side. As I said earlier, my perspective has not changed from 1967. Vietnam was a civil war. It really was not even a civil war. It was a war between the Vietnamese and a puppet government created by the United States. It was geopolitical chess playing, but instead of chess pieces, it was the lives of young men. SM (01:25:46): How important were the college students in ending the war? They did a lot of protesting from (19)67 on. MS (01:25:54): How important was college students- SM (01:25:56): In terms of ending the war? What do you think was the main reason why the war ended? MS (01:26:01): The war? As much as I would love for the anti-war movement to get credit for ending the war, the truth is the war took 10 years to end. It did not end quickly. The only thing that is gone on longer is this idiocy in Afghanistan, but certainly college students and young people, a lot of them made sure that their voices were heard, and it had an effect. It definitely had an effect. SM (01:26:43): What did the Vietnam War teach you as a person? MS (01:26:54): What did it teach me as a person? Well, I mean, I guess the bottom line is it reinforced- MS (01:27:03): Well, I mean, I guess the bottom line is it reinforced my feelings that war is usually pointless. I mean, sometimes it is absolutely necessary. I am not a pacifist, but I am sorry? SM (01:27:19): No, continue. MS (01:27:27): But war for no reason or for nebulous reasons or for reason or for geopolitical power plays is immoral, in my opinion. SM (01:27:42): What did the (19)60s and (19)70s teach you? MS (01:27:48): Think for yourself. SM (01:27:50): Very good. Do you like the term boomer? MS (01:27:56): No. SM (01:27:57): If you were to define the generation from (19)46 to (19)64, what term would you use? MS (01:28:03): Young people. SM (01:28:05): Young people, very good. One of the questions, the other question besides healing, was the issue of trust. The generation has often been defined as a generation that just does not trust, and there was obvious reasons why because leaders lied to them for a long time, whether it be LBJ with the Gulf of Tonkin, or seeing Richard Nixon, Watergate. There were so many other instances during the war with McNamara on those figures that were not true about the people that had died. But you know, being a person during that time, that the boomers did not trust anyone in positions of leadership or responsibility, whether that was a university president, the vice president of student affairs, a rabbi, a priest, a corporate leader, a congressman, a senator. Anybody in a position of responsibility, they kind of frowned on him because they did not trust him. Do you agree with that? And because that was very prevalent when I was in college. And secondly is not being very trustful a negative? MS (01:29:26): I think healthy skepticism, and again, it is one of these case by case issues. You have to let your brains and your heart guide you. When I say you, I mean any sentient human. Mistrust is earned or should be earned. SM (01:30:00): Right. MS (01:30:01): And likewise, trust should be earned. I do not go around... I neither mistrust nor trust unless I know something about the person or the situation. I do not inherently mistrust or trust. And maybe, to be fair, there are certain things that perhaps I do inherently mistrust. To try and answer your question, I think I probably do inherently mistrust authority. SM (01:30:46): Well, one of the first things you learn in political science, and I was a history, political science major, is that lack of trust is very healthy in a democracy because it means dissent is allowed and it is alive and well in a democracy. Would you agree with that? MS (01:31:05): Yeah, absolutely. SM (01:31:07): So I think it is a healthy thing, even though some people... I am trying to keep my opinions out of it, but a couple other things here and then I just have some ask you to respond to some names and terms. And then we will be done. I know this might be another one of those general questions. Do you think boomers have been good parents and grandparents? And I say this only... You can only do this from the experiences that you have had with your fellow boomers, but the question I am always asking people is, has this generation ever sat down with their kids and grandkids and shared with them? MS (01:31:45): Well, again- SM (01:31:46): And do the kids – MS (01:31:47): ...such a broad question. I mean, every individual is different. I would hate to paint an entire generation with a brush this broad. SM (01:31:57): How about just the term activism? MS (01:31:59): Sorry. SM (01:31:59): How about just seeing activism, which was a very important part of many of the boomers, do you see it today a lot in others? MS (01:32:08): Do I see activism a lot? SM (01:32:10): Yeah. In young people. MS (01:32:14): [inaudible] amongst activists. SM (01:32:14): Well, no, I mean, do you see it amongst young people today and maybe in the last 20 years? MS (01:32:21): Well, I have seen it, but that is partly because I am an activist and I run in activist circles. If I did not, I am not sure that I would have witnessed it. In other words, because I am an activist, I get to meet other activists and often they are young people. SM (01:32:39): Yes. MS (01:32:40): If I was not an activist, I am not sure that I would witness a lot of activism because it is not like it was, say, in (19)69 or (19)70 where you were constantly seeing, witnessing a dissent. It is not like that anymore. In fact, there is a lot more blind acceptance of the way things are. Although it is interesting, if you read the opinion polls, these millennials or whatever they are called are actually the most progressive politically, progressive generation ever since these kinds of polls have been taken. SM (01:33:28): And they like boomers. MS (01:33:29): They do like boomers? SM (01:33:32): Yes, they do. Because since I am in higher ed, I was in higher ed for all these years, millennials link up with boomers in many ways. They want to leave a legacy. A lot of boomers, when they were young, wanted to leave a legacy. But we talked about this, ending more and bring peace to the world and all the other things. Many may not have succeeded, but they believe in that. Well, a lot of millennials believe in they want to leave a legacy too, but the difference between boomers and millennials is the time they plan to do it. Millennials want to create a legacy beginning around 40. They want to raise families, get a job, do all the things they do, but they are thinking down the road that they want to leave something for future generations. So it is just the timing more than anything else that may be different. I have got some slogans here. Actually these are three slogans that I feel define the generation slogan. Number one is, "Malcolm X by any means necessary," which symbolizes a more radical, maybe even the use of guns, violent aspect to the movement. The second one is the quote that Bobby Kennedy took from I think George Bernard Shaw, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not," which is the activist, the mentality of I want to make a difference, bring justice to the world. And then there is the more hippie mentality, which was on Peter Max posters in the early (19)70s. And I had one on my door at Ohio State, which stated, "You do your thing. I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." That was kind of a hippie statement. And the only other one that people have mentioned is, "We shall overcome," which is symbolic of the Civil Rights Movement. And one other person mentioned, John Kennedy's, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Do you have any slogans that you think define the boomer generation? MS (01:35:53): Again, I do not think that the boomer generation has a singular way to define boomers. I think that what happened with the boomers is, and I know I am not necessarily answering your question because again I am hesitant to paint the entire generation with a broad brush, but what I think happened in the (19)60s basically is for a lot of reasons that could be enumerated but we do not have a whole... Again, it is something that books get written about these things. What happened was that for the first time in history... I guess it could be argued though the Renaissance, the Enlightenment maybe. But for the first time in history, certainly in recent history, meaning the last few hundred years or so, couple hundred, a Bohemian movement went mass, went viral. And you saw a Bohemian movement emerge from the shadows, emerge from the underground and become mainstream. Now, what happened in the process, interestingly enough, is that when that Bohemian movement went mainstream, partly what killed it off because it got co-opted by people whose motivation is profit, mainly Madison Avenue and people trying to sell things. SM (01:37:54): This last part of the interview is just a lot of names. You probably saw that at the bottom, but it says, " What do these events mean to you? And then just quick thoughts." Does not have to be anything in depth, but what do these events mean to you? The opening of the wall in 1982. MS (01:38:16): Oh, the Vietnam Wall, you mean? SM (01:38:18): Yes. MS (01:38:20): What does it mean to... I think it was an attempt by America to come to terms with Vietnam for once and for all, although it may not have worked that way. I think at the very least, it paid lip service or it gave respect to the [inaudible]. And there is nothing wrong with that. I mean, it was a good thing, I think. SM (01:38:51): What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? MS (01:38:56): Oh, that meant a lot to me. Kent State and Jackson State meant that law and order was more important to the establishment than us, than our lives were. We were expendable. SM (01:39:19): What does Watergate mean to you? MS (01:39:21): Just a symbol of the kind of corruption that continues in everyday politics. It is the same old shit, basically. SM (01:39:36): What does Woodstock and the Summer of Love mean to you? MS (01:39:42): It was an attempt by human beings to create a new reality. SM (01:39:49): What do the hippies mean to you? MS (01:39:51): Hippies were the largest mass Bohemian movement in history. SM (01:39:59): What do the Yippies mean to you? MS (01:40:07): Yippies were hippies who had been beaten up by cops. SM (01:40:13): How about, what does the Vietnam Veterans Against the War mean to you? MS (01:40:18): They were soldiers who had come to the realization that they had been fighting the wrong war. SM (01:40:27): And the next one is counterculture, but I think you have already discussed that. What do communes mean to you? MS (01:40:35): Again, an attempt at creating a new reality, a new way to live. SM (01:40:40): What do the Black Panthers and Black Power mean to you? MS (01:40:48): Well, the Panthers were a group of mostly young Black men and women who came together to reclaim their basic rights as Americans and human beings. SM (01:41:05): And Black Power? MS (01:41:05): Black Power was just an expression of pride in a time when Black people were still fighting for basic human rights. SM (01:41:26): What does SDS mean to you? MS (01:41:30): SDS was the first and largest group of young white Americans of that era, late (19)50s, early (19)60s, coming together and saying, "We have a vision for a different kind of America." SM (01:41:53): What does the National Organization for Women mean to you? MS (01:42:00): Same thing as the Black Panthers, but for women. SM (01:42:03): And how about the American Indian Movement? That would be the same thing. MS (01:42:06): Same thing. SM (01:42:09): Yeah. MS (01:42:09): It was a gay liberation. SM (01:42:10): Yeah. Yeah. And the same thing with Stonewall. And I think we- MS (01:42:15): Same thing. SM (01:42:16): Yeah. What does Attica mean to you? MS (01:42:24): Same. Imprisonments. These are all movements of people trying to reclaim their humanity. SM (01:42:29): What does My Lai mean to you? MS (01:42:36): My Lai was just a war crime that got noticed. SM (01:42:41): And what does Tet mean to you? MS (01:42:46): Tet represented the fact that the American military is not invincible. SM (01:42:57): And then these are just names of people, just quick responses. MS (01:42:59): Which, by the way, we are seeing repeated in Afghanistan and Iraq. Anyway. SM (01:43:04): Yeah. Please respond to these people in or terms, just quick responses. Tom Hayden. MS (01:43:17): Real smart, real committed, honorable guy. SM (01:43:22): Jane Fonda. MS (01:43:30): I think that Jane Fonda's... Well, what do you mean? Jane Fonda, the activist? Jane Fonda, the fitness? SM (01:43:40): Yeah, but the total- MS (01:43:42): There is so many Jane Fondas. SM (01:43:43): There is a new book out by Mark Lemke on Hanoi Jane. I am reading it right now. MS (01:43:48): Yeah. Yeah. SM (01:43:48): It brings up the three different aspects of her. Are you talking about the activist? Are you talking about the physical fitness guru? Or are you talking about the entertainer? MS (01:43:58): Right. Good actress. I do not know anything about aerobics, but I am sure she is a fine aerobics instructor. As far as her activist, I more or less was in solidarity with her. SM (01:44:13): John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. MS (01:44:20): Great men, very flawed. SM (01:44:24): Dwight- MS (01:44:25): Wait a second. Wait a second. But I think that I should say that about JFK. I think that Bobby, had he lived, may have changed the course of American history and may have been the greatest American president, but we will never know that. So it is just a feeling. I had great affection for Bobby. SM (01:44:44): Dwight Eisenhower. MS (01:44:48): Represents an older America that I do not have that much affection for. SM (01:44:59): LBJ and Hubert Humphrey. MS (01:45:03): Well, those are two different people. LBJ is a fascinating man, again, very, very flawed. A great man in many respects and a war criminal at the same time. Humphrey represents a kind of ineffectual, cannot do spirit in America, where I guess his heart was in the right place, but his ass was owned by the establishment. SM (01:45:47): Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. MS (01:45:49): Well, both men who saw that the war was morally wrong and spoke up. SM (01:45:57): Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. MS (01:46:00): Again, two different men representing two different things, but both, in my opinion, great men, great human beings, great Americans. Again, I think if both had lived, they might have affected more change and accomplished more. Again, I do not know. I am just guessing, but two men I have immense immeasurable respect for. SM (01:46:38): Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. MS (01:46:43): Well, Gerald Ford is just a joke, but Ronald Reagan is the most overrated president in the history of this country. And furthermore, he was the guy who set this country back and put it on the track back to greed and war and all the bad stuff. And I think when the history books... It always depends on who is going to write the history but in my opinion, Ronald Reagan will not be viewed as a kindly old uncle, the benevolent conservative that he is viewed as in many quarters now. I mean, really, this country started to go downhill beginning with his election. And as he is as revered as he is does not say a lot of good things about this country. SM (01:48:11): Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. MS (01:48:14): Nixon is just a crook. He knew. What he said he was not, he was. Agnew, another liar. These guys are about power. That is what they are about. SM (01:48:35): Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. MS (01:48:37): Again, two very different men cannot really be described in the same breath. Abbie personally is one of my heroes, a brilliant man, very funny, very good writer by the way. I have always thought Abbie's writings were underrated. He had a vision for a different kind of America. But I will tell you something, most Americans are not hip enough to understand where Abbie was going. The thing is Abbie was a hipster. Abbie was like a jazz musician and trying to affect change the way a jazz musician would. And that is not ever going to work because, as I said, most human beings is not that hip. I have respect for Jerry. I do not necessarily view his late in life conversion to capitalism as some kind of betrayal or anything, but he is a complicated guy. He did a lot of good. He also was capable of really making an ass of himself. Very inconsistent man. SM (01:49:58): And I do not know if you had a chance to see the YouTube of him on the Phil Donahue Show. MS (01:50:02): Yeah, I do not know if you know, but I have been working on a documentary about the Yippies for about six years now. SM (01:50:09): I did not know that. MS (01:50:10): So we have a whole... Well, it is not finished, but we have a whole sequence about the Phil Donahue Show. I spoke to Phil Donahue about that, about Jerry's appearance on the very show that you are talking about. SM (01:50:23): And boy, Phil Donahue, for him to just sit there and take what he was taking was something. MS (01:50:29): He was trying to give Jerry the benefit of the doubt, and Jerry just kept making a fool of himself. SM (01:50:36): The Berrigan brothers and Dr. Benjamin Spock. MS (01:50:41): Great Americans, great human beings. SM (01:50:44): How about Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, some of the- MS (01:50:52): Well, again, I cannot characterize them all. They are different women, but Bella I loved. I mean, I am a New Yorker and I am a New York Jew, so I have sort of a soft spot for Bella. Loudmouth, New York feminist, beautiful, beautiful woman. Betty Friedan, visionary. Gloria, she did good stuff. But my problem with what we used to call women's liberation and what later was called feminism, is that it lost its Marxist analysis. And what I am trying to say is a lot of feminists believed that once women gained positions of power, because women were nurturers, that they would bring peace and they would bring understanding and they would bring people together. But we have seen that women... I mean, we are seeing it with this idiot, Sarah Palin now. Women can be as divisive as men. And so I think feminism, the way it has played out, has been a flawed philosophy. But I do not mean to say that I do not basically agree with feminism. I do. I also do believe that men and women are different. SM (01:52:28): How about Phyllis Schlafly? Because she is the extreme [inaudible]. MS (01:52:31): She is just a joke. SM (01:52:33): How about President Jimmy Carter and President Bill Clinton? MS (01:52:38): Again, two completely different guys. I think Clinton is a phony, never liked him. Was life better under him than under Bush? Hell yeah, but I just do not like the guy. There is something oily about him. I mean, I will never forget watching Clinton on TV before he was elected president, and I had heard or I had read that he had been called Slick Willie in Arkansas. But I did not really know why. I remember watching him give a speech before he was elected president in (19)92, and I remember sitting there thinking, "Man, this cat is slick." And that he knew how to put one over on a crowd. He knew how to manipulate a crowd. And then when the little light bulb went off over my head and I went, "Ah, that is where he got the Slick Willy came from." Obviously, politically, I am closer to Bill Clinton than I am any Republican. I just do not like the guy personally. Jimmy Carter is someone who was not a very good president, but I think he was a better president than he was portrayed as at the time. His post-presidential work has been fantastic. SM (01:54:09): How about George Bush the first and George Bush the second? MS (01:54:14): Well, boy, obviously I have no fondness for either man. But at least George the first had read more than three books. W is by far the dumbest man in my lifetime, the dumbest man to achieve that kind of power. I mean, the fact that he was President of the United States for eight years is one of the scariest realities. SM (01:54:58): How about when you talk about the Black Panthers, you already talked about them, but there is very unique personalities. There is Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, H Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael. All those six are major, major different Black Panther leaders. Any thoughts on them as a group? MS (01:55:22): As a group or as individuals? SM (01:55:24): Yeah, group or individuals. MS (01:55:26): Well, again, I do not like to characterize people. Each human being is their own human, has their own set of character traits and pluses and minuses. I think Huey was a visionary. He was clearly also, to put it mildly, a very flawed man including probably a murderer. Eldridge, very flawed, but a brilliant man. MS (01:56:01): Very flawed, but a brilliant man. Same with H Rep around Stokely. I will say this though, I do believe that all these people, all these cats were driven to extremism, madness, drug addiction, and various other maladies because of the innate, inherent racism of the country that they were born and raised. I think that they were pushed to Matt SM (01:56:39): Even- MS (01:56:41): But I have a lot of respect for the man. SM (01:56:42): Even David Horowitz, who was the head of one of the writers for Ramparts, who was a die-hard conservative now. He will even say that Eldridge Cleaver was a good writer. MS (01:56:51): Right? Horowitz is a brief- SM (01:56:54): Yeah. He was about the only one that he showed any kind respect for Daniel Ellsberg on the Pentagon Papers. MS (01:57:00): Actually, I spent a day with, a couple days with Ellsberg a few years ago in Ithaca, New York. SM (01:57:06): That is where I am from. MS (01:57:07): Oh, really? Yeah. I lived there for a few months in 2004. My sister lives there and I was staying. SM (01:57:14): The Cortland Binghamton area in Ithaca. That is my area. MS (01:57:18): Oh, very good. It is beautiful. It is beautiful up there. Yeah, those waterfalls. man. SM (01:57:24): Oh yes, but Daniel, there is a movie out. You probably saw The Most Dangerous Man in America. MS (01:57:29): I have not seen it, but Ellsberg to me is one of my, he is an American hero. What he did with the Pentagon Papers was outstanding. SM (01:57:39): Timothy Leary. MS (01:57:43): A guy I knew, a guy I knew a little bit personally, a flawed man, a brilliant man, a very charming man, a bit of a con artist. Ultimately, he is on my team, so- SM (01:58:07): Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson. MS (01:58:10): Well, two different, again, two different men, but both of them, great Americans, great athletes, both of them broke barriers. Ali refused to fight a war he thought was immoral and against his spiritual beliefs. Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball, as you know, and took a lot of shit for it, and great American. SM (01:58:40): Woodward and Bernstein. MS (01:58:45): I have complicated feelings about, particularly Bob Woodward, all the presidents’ men in their early reportage for the Washington Post concerning Watergate was extraordinary. Woodward went on to be a bit of a hack. He wrote a book about a friend of mine named John Belushi, comedian, actor, and the book was so full of errors of fact and insinuation and gossipy drug tidbits it after I read it, my respect for Bob Woodward diminished, so capable of great journalism, capable of bullshit at the same time. SM (01:59:39): How about Robert McNamara. MS (01:59:44): A mass murderer cloaked in the cloaked in respectability. SM (01:59:50): Angela Davis. MS (01:59:54): She is on my team. SM (01:59:57): Chicago Eight. MS (01:59:59): Well, again, my team. SM (02:00:03): The year 1968. MS (02:00:06): Oh boy. What do you want to know? SM (02:00:07): Just- MS (02:00:07): That is a long year. SM (02:00:09): That is why some young people who read history think we were close to a second civil war by that because of that year, and everything that preceded it. MS (02:00:18): It felt like it, but we were not. I mean, it certainly felt like- SM (02:00:25): Is there any one event? There is so many that stood out above all of them. MS (02:00:34): It is hard to say. I mean, there were the two major assassinations. First, Martin and Bobby, and then of course, the police riot at the Democratic Convention August. That was a hell of a year. SM (02:00:52): How about the weatherman? MS (02:00:57): Very-very flawed, but my team, and also I understand where they were coming from. They were trying to stop however wrong their methods were. They were trying to stop what they rightfully deemed was an immoral war. And I have great affection for Bill Ayers and [inaudible] SM (02:01:28): Earth Day and the Peace Corps. MS (02:01:31): Again, two different issues, but they both represent that streak of idealism that people my age, people from my generation and older than me too as well, they both the Peace Corps and Earth Day Embodied, that kind of useful idealism. SM (02:02:03): Barry Goldwater and William Buckley. MS (02:02:06): Again, two different guys. I hated Goldwater, but I came to respect him as he got older. He seemed to, these modern-day conservatives make Goldwater look like a commonsensical guy. Buckley, I think he was a racist from what I have read. I think that obviously his politics were different than mine, to put it mildly, but I will tell you something. They were a lot of interesting people back then, and he was one of them, very smart man. I actually interviewed him once for something, and he was very helpful. He was very nice. He was very polite, very pleasant, and I liked him personally. SM (02:03:10): How about John Dean? MS (02:03:11): Well, I think that John Dean was a man who grew up in public, in a sense. I do not mean, grew up from childhood, but he started at Point A and ended up somewhere else. He clearly had an epiphany that he was involved in something that was immoral and went public with it. SM (02:03:49): I am almost, the free speech movement and the Little Rock Nine. MS (02:03:53): Okay. Again, two different things, but I guess there are similarities. The Little Rock Nine, you are talking about the kids going to school? Yes. Okay. Well, obviously that was the beginning of one of the seminal events of the Civil Rights movement, and to think of these kids being at the forefront of any of a human rights movement at all. It is kind of mind blowing. It is young people that is sort of galling about mean young people today is that perennially historic, but young people have always been at the vanguard of political movements, and it is particularly any revolutionary political change, because they have the energy and the enthusiasm and often the blind foolishness to go out and do things that older people are too old to do. Well, it was the Little Rock. SM (02:05:02): The Free Speech movement. MS (02:05:03): Free speech. Well, free speech Movement was one of the things that kick started in 1960s as we know it. SM (02:05:13): And I have down here also the U2 and the Cuban Missile Crisis. MS (02:05:19): Okay. Francis Gary Powers. SM (02:05:23): First time I saw President Lie to the American Public on TV. MS (02:05:26): That was approximately what I was going to say? One of the first indications that America was not the flawless place that they told us it was U2. What was the other one? SM (02:05:41): The Cuban Missile Crisis. MS (02:05:45): Cuban Missile Crisis. Interesting. That was the first time I realized, one of the first times I realized that we could all die in a nuclear holocaust. My parents were in Florida, and that happened, and I will never forget them, my mother calling us back in New York City and her crying, are you your kids? Okay? You are all right. I think my grandmother was taking care of us. Well, my parents were away, and I realized what this was. Well, I was only seven, I guess it was actually two. I realized that I realized the gravity of the situation, and I used to have dreams. I used to have dreams of the world ending in the nuclear Holocaust. SM (02:06:48): Did you think your mom and dad might not come home? MS (02:06:51): I was wondering whether anyone was going to survive, whether we are all going to die. I will tell you something. I will tell something in the story. An interesting story when I was in was Ithaca once having dinner at my sisters, and they had some friends over, my sister is two and a half years younger than me. Her husband is about 3, 4, 4 years younger than me. There were friends, one of whom was a college professor at Cornell, was about five years younger than me, and they were having to talk about politics in general and history and different things. So I was the oldest person at the dinner table, and I went around the table and I said, so let me ask everybody this. I am curious. I said, did anybody at this table ever really believe that the human race could perish in a nuclear attack? And every single one of them all were younger than me said, no, and I realized that that is the difference. Before you said that there were early boomers and late Yes. I think that is the difference between the early boomers and the late boomers. The first decade, the (19)46 through (19)56, is that what you said? I mean, I am generalizing here, but these are all generalizations, but I think we were the ones who really understood what was at stake. I do not think that the kids younger than us had the same kind of tears. SM (02:08:46): President Obama is a boomer. MS (02:08:49): What year was he born? SM (02:08:50): He was born in (19)60. Well, he was two I think, so that would make him, he is 49 now, so I do not, that would make, well, 49, and he was just like a baby, but he is still a boomer. Right. For the terms McCarthy hearings, I already mentioned them, but what makes them important in the early (19)50s is the red diaper babies and the way they treated and the scary, the people that were communists, and it was a scary kind of a personality there that later years. Did you ever think about that man and what he did? MS (02:09:28): Sure-sure. My father, well, not a communist, was a liberal Democrat and was horrified by McCarthyism and would actually, he edited a magazine, as I told you earlier, called Signature in the (19)50s and (19)60s. Actually. It was originally called the Diners Club Magazine, and then he changed the name to Signature, but he hired writers who had been blacklisted, so he gave work to blacklisted writers, including Ian Hunter, who had won Academy Awards as a screenwriter. SM (02:10:16): Wow. The last one here is just Walt Disney, Howdy Doody, Hopalong Cassidy. It was just (19)50s television at it is finest. Hopalong was a little bit before you, Howdy Doody, went up to 1961 and Walt Disney as well. That is his, that is history right there. That is (19)50s television. MS (02:10:40): I remember Hat Duty, and I really remember Disney. SM (02:10:45): Right. MS (02:10:45): I was a huge Disney fan when I was a little kid. What does it mean to me now? Very little. It is mildly nostalgic, but it has no substance, substantive meaning to me. 2010. SM (02:11:00): You have, I wanted to ask you about your band, because, we have been talking about your journalism, your responses to questions around the generation. You talked about Kris Kristofferson, but I would like to know a little bit about your group, your band, what they are doing, and how you have been able to survive as a band all these years. MS (02:11:23): Well, first of all, I have had many bands. I mean, the most famous one was SlewFoot, but even SlewFoot. SM (02:11:31): That is what I am talking about. MS (02:11:32): Right. We broke up in 1978 or so yeah (19)78. Yeah, we broke up in 1978. SM (02:11:43): Well, what was it like being in that group those years? Because you were playing to the Boomers, what was it, does it feel different performing to the Boomer generation than it does to performing today? I do not know how you would say it, but- MS (02:12:05): Well, I do not have to, not that it is anyone's fault, per se, but people my age grew up more or less on the same music I did, so I did not to, I never had to explain things to them. Whereas younger people, a lot of my music is new to them. Not through any fault of their own, just they simply have not been exposed to it. Although, I mean, young people, some of them have good musical taste. I am not sure I know how to answer that question. SM (02:12:49): Yeah, just whether there was more of a, we call it excitement or energy within the audiences then, as opposed to now, in terms of- MS (02:12:58): I do not know. I think there is probably still energy. I just do not think the music has the same kind of quality or edge, but- SM (02:13:06): What do you think of, well you probably cannot say this either, but when the last Boomer has passed on that they do this over at the Gettysburg Battlefield, when the last survivor of the Civil War died in 1924, they have a statute form over there, but when the last maybe 50, 75 years from now, when the best history books and sociology books are written or books on the era of, what do you think they will say about this generation of young people, all young people in this case, because we are talking about those 74 to 78 million who were born between (19)46 and (19)64, and they will define them in many respects based on the time they lived. What do you think they will say about this group? MS (02:13:51): I do not think that they are going to talk about the Boomers per se, but that whole concept of baby boomers is a sociological construct. It has no bar. It has very little bearing on history. What is important is that a sizeable subset of what is called the baby boomers made a valiant attempt to turn history around, and in many respects, succeeded. That, in my opinion, is going to be in the history books forever. It is going to be looked on. I firmly believe that the 1960s and early (19)70s are going to be looked on as a kind of renaissance in human history. SM (02:14:43): Do you have any anecdotes or stories you would like maybe to mention one or two, just like the story about being with Kris Kristofferson, are there any other stories that could be educational for others? Like you mentioned John Beluchi, you knew him personally, but when Woodward wrote that book, it was full of mistakes. I did not know you knew him. Were there any other people in your music world that you worked closely with? Any stories would you like to share? MS (02:15:16): Well, there is many stories. I am not sure what you are looking for exactly. SM (02:15:22): Well I am looking, you had a purpose in writing about Kris Kris- well, being interviewed and saying things about Kris Kristofferson, what his music meant, and what he symbolized, that he was kind of symbolic of the (19)60s, and he was consistent through his life. Are there any other personalities or groups that have educational lessons based on your experiences with them? MS (02:15:53): Well, based on my personal experience? SM (02:15:55): Yes. Based on your personal experiences, just like your personal experiences with Kris Kristofferson. MS (02:16:01): I have to think about, I do not know if, I do not think that I have an answer for your question off the top of my head trying to think about it. SM (02:16:08): That is all right. MS (02:16:09): I am Sorry. SM (02:16:10): That is okay. MS (02:16:11): Yeah, do not know. I mean, lots of famous musicians, not only from my time as a musician myself, but also as a journalist. I have gotten to meet many of my teenage heroes. SM (02:16:31): Who are some of them? MS (02:16:34): Oh, well, I mean, for instance, a couple weeks ago I was hanging out with Jim Kelner, who is a drummer. He used to play with John Lennon and George Harrison and Dylan, but he would, I do not know if you would know who he is, but I am trying to think of who you would know. Who have I gotten to know? Last night I was hanging out with Don Was, who has been the Rolling Stones producer for the last 20 years. I am trying to think of who you would know. SM (02:17:06): Where are you based now? Los Angeles, or is it San Francisco? MS (02:17:10): LA. I live in LA. SM (02:17:10): Okay. MS (02:17:14): I should say I sleep in LA, but I live in New York, meaning that my heart is in New York, but my bed is in LA. SM (02:17:22): Okay. Very good. Are there any questions I did not ask that you thought I was going to? MS (02:17:28): No, I was not really sure what you were going to ask. In fact, no, I do not. Nothing that I can think of. SM (02:17:38): Well, that is it then. MS (02:17:40): Well, Steven, thank you. SM (02:17:41): Thanks for going over the hour and a half too. I really appreciate that. Eventually, I am going to need a good couple of quality pictures of you to be sent to me. MS (02:17:52): Okay. SM (02:17:52): But I will be emailing you on that. MS (02:17:54): Okay. SM (02:17:54): And a little more updates. I am finishing my interviews as of the end of the first week of Labor Day weekend. I am going to interview Kathleen Cleaver. She is my last interview. MS (02:18:06): Oh, okay. SM (02:18:07): And I have been told I got to stop the interviews because I have, I will have about 200 then, and that is a lot of interviews. And then I am going to be spending nothing but four solid months in hibernation, transcribing it myself. I have got the equipment. I am already, and I want to do it myself because people have told me the mistakes have been made when they hand them to other people, and then they end up having to do it themselves anyways. And then I will send you a copy of the transcript, and so you will be able to see it. And at the same time, there will be a form to sign so that I can use your interview in my book, and I will be sending that out to everybody. People said, well, you are put Mark, you should have handed this out to everybody before you even started this press, but they will see the transcript and we will go from there. MS (02:18:51): Okay. SM (02:18:53): And I really want to thank you. MS (02:18:53): You are welcome. Thank you. Who is publishing? SM (02:18:59): Well right now? Syracuse University Press is very interested. I have not, have not been going, I have been only going to university presses. I have not been doing anything with, I have not made no contact with major presses. And so as I get closer to Labor Day weekend, I have been told that this book needs to go out to more people. The University press books do not reach very many people. Syracuse University Press, I think is the one that is going to do it, but there is some issues there right now, and because of the economy, we all about the economy, and so some university presses are limited in the number of books they do on an annual basis. Now, they did not use to limit themselves, so it is not definite yet who the printer is, but I have a couple professors I am working with on this and go from there. MS (02:19:50): Okay. Well, best of luck. Keep me posted and thanks, man. SM (02:19:56): Yeah, thank you, Michael. Have a great day, and keep writing those articles. I will be reading your articles now all the time. MS (02:20:02): Thank you, Steven. SM (02:20:02): Yeah, have a good one. MS (02:20:09): Oh, wait a second. Let me ask you something. Yes. Before I, do I have your phone number? SM (02:20:10): My phone number is six one zero. MS (02:20:12): Hold on one second. SM (02:20:16): And I have a tape machine here all the time. Yeah. Six one zero. MS (02:20:19): Where are you, by the way? SM (02:20:21): Oh, I am, I am in Westchester, Pennsylvania. Just outside Philadelphia. MS (02:20:25): Steven. Oh, is it 4 3 6 9 3 6 4? SM (02:20:30): Yes. 6 1 0 4 3 6 9 3 6 4. MS (02:20:33): All right. Very good. Alright Steven, thanks so much. SM (02:20:36): One other thing. Yeah. Do you know Kris Kristofferson real well? MS (02:20:41): I know him. SM (02:20:42): Boy would I love to interview him. MS (02:20:46): You would have to go through his publicist and I do not even remember. SM (02:20:53): You email me that information if and I will. MS (02:20:56): I do not know what his public, you know what, I will email you. I do not, I am trying to think the best way to do this. I will email you somebody. You know what the thing is that I really do not have the, I do not have the, it is really not my- SM (02:21:24): I can go right to his website too. MS (02:21:26): Yeah. That is really the best way. SM (02:21:28): Do you know if he lives in LA or does he live in Burlingame? MS (02:21:32): Burlingame. SM (02:21:34): That is where his hometown is. MS (02:21:37): Burlingame. SM (02:21:37): California in- MS (02:21:38): San, well, actually he was born in Texas. SM (02:21:41): Yeah, but he went to Burlingame High School. MS (02:21:43): Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think his family moved to California later, but anyway. SM (02:21:54): Okay. MS (02:21:54): From what I know, and I do not know everything, obviously he splits his time between Malibu and LA and Hawaii. SM (02:22:05): Well, that is nice. MS (02:22:05): Yeah. No kidding. SM (02:22:09): All right, Michael. Thanks a lot. Have a great day. MS (02:22:12): You too. SM (02:22:12): Bye. (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 Michael Simmons Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Simmons, Michael ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Simmons, Michael--Interviews 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 2010-06-05 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.10.2016.114a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.114b 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. 142:16 Description An account of the resource <span>Musician, writer, filmmaker and activist Michael Simmons was dubbed “The Father Of Country Punk” by&nbsp;<i>Creem</i>&nbsp;magazine in the 1970s. He was an editor of the&nbsp;<i>National Lampoon</i>&nbsp;in the ’80s where he wrote the popular column “Drinking Tips And Other War Stories” and won an LA Press Club Award in the ’90s for his investigative journalism for the&nbsp;<i>LA Weekly</i>. He&nbsp;has written for&nbsp;<i>MOJO</i>,&nbsp;<i>Rolling Stone</i>,&nbsp;<i>Penthouse</i>,&nbsp;</span><span><i>LA Weekly</i></span><span>,&nbsp;</span><span><i>The New York Times</i>,&nbsp;<i>LA Times</i>,&nbsp;<i>High Times</i>,&nbsp;<i>Artillery</i>,&nbsp;<i>CounterPunch</i>,&nbsp;<i>The Rag Blog</i>,&nbsp;<i>The Progressive</i>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<i>Dangerous Minds</i>&nbsp;and has scribed liner notes for Bob Dylan, Michael Bloomfield, Phil Ochs, Kris Kristofferson, Mose Allison, Kinky Friedman,&nbsp;</span><span>Arthur Lee &amp; Love</span><span>&nbsp;</span><span>and Paul Krassner</span><span>. He wrote and co-produced the documentary&nbsp;<i>The Real Rocky</i>&nbsp;about boxer Chuck Wepner.</span> https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/dc0dd18c9a89052a98355aa9ad68881c.jpg 6779d801a6e8ebbf2bee2ca0d8bc10ce https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2998043cb4fe900989948fb001628c4e.mp3 97b1e05976469d337209b18d61605fa0 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 Peter Richardson Date of Interview 2010-06-10 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 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 118:41 Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Peter Richardson is a scholar, author, editor and lecturer. He currently teaches and coordinates the American Studies and California Studies programs at San Francisco State Univerity. Dr. Richardson has authored several books and was a recipient of the National Entertainment Journalism Award for Online Criticism in 2013. Dr. Richardson received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:4483,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Peter Richardson is a scholar, author, editor and lecturer. He currently teaches and coordinates the American Studies and California Studies programs at San Francisco State Univerity. Dr. Richardson has authored several books and was a recipient of the National Entertainment Journalism Award for Online Criticism in 2013. Dr. Richardson received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.</span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Summer of love; Black Panthers; The Beach Boys; California in the 1960s; Baby boom generation;\\nVietnam Memorial; Berkeley University; Bay Area; Los Angeles.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Summer of love; Black Panthers; The Beach Boys; California in the 1960s; Baby boom generation; Vietnam Memorial; Berkeley University; Bay Area; Los Angeles.</span> Subject LCSH College teachers; Authors, American--20th century San Francisco State University; Richardson, Peter--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 Dr. Peter Richardson Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Richardson, Peter ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; Authors, American--20th century San Francisco State University; Richardson, Peter--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Peter Richardson is a scholar, author, editor and lecturer. He currently teaches and coordinates the American Studies and California Studies programs at San Francisco State Univerity. Dr. Richardson has authored several books and was a recipient of the National Entertainment Journalism Award for Online Criticism in 2013. Dr. Richardson received his Ph.D. in English from 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 2010-06-10 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.10.2016.143 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. 118:41