89 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/20ec3be45fc53d0d2ff785fe01e0cc88.jpg 6c47375f4fda7b31a929aa9800f1ef16 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1c7f2cb01d77f0138c58a519cfd291ba.mp3 a8c06fef3b3a65bde52b261842f36bf6 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. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-11-23 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Randy Shaw, 1956- Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Randy Shaw is an attorney, author and activist. He is the executive director and co-founder of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, as well as the co-founder and a Board member of Directors of Uptown Tenderloin, Inc., and the editor of the newspaper, Beyond Chron. Shawn has written five books on activism. He received his Juris Doctor degree from Hastings Law School."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5039,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Randy Shaw is an attorney, author, and activist. He is the executive director and co-founder of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, as well as the co-founder and a Board member of Directors of Uptown Tenderloin, Inc., and the editor of the newspaper, Beyond Chron. Shawn has written five books on activism. He received his Juris Doctor degree from Hastings Law School. 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 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Affirmative action; Proposition 13; Activism; Activist Handbook; Illegal immigration; Baby boom generation; Tenure in the nineteen seventies; Nineteen seventies; Vietnam War"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":1,"3":{"1":0}}">Affirmative action; Proposition 13; Activism; Activist Handbook; Illegal immigration; Baby boom generation; Tenure in the nineteen seventies; Nineteen seventies; Vietnam War Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 42:07 Subject LCSH Lawyers; Authors, American--20th century; Civil rights workers; Shaw, Randy, 1956--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 Randy Shaw Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Shaw, Randy, 1956- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Lawyers; Authors, American--20th century; Civil rights workers; Shaw, Randy, 1956--Interviews Description An account of the resource Randy Shaw is an attorney, author and activist. He is the executive director and co-founder of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, co-founder and a Board member of Directors of Uptown Tenderloin, Inc., editor of Beyond Chron. Shawn has written five books on activism. He received his Juris Doctor degree from Hastings Law School. 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 2010-11-23 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.10.2016.147 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. 42:07 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/8b2b6ed5d15df9420466a28256f0c24e.jpg 461cb2952f6315f907e2496a62c76c18 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7c8bdfcaa9275461d3eb904db42acf57.mp3 26e85e30cf298954bb4f2702635d2bcc 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. <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. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Raul Torres Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Drug scene; Vietnam; Students; Pro-Education; Conscientious Objector; Vietnam Draft; Vietnam War; WWII; Social Conscientiousness; Drug abuse; Boomer Mentality; Korean War; War spending; Civil Rights Movement; Parents; Boomer's; Vietnam Veterans; Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Memorial; Generation Gap; The Establishment; Richard Nixon"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Drug scene; Vietnam; Students; Pro-Education; Conscientious Objector; Vietnam Draft; Vietnam War; WWII; Social Conscientiousness; Drug abuse; Boomer Mentality; Korean War; War spending; Civil Rights Movement; Parents; Boomer's; Vietnam Veterans; Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Memorial; Generation Gap; The Establishment; Richard Nixon Biographical Text Raul Torres is an educator and former principal of Thomas A. Edison High School in Northeast Philadelphia from 1985-1998. During the Vietnam War, Thomas A. Edison High School had the highest casualty rate of any high school in the United States, a fact confirmed by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (non-profit that built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, The Wall, in Washington, DC.) and has been recognized by local, state and federal government officials. 64 Edison students died in the war and they are forever remembered as the "EDISON 64." Raul Torres' brother, Robert Torres-Army Sgt.. is one of the 64. Those who died and served were predominantly African-American and came from a tough neighborhood filled with gangs At the time of  the Vietnam War, the high school was an all boys school.  The original building is no more, but since those days, through today, the school has memorialized those students with a wall in the main lobby of the school that includes the listing of all 64 who paid the highest price with their lives.  The first wall was built in the old school in the 1960's and continues today in a new school at another location.  The school and Philadelphia is very proud of these former students who came from a very tough environment and chose service to their nation as stepping stone and or choice to change their lives for the better.  The "EDISON 64" will forever hold a place of stature to those times in American known as the 1960's. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 112:22 Subject LCSH High school principals; Torres, Raul--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>. Date of Interview ND 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 Raul Torres Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Torres, Raul ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource High school principals; Torres, Raul--Interviews Description An account of the resource Raul Torres is an educator. He is the former Principal at Edison High School in Philadelphia in the 1980s and 1990s. Raul Torres is an educator and former principal of Thomas A. Edison High School in Northeast Philadelphia from 1985-1998. During the Vietnam War, Thomas A. Edison High School had the highest casualty rate of any high school in the United States, a fact confirmed by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (non-profit that built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, The Wall, in Washington, DC.) and has been recognized by local, state and federal government officials. 64 Edison students died in the war and they are forever remembered as "EDISON 64." Raul Torres' brother, Robert Torres-Army Sgt.. is one of the 64. Those who died and served were predominantly African-American and came from a tough neighborhood filled with gangs At the time of the Vietnam War, the high school was an all boys school. The original building is no more, but since those days, through today, the school has memorialized those students with a wall in the main lobby of the school that includes the listing of all 64 who paid the highest price with their lives. The first wall was built in the old school in the 1960's and continues today in a new school at another location. The school and Philadelphia is very proud of these former students who came from a very tough environment and chose service to their nation as stepping stone and or choice to change their lives for the better. The "EDISON 64" will forever hold a place of stature to those times in American known as the 1960'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 ND 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.10.2016.4a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.4b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 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. 112:22 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/598cb143fac6288490ecfacd5b000bc7.jpeg 98565e5e19aaafd1d4f6ec101af44f04 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b8e07008b1bc9668ee3a937d169950fd.mp3 675a300d6f9546c613ab4decd628cfb9 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 Middle Eastern Oral History Description An account of the resource This collection includes interviews of Middle Eastern immigrants who settled in the Binghamton area. Since the rise of nationalism and the repression of minorities during the last phase of the Ottoman Empire, the ethnic groups in the Middle East have faced physical pressure and violence, cultural assimilation, and ethnic cleansing in the nation-states they lived in, which made them to leave their homeland behind and settle throughout the United States. This project looks at the details about the impact of diaspora. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright.  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Aynur de Rouen, Ph.D. Relation A related resource <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/oral-histories/index.html#sustainablecommunities">Sustainable Communities Oral History Collection</a> Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview August 27, 2019 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Joseph Seif Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rawan Shabbar Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Digital Format Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 54:32 minutes Biographical Text Rawan was born in Irbid, Jordan. She lived in Oman throughout her early childhood and moved to Saudi Arabia for school. She continued her education in her hometown in Jordan and received a scholarship to finish her Master's at Binghamton University. Keywords Riyadh, Chicago, Binghamton, Irbid, Jordan, Jordanian Food, Jordanian Culture, Binghamton University 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 Rawan Shabbar https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7fcf306abba8625049aecb011e883118.mp3 1db667c6348d5691415fdc3994fda77b https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/dd6195e9c010d10fcbb8bc10a2ed354d.mp3 accd3d49c918dd10514dfe25dfc6e6eb 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 Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> 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. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed McNamara, Regis C. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview O'Neil, Dan Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 35:54 Minutes ; 14:35 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55981">Interview with Regis C. McNamara</a> Subject LCSH McNamara, Regis C. -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.); University of Notre Dame; University of Notre Dame -- Football; Rockne, Knute, 1888-1931; World War--1939-1945; Engineers -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.) -- Officials and employees -- Interviews; International Business Machines Corporation; Binghamton City Engineer Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Regis C. McNamara Interviewed by: Dan O’Neil Date of interview: 27 April 1978 Dan: OK, Reggie, would you start out telling me about your life and experiences and working experiences in the community starting with your date and place of birth? Reggie: Well I was born in ah Pittsburgh, PA, February 2nd, 1908 and ah I lived, I lived there very shortly and I came to ah Binghamton, NY, during ah the First World War, about 1918 and ah all my preliminary education was in the Binghamton School system—I went to Thomas Jefferson School, grade school, and Binghamton Central High School and ah— Dan: Pardon me. [checks tape recorder] OK, go ahead. Reggie: I played ah ah I played ah football for the Binghamton Central High School and then from Central High School, I went to the University of Notre Dame and ah at that time ah Notre Dame had a ah worldwide reputation as a ah football school as well as a good educational school and I, I matriculated at the University of Notre Dame ah I can remember I paid ah my first year’s tuition out there which took care of my board, room and tuition was $800. I’d earned the $800 ah myself ah working as a newsboy for the Binghamton Press and as workin summers on various laboring jobs. Laboring jobs were mostly to keep in shape for football, were in the fall seasons. Ah while at Notre Dame ah my course was, I took up Civil Engineering and ah by playing football at Notre Dame, I played in two National Championships football teams in 1929 and 1930—that was under Knute Rockne. Dan: And who were some of your teammates, Reggie? Reggie: Ah the team ah some of my teammates were ah ah Frank Carrideo— Dan: Right. Reggie: —who was ah an All American and was one of the ah ah best ah place kickers and punters that I've ever seen in my career of watching football. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: Better than professional football like and ah I don't say that just because ah I knew Frank but for a long time in professional football they never believed in kicking out of bounds. Now, professional football has got back to kicking out of bounds but Carrideo had perfected it while he was at Notre Dame and he was a real professional when it came to kicking the ball out of bounds. Ah Marchie Swartz was another ah ah one of my players on that team. Marty Brill who was the ah—Swartz was the left halfback and Brill was the right halfback and ah we had a center was Tim Monahan and we had a couple of ends by the name of Cord and ah Marty Beezy and ah then ah I also played with what they called the shock troops during those days. Rockne had introduced the shock troops to football which was something new ah to football. The idea of the shock troops was that they would go in and play the first half, the shock troops, and try and wear down the opposition—then the other team would come in and try to score on the opposition. The shock troops were back in the third quarter with and the same idea in mind was to wear them down and then the other team would come in the fourth quarter with the hopes of scoring. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: And it worked successfully for ah two seasons because we were National Championship in 1929 and 1930. Dan: Uh huh—they didn't have the platoon system at that time? Reggie: No, there was no platoon system, you played ah both ways. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: You played on offense and defense. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: And ah one of the things that ah I really believed in those days and I think they should change in the ah back to it and that was the leather helmet. The ah leather helmet was safe and it gave you plenty of protection to any blows to the head.  Dan: Umum. Reggie: As a matter of fact, in those days, they used to allow the opponents to hit you on the head. Today you can't hit your opponent on the—it's been ruled out and still they have these ah plastic helmets which do more damage than do good. The point of ah the opponents use the plastic helmets to ah to hit your opponent on the arms or legs or in the stomach and oftentimes you can bruise a muscle that would put a player out for maybe a month or two or even break an arm or so with a plastic helmet and to me I see no reason why they should use a plastic helmet today, ah. Dan: What position did you play, Reggie? Reggie: I played left tackle. Dan: Left tackle. Reggie: Left tackle and ah the other player that played right tackle on the shock troops was Frank Leahy, who later became ah the coach of Notre Dame and was the second coach ah in the history of football that had a record similar to Rockne's. Rockne, as far as I'M concerned and it maybe ah it may be a football record—Rockne was the first coach and then I believe Leahy was the second, had the best record in football. I'm not sure of that but ah that's my recollection remembrance ah Frank was ah ah a fella that got hurt very easily. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: He ah I believe his first year at Notre Dame he was a center and he ah got hurt—he got hurt and was out most of the season and when he played ah tackle, he got hurt too and ah ah and when his football days were over, he spent some time at Mayo Clinic with Rockne and they were both in the hospital at the same time and ah I believe that’s where Leahy got the desire to become a coach and also got a lot of Rockne's ah secrets. Dan: Now Rockne died in 1931. Reggie: It was 1931. Dan: 31. Reggie: Yeah when Rock— Dan: And who succeeded him? Reggie: Hunk Anderson. Dan: Hunk Anderson. Reggie: Succeeded Rockne—Hunk at the time was the ah was the ah was one of the assistant coaches that coached the line. Dan: I see. Reggie: And then he succeeded Rockne and they had another player there—was a backfield coach, Jack Sheven, who was later killed in the World War II ah Jack was a great player and also a great coach at Notre Dame. Dan: Uh huh—what kind of a man was Rockne, personally? Reggie: Rock was a, he was, he was a nice guy to ah, ah to meet. Matter of fact everybody, everybody liked him when they met him but he was a real tough man when it came to teaching young guys on the football team—in other words you were only out there for maybe an hour and a half or two hours practicing and it was all, all work—there was no such thing as play—it was all work. Dan: Now you spoke of your first year—it cost you $800 room and board, did they have such a thing as scholarships in those days? Reggie: They had scholarships in those days but not, not too many. I can remember ah—I didn't have a scholarship when I went out there—I went out there because I heard of Notre Dame's reputation—well I thought I'd take a chance. Dan: I see. Reggie: And ah the first day when we were supposed to report to football, it was on a Sunday and to get our uniforms and so I think there was something like ah a thousand guys in line to get a football suit and ah I finally, I was, was told to get over there early and ah I was about 50th in line and ah—No, I was about 10th in line. I, I and then the coach, Rockne, came over with the Freshman football coach and ah he said, now ah our Freshman football coach that year was Bo Poliski—he had been a tackle on the Notre Dame team the previous year and he told Bo, he says, “Bo, you go up and down this line and pick out some fellas you think can ah make your Freshman football," and ah Rockne picked out one guy himself and says, "Some guys like this," and then ah Bo started to ah pick the men out and ah there must have been 50 guys in the next line. Bo finally picked me out—I think that's the only way I got a uniform because he picked me out. Dan: Yeah—you played football all four years you were there? Reggie: Ah yes, yes I did—I played Freshman and my 3 years as Sophomore, Junior and Senior, then I was later—ah I didn't graduate when I was supposed to in '32 so I had an extra year and ah I was, I helped coach the Freshman team out there. We ah we taught, we had in those days—the Freshmen used to play just one game—it’s like a reward for them ah efforts of being banged around by the Varsity all year long. Today I think they do play a schedule—in those days, they just played the one game. Dan: Umum. Now after your graduation from Notre Dame, where did you go, Reggie? Reggie: Well ah I went ah, my father was living in Pittsburgh at the time and I went home to Pittsburgh. Dan: Umum. Reggie: And ah that was in 1932, ‘33, 1933 and that was at the height of the Depression and ah I had no, I had no job or anything—no prospects of getting any job ah but at about that time the ah the professional team of the Pittsburgh Steelers was formed and ah I ah I had a tryout with the Steelers. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: And ah I didn't, I didn't make the team but—[Wife reminds him of 3 o'clock appointment]—I didn't, I didn't make the team but ah ah I remember the salaries that they paid. They used to pay $50 a game. If you had made it, of course you'd get paid $50 a game and they had I think they had three stars on the team that were under contract—what they got I don't know but the rest of the fellows, it was $50 a game. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: And ah course today the Pittsburgh Steelers is quite a team. Dan: Oh they are, they are. Reggie: But ah then I, I as I say, I couldn't, I couldn't get ah work in Pittsburgh, I finally came back to Binghamton and my first job was ah working for ah IBM and ah as I say I was a graduate engineer from the University of Notre Dame. I couldn't get a job as an engineer and there was a, I was able to ah talk my way in with the assistance of some friends and I got a job with IBM for $20, or what did I tell you I was getting. Dan: 50, 40 or 50. Reggie: Ah let’s see now, $2.00, I was getting $2 an hour, that was it. Dan: $2.00 an hour. Reggie: $2.00 an hour, yeah I think that’s what I got, I think. Dan: Was it a forty hour week? Reggie: Yes it was a forty hour week. Dan: So you were getting $80 a week? Reggie: Something like that. Dan: Yeah—that was what year, about '34 or '35, Reggie? Reggie: Ah I think it was around '34. Dan: '34. Reggie: ‘34 or ‘5. Dan: Was—what job did you do down there? Reggie: Oh I was what you call a pickup boy—I picked up material, putting them on a truck and delivering to one department and delivering them to another department. Dan: Yeah, yeah. Reggie: It wasn't my profession as an engineer. Dan: Yeah. Reggie: Well I finally the ah I got a job in the ah the New York State Department at Chenango Valley State Park as an engineer.  Dan: What year was that? Reggie: That was about 1935, I believe. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: I worked along with the CCC boys. Dan: Oh yes. Reggie: Teaching them surveying and then also doing design work for the Parks Department and then ah after that ah I would ah—I'd some work for the Army engineers and then after that I worked for the City of Binghamton. Dan: What year did you start with the City? Reggie: Ah I think it was 1922 that I first started. Dan: Ah, no. Reggie: Oh wait a minute, not ‘22 ah was just before the War, 1942. Dan: 1942. Reggie: 1942, yeah—I worked for the City as Deputy City Engineer and then ah later on I became the City Engineer. Dan: Umum. Reggie: And I was 16 years City Engineer of the City of Binghamton. Dan: Umum. Now all told how many years were you with the City? Reggie: I think it totaled up something like 22 years. Dan: 22 years. Reggie: 22 years I was with the City. Dan: Uh huh. Did you go into Service at all? Reggie: Yes, ah ah I left the, I left the City when I was Deputy City Engineer to ah join the Navy and ah I took my indoctrination at Harvard University and ah I was assigned to Corpus Christi ah flying aviation field and ah from there I ah, I, I wasn't in what they call a construction battalion at that time but later joined up with the construction battalions and from there ah from Corpus Christi I was sent overseas as a Lieutenant in charge of what they call a CBMU, that's a Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit, that was five officers and 200 men and ah I was the Commanding Officer, and I spent time in the Pacific area in Wallace Island and ah ah British Samoa. Then after I came out of the Pacific, I spent time with ah ah down in New Orleans ah as a Public Works officer down there. Dan: Umum. Reggie: And then I was honorably discharged and ah I came back to Binghamton and ah I started a consulting engineering business and I worked at that for a while and then I was ah I became a City Engineer. Dan: City Engineer. Reggie: City Engineer of the City of Binghamton. Dan: Uh huh, but you were an assistant at first—right? Reggie: I was the Deputy City Engineer. Dan: Deputy. Reggie: Yes. Dan: Uh huh and that was prior to the War and right after—you got a leave of absence to enter the War? Reggie: That’s right, yeah. Dan: OK, yeah, and what was your salary starting out as a Deputy, Reggie, if it's not too personal? Reggie: No, it's not too personal. I'm trying to think ah it wasn't very much ah it seems like it was around maybe $8000 a year, something like that. Dan: And then as a Civil Engineer at the time of your retirement, what had it gone to? Reggie: Well ah as a even as City Engineer I think I only made ah as high as 12 or $13,000. Dan: Is that right? Now was this a Civil Service position? Reggie: No. Dan: You didn't have to take— Regrie: No it was an appointive position. Dan: And you were appointed by who? Reggie: I was appointed by Don Kramer who was the Mayor at that time. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: And I think that was in 19, 1955, I believe. Dan: 1955 and you retired—what year? Reggie: Ah well I didn't retire—I was the ah the ah opposition party that had control of ah City Hall I think it was in 1960. That would make it about 16 years anyhow or ‘66, something like that, ‘66, 1966 and ah they appointed their Engineer so then I went back to my consulting engineering business. Dan: I see, yeah. Reggie: And then I worked at that for a while and from there I ah I had various positions ah with the New York State—I worked in the New York State Office of General Service. I worked on the, as an engineer, on the Municipal or State Office building over here in the center of Binghamton and from there I ah worked on various ah ah buildings like the new Post Office building—I worked for an architect on that and then I worked on for the Broome ah up here on Glenwood Avenue. Dan: Oh yeah, the retarded to the Broome Developmental Center. Reggie: No. Dan: Or was it BOCES? Reggie: No not BOCES, it’s the school for the— Dan: The retarded. Reggie: The retarded children. Dan: Yeah—that's Broome Developmental. Reggie: Oh is that what it is? Dan: Yeah. Reggie: Well I worked on that ah for one of the contractors I guess and then later after that I worked for the New York State Housing and Community Development ah ah as a Code Engineer. Dan: I see—did you work in conjunction with Dorothy Titchner at all? Reggie: No. Dan: You didn't? Reggie: No. Dan: Because she was the Housing Authority. Reggie: She was the Housing Authority and ah no my, you see my area working for the housing ah people were in the Code Sections. Dan: Code Sections. Reggie: Yes and I used to travel the ah western section of New York State to visit building inspectors to ah answer any questions they may have concerning the New York State building code. Dan: I see. Reggie: And then after that I ah, I retired. Dan: Uh huh—that was in what year would you say? Reggie: Well let’s see about 3 years now ah. Dan: 3 years—'75. Reggie: About '75. Dan: Yeah but as a civil engineer, what was your duties—the City Engineer? Reggie: Well as City Engineer you were responsible ah to see ah that the streets were properly paved, new sewers were put in ah repairs of ah of ah structures and also the building of new structures, the letting of contracts for incinerators, water filtration plants, sewage disposal plants. D an: Uh huh so you worked probably with ah Charlie Costello. Reggie: No ah ah at that time the Water Superintendent was Cy Carmen. Dan: Oh is that right? Reggie: Yeah Cy Carmen was the Water Superintendent and I worked a lot with Cy. Dan: I see. Reggie: But ah— Dan: Did you have anything to do with the downtown urban renewal? Reggie: Oh yes ah as one of the officers in the City Administration ah the City Engineer was on the ah board—it was called the Urban Renewal Board and there was the City Engineer, the Mayor first, the Mayor was the chairman and the City Engineer, the Corporation Counsel, the Comptroller and ah I believe there was one other—there was 5 altogether that was on that board and ah we had to, we had to make certain decisions for urban renewal and ah I remember at the time ah the ah, ah the regional man, I can't remember his name now, he wanted me to take over the urban renewal and I, I turned it down. I didn't want any part of it although some engineers in other cities throughout the State did have both jobs—the City Engineer and also the Head of the Urban Renewal. Dan: Yeah. Reggie: I think Bill Green was the one that got the job—he took it over as Head of Urban Renewal. Dan: Yeah but you were in office when the ah Urban Renewal built the new Post Office. Reggie: Ah. Dan: That is the Brandywine Highway and new Post Office and all of that. Reggie: Well I was in office when all the ah I would say a great, a great ah majority of the construction was done during my 16 years. The arterial highways were all built during that time, ah the new Water Works was built, incinerator was built, the sewage disposal plant was built, the intercepting sewers were all built during my time as we built the ah we built a couple—we built one fire station, we built the Ely Park ah clubhouse up there so ah I remember it was a very active building time. Dan: It was because since then, it has been dormant. Reggie: “It has been dormant,” is correct. Dan: And what do you think of the prospects of Mondev—do you think that's going to go down the tube? Reggie: I really believe so. Dan: You really believe so. Reggie: I believe so, I think. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: I ah I don't think Mondev is sincere and ah the reason I say that is because ah Mondev has been trying to get every possible inch that they can and of course if I was in Mondev's shoes and was a builder, I would ah maybe do the same thing because they are trying to get every possible thing that they can get. Dan: Yeah. Reggie: And I think it's about time the City of Binghamton realizes that is all they're interested in and if they don't get everything that they want they'll just drop it like a hot potato. Dan: Well of course they have diminished the plans to the extent now that it doesn't make much difference whether they take it or leave it. Reggie: That's correct, that's correct. Dan: Of course in the meantime all the business has gone out to the Mall. Reggie: Right, right. Dan: Ah Reggie you mentioned that you were born in Pennsylvania. Reggie: Pittsburgh, PA. Dan: Pittsburgh, PA, and you came here in 1918 and for what reason did you come to Binghamton? Reggie: Well my father was connected with ah ah a tire company. Dan: Oh I see. Reggie: He ah it started out in Gallipos, Ohio, this tire company, and then it moved to Binghamton—it was called Achilles Rubber and Tire Company—it was located at the north end of Floral Avenue. Dan: Uh huh. Reggie: Matter of fact it was the first tire company in the world or in the country that guaranteed their tire to go 10,000 miles. (laughter). Dan: So, so he stayed here then. Reggie: He stayed in Binghamton. Dan: And then you went, you went to Central and all your grammar school and everything. Reggie: Right. Dan: Your education was here in Binghamton. OK and do you belong to any clubs at all Reggie? Reggie: Yes I belong to the New York State Professional Engineers ah Society and also belong to the Knights of Columbus and of course the Notre Dame Alumni and also the Notre Dame Monogram Club. Dan: Umum. Reggie: I think that’s about the extent. Dan: That’s about the extent and you're married and how many children? Reggie: Married and I had two boys ah my youngest son was ah killed in an automobile accident and my oldest boy, John, is a professor at the University of Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Dan: I see. Reggie: He's a clinical psychologist. Dan: Oh. Reggie: Doctor of Clinical Psychologist. Dan: Wonderful, wonderful, fine and you had your first grandchild this ah— Reggie: Just ah, let’s see, just a couple of weeks ago. Dan: Just a couple of weeks ago. (laughter). OK now is there anything else you would like to include in this interview Reggie before I terminate it? Reggie: No I don't think so. Dan: I think you have covered your working experiences quite well. Reggie: Yes I think I have. Dan: Uh huh but you were in office during the height of the building ah development of downtown. Reggie: Right, right. Dan: And since you left, why, it's and it was a politically appointed position. Reggie: I was, yeah, uh huh. Dan: OK fine—well thank you very much Reggie—would you like me to play this back for you? [Pause] Dan: Reggie you mentioned you wanted to make some corrections in the interview especially starting now with the starting salary you got when you first went to IBM. Reggie: Yes ah I mentioned I got $2.00 an hour well that was a mistake, I got 20 cents an hour at that time. Dan: OK and then you ah at Notre Dame. Re ie: Yes the other player I would like to mention I played with out at Notre Dame was ah ah Jumping Joe Savoldi who was an All American at Notre Dame and later he played with the Chicago Bears as a football player and then after that he went into wrestling and became the World's heavyweight champion wrestler and ah he defeated ah Strangler Lewis for the championship and that ah and in those days ah that was a regular championship match—as you know today wrestling is more of a— Dan: —a show. Reggie: —a show more than anything else but not in those days, they were championship matches. Dan: Right, right. Thank you Reggie. Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Date of Interview 1978-04-27 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 Regis C. McNamara Subject The topic of the resource McNamara, Regis C. -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.); University of Notre Dame; University of Notre Dame -- Football; Rockne, Knute, 1888-1931; World War--1939-1945; Engineers -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.) -- Officials and employees -- Interviews; International Business Machines Corporation; Binghamton City Engineer Description An account of the resource Regis C. McNamara talks about his education at the University of <a href="http://www.nd.edu">Notre Dame</a> and playing football under Knute Rockne.  During World War II he was a Lieutenant in the Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit. He worked for IBM and then as an engineer for New York State at Chenango Valley Park. He held the position of Deputy City Engineer for Binghamton before being appointed City Engineer by the then-mayor of Binghamton, Donald Kramer. He later held various positions with the State of New York and also as a private consultant. He discusses construction projects he worked on, such as, the Brandywine Highway, post office, a sewage disposal plant and a new water plant. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 44A ; Recording 44B Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McNamara, Regis C. ; O'Neil, Dan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-04-27 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 35:54 Minutes ; 14:35 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/452f0fe05e924e1a7221f51da635fbd2.jpg 8271af811647c16d2b6b6b9162071982 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/08465f1a4d3db4bce08cd1cc191cf17a.mp3 a83e1374ece0de7d8e4a0435b73cce42 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. <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 2009-10-10 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rennie Davis Language English Biographical Text Rennie Davis (1940-2021) was a spiritual lecturer and an activist. Davis was an American anti-Vietnam war protest leader of the 1960s. He was one of the Chicago Seven defendants. He appeared on several shows, including Larry King Live and Barbara Walters, and provided business advice for Fortune 500 companies. Davis was an alumnus of Oberlin College. 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.) 125:41 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Voting rights; Drug culture; Baby boom generation;Healing; Vietnam Memorial; Hippies; Yippies; Peace Corps; Trust; Mistrust of government; Kent State; Watergate; Richard Nixon; Democratic Convention; Weathermen; Students for a Democratic Society; Vietnam Veterans; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Lyndon Johnson; John F. Kennedy; Robert F. Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":13228792}}">Voting rights; Drug culture; Baby boom generation;Healing; Vietnam Memorial; Hippies; Yippies; Peace Corps; Trust; Mistrust of government; Kent State; Watergate; Richard Nixon; Democratic Convention; Weathermen; Students for a Democratic Society; Vietnam Veterans; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Lyndon Johnson; John F. Kennedy; Robert F. Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X. Subject LCSH Chicago Seven Trial, Chicago, Ill., 1969-1970; Political activists--United States; Davis, Rennie--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Rennie Davis Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Carrie Blabac-Myers Date of interview: 10 October 2009 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 0:02 RD: That is probably worse than what happened to [inaudible] finding, you know, Christianity as a religion that did not really make any sense at all, so Tom kind of went through, what in the world? I mean, it was just, you know, I was viewed by myself too. I was a self-image, but other people too, just so stable in my politics and my consistency, what I believed and what I would do, you could count on me you know, and it was nice to have. Then all of a sudden you could not count on me anymore and I thought, oh what happened? 0:44 SM: How did you used to be for the record questions? I answered? How did you become who you became? 0:50 RD: In the (19)60s? 0:51 SM: In other words, experience? Yeah, when we when and when students on college campuses saw you and Tom. You know, a lot of us knew about Tom because of the Free Speech Movement and, and the poor Iran statement, and we were reading about that young man from Michigan. But where did you come from? How did you get? How did you get the 1968? Chicago? I mean? 1:16 RD: Well, my dad was the Chief of Staff of Truman's Council of Economic Advisers, and was a, had left University teaching when Roosevelt came in, you know, and but basically saw himself as supporting a government trying to do recovery with stimulation. And so he was pro Liberal government, you know, Liberal Democrat, I would say that it risen to the highest level of his profession. And I grew up in an environment, a climate, I mean, he lost a job when Eisenhower was elected president. 2:10 SM: Definitely a democrat. 2:12 RD: He had purchased this 500-acre farm about seventy miles west of Washington and decided because he had himself grown up on a farm in Sao Paulo, Ohio that he was, you know, from his perspective, black balled and Washington, he could not get a job, you know, in his profession, at least for a while. So he decided to make a go of it on the farm. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to us, you know. At first we were kicking and screaming, but so we all moved out to the farm and it looked like we were farmers. I mean, you know, the nearest neighbor was almost a half a mile away, it was a very isolated place, but beautiful place, but, and I went to, you know, a local high school and I guess I found myself about a year ahead of everybody, academically, just coming from the Washington School to a rural country Virginia School. But right away, started making good grades for me, you know? And then I got active in activities in the in the school too. I was president the student body, I was editor in chief of the school newspaper. I became kind of um, I won the state championship in 4H, poultry judging. I won the eastern United States poultry judging contest. Then I had a stolen from me in Chicago. That was my view, but it was not really. So I had the farming thing and I was, I suppose you could say I was high school activism and I was doing a lot of things in high school. 4:03 Unnamed speaker: You were telling me about a rally that you did in high school, didn’t you? 4:07 RD: Valley? 4:08 Unnamed speaker: A rally did not you do a rally in high school or something like a demonstration? 4:13 RD: Well, we had a dance thing that we moved off, you know, we rented a place I had a band, I played the piano, and we had a nightclub type of thing, you know, but there were not any chaperones. We were just doing it on our own, you know, and it was became a big controversial thing with the principle of the school. I would not call it too political but anyway, during this period, I asked my dad, you know, I had a worldview and thinking about issues I sort of you know, I was I went to an all-white high school. You know, I did not really fully glock segregation when I was in high school. I had a very high-grade point average, which, you know, I fortunately, got me into a decent undergraduate school, I went to Oberlin College in Ohio. And I, in the first year was terror of trying to catch up with everybody and then by the second year, I became roommate with a guy named Paul Potter, who was, who knew Tom. Tom was at the University of Michigan, we were at Oberlin. And it was it was very interesting. I mean, you were in January 1960, you really could not tell that it was not still the 1950s. There was no signs of anything really. It was my first intuitive moment, I would say, you know, I knew in January 1960, something immense and huge was about to happen. And I could not really say what it was other than it felt like the entire generation was going to come together and really make a difference in the world, you know, but there was there was zero, so I mean, there was nothing going on. I mean, before Kennedy was elected. Well, yeah, this would be maybe with Kennedy. Kennedy, what would have been a January 20, 1960. So the election was happening. I mean, you could say also the, you know, I mean, I watched the Stevenson campaign with Eisenhower. And we were drawn to the elegance of Stephenson, and his family and so on. But there was no civil rights movement. I mean, there were there were things let you know about now, historically, but not in the media. But it was just it was just entertaining. There was just like a vibration or something. I do not know that is probably not the right word, it was a knowingness that, that I was a part of something that was huge, you know. And I knew that really before the, right there at the end of (19)59, very early (19)60. And then, for me, the thing that launched everything was February 4, 1960. When four students that A&T college, you know, sat down in Greensboro. And you know, we watched this thing through the media. Now, Life magazine came out with this picture book story and it was mostly it was just shocking, you know, I mean, I mean, I grew up in an all-white school. And yet, for me, the idea that blacks had no justice, they could not have a hamburger, you know, there were two whites and negro toilets. And they, you know, it was just like, I did not know where I was, I mean, I did not get it, you know, before, but now I could see, you know. So it was a little bit of my father's values about justice, fair play and equality and you know, those kind of principles. Yet, you know, beating reality that was like, shocking and like oh, my God, you know. So, it was by February, early March, and by February, I would say we were full tilt 100 percent into a movement that really technically did not even exist, but talented kids, it was like, wow, here we go, you know? And from that day forward, I would say it was pretty much nonstop, twenty-four seven for thirteen years, was the only thing that was really our focus. Tom showed up. Well, I wound up organizing a political convention in Oberlin College, where students nominated a mock convention, you know, you nominate a presidential candidate. I was the campaign manager for Hubert Humphrey, who at that moment was considered kind of a liberal. 5:52 SM: Yeah. That must have been a great experience. 9:22 RD: Yeah, and then Tom showed up, you know, one spring day at school and basically, oh, and we from there we formed the political party called the Progressive Student League. And these are all unheard of concepts. Yeah. I mean, they were just seemed like we were ingrained with this or something it was weird, because nothing was telling us to do any of this was sort of natural. You know? So we so we ran up a slate of candidates for student government. I was the chairman of the party; I did not run as a candidate, but our slate swept the whole thing. So, we controlled every single seat on Student Government [laughter] Like all at one time. Now I was really powerful. 10:17 SM: You were empowered. 10:18 RD: I was empowered, yeah. 10:19 SM: Tom talks about them, you know, when he came to our campus, that our students were having a hard time. [inaudible] When you hear, when do you think the (19)60s and the (19)70s began? What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of that period? 10:47 RD: Well, that was what I was just sharing. I would say the sense of the (19)60s started around December 1959 and January (19)60. There were some events like Kennedy running for president. But quite honestly, what I said was not apparent. And what it was, was a sense of a generation, young people generation, who was going to make the world a better place? Really make a difference. And there really was not any objective, tangible evidence that I can, you know, that I noticed anyway, for that, it was just an internal sense. Then the external event for me was the February fourth sit in. 11:45 SM: Okay. 11:46 RD: So that launched me into a full time into a campaign to you know, the (19)60s movement. 11:56 SM: That would be, that was my next question here. Is there one specific event that shaped your life when you were young? What was that event? 12:02 RD: Well, that was the event that triggered everything, yeah. 12:08 SM: When did you sense that, not only within your group, but within the boomer generation and again, when we define the boomer generation now, because there have been books written about, they kind of define those individuals born between 1946 and 1964. And we know that a lot of people that were leaders in the anti-war, movement, civil rights, and a lot of these other movements were older than that. But when did you start sensing that the boomer generation, this post-war generation was- 12:44 RD: January 1960. 12:46 SM: That very same period. 12:47 RD: That is what I am talking about. That sense that there was a new generation that was going to change the world was internally sensed. Then the external launch was February 4th but they, you could say, well, that the SDS has not really got started, or there was not that much activity going on. But the mood shifted, the climate changed. I mean, the media was driving the sit-ins, and, you know, that was all happening, but to say that by - we organized this mock political convention, and it had the quality of the movement already, you know, occurring. And then then we formed the political party and it caught on. I mean it was, unheard of you know, probably, I do not know if any university ever really did that. I mean, maybe they did, but, you know, to us for the (19)50s. I mean, that was just, you know, I mean, we were you ran for student government over, you know, the right that visit women's dorms or things, you know, I mean, it was social issues locally. I mean, we were on it, we ran on our campaign of recognizing China as a government! Okay, that was one of our platform, plans, you know, civil rights for black people. It was all political. That was in the fall that was in the spring of well, I guess that would be (19)60. January (19)60? Yeah. Spring of (19)60. Then Tom Hayden shows up and basically is promoting a student organization nationwide. And he has already formed a political party in Michigan at the University of Michigan. It is almost identical, in concept of what we have just done at Oberlin, and we never talked about it, there was no communication about it. We just like, obvious to do this. And it had never been obvious before, you know. And so we were all excited. Yeah, let us go National and get things going and we were sending, you know, we were sending money, and support to students that were then forming themselves in, in the south. And so SDS emerged, Students for a Democratic Society and simultaneously at the same time, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee emerged. All of this, you know, in the spring of (19)60 and SDS was now a support system and a fan club for SNCC. You know, then basically, from there, we were starting to recognize that there was a national, I guess, you could say, leadership group sort of forming and we came together to produce a kind of a Tom Payne common sense pamphlet for the present time. And that became known as the Fourth Huron Statement. I mean Tom did, you know, a very elegant first draft, but a lot of people were involved in the writing of that, you know, quite a few. It was a group of people that, you know, emerged, Todd Giblin and, 16:29 SM: I did interview Todd. 16:30 RD: Yeah, yeah, I mean, there is a lot of people that, you know, contributed, Al Heber, myself, to the writing of that, you know, then that sort of caught on like wildfire on the campus, the Fourth Huron statement, and then we were looking for what are our next steps, and we felt like the next steps for us was to organize in communities, black communities, with a focus on voting rights, and also poor white communities with a focus on economic issues. And so, I became the director of something called the Economic Research and Action Project or ERAP in, let us see, I think we, we formalized that in the fall of (19)63 at a meeting in New York. Bob Dylan actually came to that meeting, sat in the back, you know, he was, and, you know, we were all thrilled with Bob Dylan you know! I mean, the immediate, he was similar, you know, he was just out of nowhere comes this voice that seems to be expressing something that we all, you know, aligned with, it was just like, it was all happening naturally. Without, I mean, there was a lot of work and organizing. But the thing that I do not think has ever been talked about, from anything I have ever read, was how self-organizing, it occurred. How the mood of young people just changed kind of overnight, in a flash and there was suddenly a base, where, you know, everywhere you went, there were people, you know, it is like two societies emerging, you know, a new nation just appearing overnight with I mean, yeah, it was organized to death and that made all the difference, ultimately, but what never really been understood or explained or talked about from, from what I have seen out there, maybe it has been, I just do not read everything, but just how this thing appeared kind of out of nowhere, you know, if you wanted to believe that human beings exist, after they die, or come in, you know, with a plan, not that you need to do that but just to be hypothetical for a minute, it was almost as if an entire generation chose to come in and do something. It was. It was just, it was weird, almost, you know. It was not, it was as, as if something had been pre-planned, you know, they all show up to be in this huge experiment of love and democracy and, you know, personal experimentation and breaking from society. Or it was it was just like a new culture, suddenly appeared overnight. And there were clearly two cultures, there was cultures of the fifties that still continued right into the (19)60s that was, you know, normal Americans, adults, you know. And then there was young people. And so, you know, you could, I did this many times I mean, I would just get a whim to go, I mean, I might be living here in Washington and decide to go to San Francisco. And so, you know, I would, you know, have a coat, I mean usually an army fatigue and put a toothbrush in my pocket, and probably nothing more, you know, and then just walk out onto the street, right in front of my house, and you did not have to be a main thoroughfare or anything. I would just stick out my thumb and the chance, I mean, within five minutes, there would be this painted van coming along, you know. 20:32 SM: I remember that. 20:33 RD: I mean, this was happening very quickly, you know. It is just like, suddenly we were everywhere. And it seemed like everywhere you turn around there was, you know, like minded people. I do not know how to describe them, free spirits, um, certainly doing some experimentation with pot. Yeah, you know, dressing you know, you know, not in a conventional way. I mean, not too careful. I mean, colorful and long hair. I mean the whole culture started to appear, you know, and appeared very quickly is what I am saying, you know. So we went into, from there, we went into community organizing and then I finally we worked with Bob Moses at a time later, Bob Harris, you know, and his project in Mississippi. And then, you know, we had a similar projects 150 students in ERAP that went into ten communities in the north. That was launched in 1965. The summer of (19)64 - (19)65 which is how it all started. 21:48 SM: How do you respond to in 1994, when Newt Gingrich came to power, he loved to make comments about the boomer generation and George Willis continued to do so with a lot of his writing and other political commentators, that the, the reason for the breakdown of American society goes back to that boomer generation: the reason why we had the divorce rate, the reason why we do not trust leaders, the reason why we have divisions between black and white, those who voted for the troops and against the troops, it was all for and against, for and against, and it created an environment that we have today where nobody talks to each other. They do not trust anybody. And Newt Gingrich and George Will, are two of the people that have written a lot on this. And actually, you know, Newt is a boomer, a lot of people think he is from Georgia, he is from Pennsylvania, born in Pennsylvania, until the age of twelve and of course, Ronald Reagan, when he became president, he made also comments: "We are back", you know, "We are back". You know, "America is back, love America", it was really a condemnation putting blame on that generation or those people that were linked to that generation, how do you respond to that? To those commentators? 23:12 RD: I think evolution, is, I can appreciate that. That point of view. I really can. But on the other side, would be on the other side. You know, taking the kind of shots at, I think maybe the better sociological study on this question with Paul Ray. With just doing a massive, one of the large probably the largest survey that has ever been done, recent, sort of recently about this society is Paul Ray's work where you know, it is, it is statistically scientific and try to actually measure the values of the whole society. And so, he finds that the smallest segment is the is the group that that Newt is talking about, that he describes this traditionalist, small town, rural, local, America first right or wrong, homespun values, you know, you, you trust the people you know, you do not trust, big government, Washington, farming roots, you know, agricultural roots, that sort of thing. And I forget the percentages, I mean, you can look those up. But then there was the rationalist which basically tended to include the modern big city, financially oriented. Rationalist meant that there really was not a guiding set of principles the way traditionalists had, they were more, doing what is practical. They were, you know, cosmopolitan and smart and, you know, they would, you know, they could create derivatives in a nanosecond, you know, or whatever was coming up, you know, that that kind of idea. They were not necessarily Democratic or Republican, but probably more democrats in general. They were not really that political, they were more practical, you know, pragmatist, that sort of idea, you know. And they were the dominant result in the study. But then there was this third group. That was actually this was the new emerging group, because the rationalists and the traditionalists had defined this country, historically, all through every generation. Now, suddenly, there was this new group that had this set of values that had reached critical mass. And they clearly had their roots in the (19)60s. They were oriented to environmentalism; they were curious about world events. They could take a position and study the point of view of another country about this country. And it was not America, right or wrong, it was like, they could see an international perspective. They tended to you know, favor participatory democracy kind of idea. And there was also within them, although they favored women, they favored blacks, they had all those kinds of things, but there was also within them a, an interest in spirituality, and not religion. But something else, you know, that never got clearly defined but it was more open ended, you know, seeking the truth, you know, answering the question, who am I, you know? Sitting quietly in nature, and just musing with yourself a little bit. Some of the things that happened after the drug explosion, when people went into nature and just tried to find themselves a little bit, and, you know, just be beautiful, and you know, love life, and that sort of thing, you know, kind of weird thing. I mean, if you are a farmer, where I grew up, you know, go and sit on a rock, and just adore of the sunset, I mean, he kind of do, but not really, you know, you work up until it is time to go to sleep, and then you get up and you work some more. And then you die, you know? It is a little more like that, where this idea of leisure time and introspection and finding out who I am, you got, a wa-wa things that I am putting into the rubric of spirituality. This was discovered by Paul Ray too, you know, that this was one of the components of this group, you know. And that this group was redefining the political landscape of this country. Now, all groups want to blame each other for you know, their misery and their problems. And that until human being changed their awareness stage and realize a little more about how the world really works, you know, that is going to be a natural thing. So people, people think that, you know, the republicans are doing it to me, I would say, though, that, that we live in the moment right now, where this basic, you could call it a fissure or separation is now intensifying, and peaking potentially, to the potential ending of the human species. Whether the human race will actually survive or kill itself off. This, the seeds of that question are planted right now in what we were seeing when you just turn on the television watching a talk show. I mean, all conflict is intensifying, all blame is intensified. I am not talking about which side to be on I am just talking about side-taking itself. Okay. So side-taking itself is intensifying, no one can hear anybody. And, you know, I mean, you can be Keith Oberlin or you can be Glenn Beck. You know, the point is that I am trying to make is that neither one can hear each other. They are both demonizing the other side, no one sees human beings anymore. They just see hatred for the opposition and blame everything that is wrong with, on the other side. We are actually moving now into a moment of the first what I would call the first stage of hysteria, the same kind of hysteria that is always been behind all wars. Okay. So war has officially ben the historic byproduct of this kind of hysteria. And what I just said, I do not see, I do not see in the right or the left, any understanding of this, okay. Everybody was so immersed in their position that the idea that you are attacking humanity itself, that it is not about which side you are on, it is about side kicking itself. Okay. It is reaching a level where this leads to war. Okay, civil war or international war? But that is where it ultimately goes. And then nobody say that everybody, you know, buttons down. 31:17 SM: Very good. Paul Ray. How do you spell that last name? 31:21 RD: R. A. Y. 31:23 SM: Has he written a book? 31:25 RD: Yeah, he wrote, he calls this third group Cultural Creative. It would be good for you to look at it because a lot of good, you know, statistical information about the very subject that we are talking about here. I think it is the best study so far really. 31:47 SM: If you look at the boomer generation, now, the seventy to seventy-five million, what would be some of the strengths of that group and what will be some of their weaknesses? As someone who not only worked with many of them, and inspired many of them, and I am sure you got frustrated with many of them, and as you look at them when you were younger, and when they were younger, and how you look at them now is there; now, first group has now reached I think sixty-two or sixty-three? Social Security, I think is the first group now right now, the sixty-two-year-olds. 32:22 RD: Uh huh. 32:24 SM: What do you see as their strengths and weaknesses, if you were to describe them as a group? 32:36 RD: I look at strengths and weaknesses, through the eyes of evolution. What furthers the growth of humanity? What allows humanity to come out of a very immature stage of awareness into a more mature stage of awareness, not, not as a judgment, but just as a trend, you know, where, and so from that point of view, humanity at an immature stage of awareness, has some of these qualities. They are very closed. Okay, their bodies are closed, their, their thoughts are closed, they are very, they have identities that protect whatever their belief system is. It is a little bit my way or highway kind of thing. And for humanity to mature, humanity needs to open and open is tied also to respect. When you disrespect, especially life, you close. You make judgments, you close, you do not really, you are not aware, you do not really see nuances or subtleties. So, from an evolutionary point of view of how the human race might survive, grow, and one day evolve into the magnificence that it actually could be, I am looking for human beings that can listen, human beings that can be rather than just be so caught up in their thoughts that they cannot really hear anything. The human being that is open, respectful of life, you know, recognizes that nature is living, not just an inanimate object, so you know that the only thing that is on this planet is human, and nothing else is really that important, really. So from that point of view, these guys have evolution. I would say that the boomer generation was on the whole, hopeful. The drug part of it is sort of good news and bad news in a way. I mean, the, what the, what the drugs did was to essentially remove inhibitors between the brain and the mind. You know, we all have inhibitors. We have inhibitors about sex, we have inhibitors about pretty much everything really, you know. So, you remove some of those inhibitors and if you are in a kind of a beautiful setting, you know, you might see your future, you might see a big picture, you know, you might get a little glimpse of how just beautiful you really are, you know. You might see yourself, as not just the human body, just things like that. So, the LSD, the peyote, though, you know, the hallucinogenic drug part of this, you know, caused many people do have an altering perspective on things, you know, that, you know, I am not defending drugs, I am just saying this was not a bad, you know, that did come out of this. Now, Newt Gingrich would be all upset that this happened, but it was expansive on the whole, there was also though a, the roots of, of humanity itself, were there too. And so, if you looked at the, say, the drug experience, you really could see, there were two levels. You know, there was the- what today would be the rave party experience, you know, just, you know party, you have no respect for anybody's space, while you are on this journey is there is no such thing as a sacred journey, you know. You know, you do not care about the clutter in the room as you do your trip. And, and out of that, inevitably really would have come bad trips, you know, you could actually scar your mind you, I mean, you see some things that you have repressed that, you know were sort of dark and upsetting, you know. Then there were those that, you know, went into nature and, you know, really cared about their environment and saw it as a sacred thing, and would set their intentions for what they hope would come out of. And you know, would actually have a pretty beautiful, expanded experience from it, you know, so within the drug experience, you had both groups going on within the boomer broad, broadly speaking. And you saw the same thing, too. I mean, there was a period in the (19)60s, where you really could just jump in a car, as a woman, travel across the country and feel really safe. I mean, you know, hitchhiking be safe, you know, you were not going to be raped, attacked, or anything you were really love, you know, happening, you know, for a little period of time, you know. You know, then you had, you know, the call the dark side, whatever were things that sort of, you know people turned on each other, you know, it was not safe anymore. And you know, and so, we kind of lost that innocence, you know. But there was a little moment of innocence in the cultural part of this equation, not so much the anti-war movement part, but in the cultural part. There was an innocence and that from an evolutionary, human evolutionary point of view, that is precious. That is very precious, you know, and so that was there. So within the strengths and the weaknesses, we brought as a group, our own strengths and weaknesses of humanity. And you know, the dark side came up, that repression came up, the hateful things came up, but also the innocence and the beauty and trust and the respect for life. And so there were there both things were present no different than the people themselves. Now, you know, when the whole thing closed, and everybody moved on, you know, then people when you know started or you know, money became important again, and having a household and, you know, family and children, you were going to pay rent now, and you know, it was not such a free carefree world anymore. The, sense is, though, that people were nevertheless affected by whatever it was, you know, there was an underlying beat river, to the whole thing. And it may be that that deep river appears again, you know, in another time, maybe this time, but not so much from the sixty-year-old but from younger people. It was, it was a life changing event. That would be really hard to find in this country's history any parallel. 40:08 SM: Good that brings me right into my next question and that is when I was on college campus there was this feeling of oneness even if you did not know a lot of the people there was a feeling. You hit it right on the point there about this innocence. Because I can remember specifically, because I did a lot of hitchhiking. Hitchhiked to Boston. Hitchhiked with my friends. I never was worried about it ever. And I remember some of the girls on the college campuses at that time were hitchhiking too then something happened in 1970-(19)71 school year, then all of a sudden, if the girls, the women are going into Binghamton you need if you have accompaniment, (19)71, (19)72, (19)73 things started change then. But the question that I want to ask is, there was this feeling that we were the most unique generation in American history. A lot of boomers felt they were very unique, because they wanted to change the world, they bring peace, that all kind of this utopia kind of feeling. And just you are thoughts on, on that. Just this feeling. And some a lot of boomers still feel it as sixty-year-olds despite all the criticisms, just your thoughts on whether they were the most unique or? 41:35 RD: Well, I would like to not turn it into self-aggrandizement for the generation you know, but you if you can kind of get out of self-importance about it because you happen to be one or something, I would say that I do not, the only generation that either remotely comes close would be the founding fathers. There you had a more of a leadership group, maybe similar to some of the people that were around SDS, and so on, that really carried an incredible legacy from kind of a controlling institutional world, whether it was a monarchy or a church institution. But all over the news, force and torture and so forth, to maintain a power base. Life was not safe, life was not really, you did not feel excited, you did not feel open, you watched your back, you know, your womb. And then coming into Europe comes so called enlightenment philosophers, John Locke, Descartes, you know, different, different writers who, you know, kind of set the stage. And the stage is all read by these founding fathers who follow what they were called. They, they envision, a- you know, a government that is really a new concept in the world, you know, it is it is very similar to SDS. It is not called participatory democracy. But it is democracy, you know, and it is, and it checks and balances over the excesses of egos of human beings. There is a lot of wisdom, you know, being expressed. And there is a country that, you know, has always been fine with Great Britain, that for a variety of reasons shifts and, gets motivated and inspired by philosophical visions. Especially the reading of Common Sense of Tom Payne. So suddenly, you have got a popular base that is buying very visionary concepts for that time you know. Well, when you look at all the other generations, Roosevelt, certainly, you know, had a had a gift for words and holding people together, not unlike Obama now, although Obama has his critics, Roosevelt did too, but it just was not the same. It is hard to see a group of people, creating a new vision, like a new humanity, a new vision of humanity with a mass base behind it that is trying to act and live and walk its talk as best it can and except for the founding time of the country, which is even there, it is a little bit of a stretch, I mean, you got certain elements to it. This, the (19)60s generation just is pretty unique. You know. From a point of view of personal growth, from the point of view of social change, from the point of view of freedom from stereotypes, moving away from racism, moving away from women oppression, you know, equality of all people, the very themes that the founding fathers are trying to say. I would say the (19)60s, grasped the vision, and had a mass constituency, attempting to do it. 45:51 SM: Hold on a second, make sure I turn this tape. Okay, its going. 46:02 RD: Ok, for a lot of people, and by a lot I mean, millions of people, it was the defining event of their life. It defined who they were as a person and it might spill in today into being a democrat rather than a republican or something but that kind of misses the point. It was more like founding father time, you know. Big, big thinking, big philosophy, inspiring humanity to its greatest potential. Freedom as an individual, not buying into authority concepts anymore. You know, society be damned! We are forming a new society! You know, we are democrat! We are a democratic society, you know, kind of thing. You had a mass base, that divided into two elements. One was sort of the political side, the other was the cultural side although they overlapped a lot. And taken together, they made for a time and a people that, you know, can have no parallels in American history. 47:20 SM: Very well put very well put. I wish I knew it Newt was here. 47:28 RD: I do not know; we might not be able to have our conversation then. 47:32 SM: I want to I am going to read this part here. Do you feel that boomers are still having problems with healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? Divisions between black and white divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize. Division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. How has the wall, the Vietnam Memorial wall play in healing the divisions? Not just for veterans but beyond the veterans and their families. And do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave like senator Edmund Muskie said to our students, when we met with him before he passed away, that they will be like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has forty years made the statement "time heals all wounds" truthful? Just your thoughts about, have we healed as a nation since all the divisions back in the (19)60s, early (19)70s? 48:35 RD: Well, you know, healing like everything else is in the eye of the beholder. Do people who are baby boomers taken as an aggregate, walk around with a lot of hurt and scars over the divisions of the country that Newt Gingrich might say were caused by the baby boomers? Do they really have that sense of they really, you know, the divisions were there? You know, something that weighs heavy on them. Do the Traditionalists feel so deeply like Newt was expressing that the country is forever scarred and ruined by the (19)60s Boomer world? And so they can never go to the grave feeling they never healed the country back to the Reagan vision or something like that. Well, I, I think that if I you know, I do not know you maybe probably know that better than I do, really. But I would say for my main point is that I do not think the baby boomers have a lot of hurt and things to heal in themselves relative to this question. I really do not. I think that they may be disappointed that they did not achieve their agenda. They may wish they could go further. They may look to Obama as the current modern expression of what this is all led to. But they may be frustrated by, you know, the prejudice and the separation and the traditionalist value thinking but I do not think they are going to the grave hurt. I mean, Vietnam veterans coming back maybe pain our pain, many of them. There may be elements like that there might be somebody that had a bad trip that has psyche scars that, but I think those are the minority. I mean, I do not think those is defined the whole baby boomer world, you know. I think the baby boomers are kind of healthy on the whole, you know, relative this question. If, if there had to be an evaluation between the traditionalist and the baby boomers, it might be that the traditionalist is more hurting about this than the baby boomers. But I do not know that that is so deep, either. I mean, I think that they reject what is happening in the modern world, if you want to call baby boomers the modern world. They do not buy into it. But I do not think that they are hurt by it. I think what you have is two cultures, you know that and then in a certain way, Newt is on to something, you know, what you have got is a country that has really divided into segments, you know, two different cultures. The (19)60s certainly example of it had the stick, you know, the normal culture, and then you had the weirdos the (19)60s, hippies, yippies. You, you know, and but if you were a hippie, you did not, you were not upset about it. I mean, this was your life. I mean, this was great. This is far out. And this was American flag and apple pie and America right or wrong. That was fine, too. They were two different worlds. And they were not really exchanging ideas, interfacing with each other. They did not see each other as all human beings, it was very rare to see, in this modern time, a true coming together as humanity. The maybe the last time he saw it at all was the night of the millennium. In a very unexpected way, where all of humanity kind of came off without anybody blowing anybody up, killing anybody. Everybody just yeah, big time, you know, that, you know, the Olympics is it occasionally. But still the leading light, I would say in the world relative to seeing something that is, all humanity is participating in a great competitive sport. But it all comes together at the end, and we are all human beings. So, the thing that has been lost by the process that we are in apparently, it is too early to tell the outcome, is our humanity. So, baby boomers do not see humanity in traditionalists. They do not. They do not see humanity when they look at George Bush, they do not see humanity when they see Newt Gingrich, they do not see humanity when they hear Glenn Beck. They do not. And the same is true the other way you know, there is no humanity being felt for Obama. There is no humanity being felt for Rachel Maddow. You know, probably from the whether you call it the right or traditional equivalent, I call it you know, there are two cultures in this country. And the, the biggest group, which is the rationalist, but just make money, let us be smart, savvy, and sophisticated and all mature and grown up, do not really think deeply. You know, they are not really into philosophy, they do not really grasp the big picture. You know, they are more about the short-term gain that and those games get shorter and shorter and shorter. It used to be a quarter focus. Now it is daily, hourly, you know, kind of thing. It is very self-aggrandizement in its orientation. It is not really worried about global warming. Or, you know, the world situation. Or I mean, yeah, a little bit but, but that is still the dominant group. So yeah, Paul Ray was right, you still have these three major groups, the biggest group being the rationalist of the pragmatists in the middle, are almost tuned out to the main events that are going on all around them. And the main bent is basically the right wing and the left wing. Okay, the baby boomer thing, the left and the and the traditionalist and the Republican Party being the right. 55:38 SM: How do you deal with another criticism is given to the boomers. And that is that, again, oftentimes, I have read this, ah jeeze, there is seventy-five million people only 15 percent, were ever really involved in any kind of an activism. So that is, you know, for them 85 percent of seventy-five million, that is not, you know, that is not, that means a lot of people did not care, a lot of people were not involved in the generation. 56:06 RD: The baby boomers? 56:06 SM: The baby boomers. 56:07 RD: Uh huh. 56:08 SM: But the common I have always said, you need to talk about 15 percent of seventy to seventy-five million, that is a hell of a lot of people. 56:15 RD: Yeah. 56:15 SM: And secondly, I just like your thoughts, because it seems to me that the subconscious is just as important as the conscience here. And so, we might say that 15 percent were involved in activism, but the other 85 percent had to be affective somewhat because they were part of something. Unless they were closed in a room someplace away from, it really had to affect them in some way. 56:41 RD: Yeah. 56:41 SM: And, and, and I think, so I liked your thoughts on that. That is another criticism given to the boomers. And secondly, the influence of boomers have had on their kids, and now grandkids in terms of passing on this sense of activism, or lack thereof, just your thoughts on a two part question there. 56:59 RD: I agree with what you are saying, you know, 15 percent of a society is a huge number, quite honestly, 2 percent of a society produces critical mass. Critical mass starts to develop this mysterious thing that our science as an "envi" is the Hundredth Monkey Effect. I say our science because they, you know, it was WWII you know, they went on to an island where no human beings have been and monkeys watched, you know, the Americans doing their thing and pretty soon the monkey started washing their hands and peeling the bananas like humans did. And that was, you know, observed scientifically and noted. But then islands that were nearby that had no contact at all, the monkeys started to peel their bananas and wash their hands, as well. And so, there is a transfer of some, some mechanism is occurring, or at least it theorizes by the Hundredth Monkey Effect, that a small group of people reaching a certain critical mass can profoundly affect the entirety of humanity. And, you know, I could give you my own science on that, but that is not necessarily for this purpose, you know. You would have to come tonight for that. 58:26 SM: Right. 58:27 RD: But, you know, there is a science to it, there really is and so you are on to it, you know. 58:33 SM: Right. 58:35 RD: A relatively small group of people still reaching critical mass, but changing their awareness changing how they see the world, changing their perception can have a positive or a negative effect, depending on what the change is. 58:51 SM: Is not that was the Peace Corps was about? 58:53 RD: Well, I guess so, you know, that is the that is the vision of going out and, you know, creating examples and being an example of bringing your enthusiasm into an area where basically is- a little drudgery and hard work and suddenly, you have got creativity and excitement and new and a helping hand carrying some water buckets too. It is certainly the concept. The thing is, though, that what the baby boomers seem unable to see in their expanded awareness, is that the people that are opposed to them. Let me see if I can explain this. A lot of baby boomers today have moved from politics and the (19)60s into more of personal growth. They are still political, they still vote, they still do things. But when it really comes down to what they are doing, they are a little more aligned, many of them okay, to the works of Deepak Chopra, or Wayne Dyer. They would go to a workshop that proposes the concept that you create your own reality. You are not a victim in the world, you can get back your life, you can take the reins of your life and there is, you want a positive attitude. Taking care of your health is an individual responsibility, not a governmental responsibility. You know, let us, let us stop the blame a little bit and work on ourselves. Okay, so I would say there is a progression going on in the baby boomers from the (19)60s into the you saw it at the end of the (19)60s and the early seventies. I mean, John Lennon goes to India, you know, sits with Mahatma, you know, the transcendental meditation guy. 1:01:10 SM: He just died last year. 1:01:13 RD: Yeah. You know, you had you know, a spiritual thing occurring kind of you know, gurus, you know, it was not so much the gurus, it was just looking for a new spirituality and the inner world. Well, that now we are all grown up, and we all have jobs, and we can put on suits. And we can talk a little more so that people can hear us. But if we are doing something, somewhere, as a baby boomer, if you were really to look at it, there is one group of activity that is raising money for health care, supporting the Al Gore campaign in some manner. There is that side, but there is also a huge side in personal growth, personal development, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, I mean, Wayne Dyer, you know make some amazing statements, when you think about it, and he is on NPR, or PBS or whatever, you know, he is a national 1:02:15 SM: Right. 1:02:15 RD: Speaker, you know, saying that, basically, if you want to change the experiences of your life, you have to change yourself. So, in the (19)60s, most people that were activists never thought about Mahatma Gandhi. If you want change the world, you have to change yourself. Okay. But John Lennon when he came into the movement, that is what he thought he did. He was coming into that and what I am trying to say is that there is a deep river underneath the baby boomers that you might want to take note of, okay, which is about, if you want to change the world, you have to change yourself. That is the concept. Now, it turns out, going way into the future, which is, you know, probably, uniquely, something I would do, but I do not know others will really want to do that. I would say that the greatest discovery in the history of the world, which is yet to be made, but it is still it right in front of us. It is not way off either. It is not, it could come from the cultural creatives, but maybe more likely, it is going to come from the field of particle physics, especially this new particle collider outside of Geneva. Okay, so what it is, is that here is the commonsense opinion of everybody on Earth, whether you are a cultural creative, a baby boomer, or a traditionalist okay? Bad things happen for no reason at all. Okay? Things outside myself are real. 1:03:51 SM: Right? 1:03:52 RD: The world outside myself is solid, objective, and independent of myself. This is the everybody okay? I do not care who you are. I mean, everybody operates as if that was the truth or the, the physics let us call it the physics of this world. Well, it turns out that that is not the physics of this world at all, is completely misinformed. The only comparison historically that you could find, I think, is in the sixteenth century. I mean, you got the earth is stable in space, and the sun orbits the Earth. And what I mean, just look out the window, those clouds are slow moving, the idea that the earth is hurtling through space at 67,000 miles an hour around the Sun is absurd. And you know, and then one man Nicholas Copernicus makes the argument that sorry, but everybody on earth is completely misinformed. Well, it is very similar today to the greatest discovery ever is that this world and this can come from a true understanding of the atom, The atom is operating on a mirror principle. It is simply reflecting back to you your own residual self-image. No one is doing anything to you. No one has ever done anything to you. The origin of everything you are experiencing is coming from 60,000 thoughts across your brain every twenty-four hours. That is the origin of everything. Now the baby boomers do not know that. And the traditionalists do not do that, and no human being on earth really understands that. But the baby boomers, especially this underlying river, about personal growth, you know, that sort of thing, are in a direction that is very similar to the field of particle physics. So, who is going to win the Nobel Prize for making the world's greatest discovery could be particle physics, understanding the mystery of the atom, or could be cultural creatives understanding the mystery of their self? Okay, either both basically produce the same discovery that it is all coming from you. Now, this is a devastating concept to every political system on Earth. That is that absolutely is rooted in the blame game. And, and it now makes mincemeat of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann, there is no, I mean what can you say. 1:06:21 SM: Did you go on TV and talk about this? 1:06:23 RD: No. 1:06:23 SM: Have you been invited? 1:06:25 RD: I do not know, I do not really seek out an invitation to this thing that I am doing right here today is a completely brand-new thing for me, you know, I mean, I am writing a book, is what I am doing, you know, and the book will, is profound for me just completely profound, and many, many subjects are addressed. And that is really my focus right now that would be my legacy. I would like to look, look away in the future and bring it right back to the present. But I do that, I mean, if you were to come tomorrow at the workshop, now, this is not an encouragement to come. 1:07:10 SM: Cannot go I have two winter meetings. 1:07:12 RD: What you will see is, not many people will come, you know, a few people will show up, but it will be the most impactful life changing event that they have ever had. I mean, they will feel like, their whole life has been waiting for this moment, that pretty much you know, if I do anything that is, and people can hang in there, you know, that is usually what it does. 1:07:35 SM: Right. 1:07:35 RD: It is quite a big deal, you know. But anyway, I see the baby boomers as being the seeds for a change of awareness. Ultimately, you know, starting with the (19)60s, going into nature, returning to the world, wanting to make the world a better place, environment, that sort of thing, keeping the spiritual side. And then the work to the extent that, you know, for a lot of people, Wayne Dyer, you know, he paused. It is a- it is not, I am just using them as archetypes. Not that they are the all that important. But inner work. You know, meditation is not weird or funny to a lot of these baby boomers, they may not talk about it. And they definitely think they are the only one who thinks this way. They do not recognize the collective, you know. I mean, they still think they are all by themselves. And it just even though there is 30 percent of the country is now makes up this group. They still think they are- no one thinks like me. But they are, they are the best possibility. Because what I understand is what is about to happen on earth. And what is about to happen on earth is you will never understand it unless you can understand evolution. So evolution is where an awareness change changes, okay? That- It is unheard of. We have no knowledge of it as a human race, okay? Because it is never here is the beginning of human, human there was there was something before human and then it was human. And then humans Marshall long. And now, this is the generation where human’s kind of come to a place where they are either going to evolve or they are not. 1:09:30 SM: Yeah, there is no. 1:09:32 RD: Right or wrong about it. There is just evolution is coming through with you or without you basically, yeah, so the, the baby boomers are, you know, may not make this jump. They may not, you know, because they fund the fundamental jump is partly even contemplated, or even considered by anybody, except those that are doing this inner work. They do not live it, but they understand it. They have been exposed to it; you know. So the awareness is that I mean, here would be the short version. The only power tool that you have as a human being is perception. So, the whole world, reflects your own perception. So how you see others is how you see yourself. How you see yourself is how you experience the world. This is not a philosophy, this is a physics, this is how it works. Okay? Now, it these details, a lot of information will defend that position, but I am able to defend it in detail to a science. Completely, you know, to the point where people will either think I am a great theoretician or run out of the room. But perception, it is all coming from ourselves from inside the world is not objective, real or solid. The world is a psychological construct whose origin is yourself. And the case is made by understanding the atom. 1:11:05 SM: That is going to be in that is going to be in your book. 1:11:07 RD: Yeah. 1:11:07 SM: When is the book supposed to be out? Are you going to go on college campuses? Because I think you need to. 1:11:13 RD: I would like to, you know, if I had good speaker’s bureau, and somebody who can you know, gets what I am a little bit. I think going back on campuses, which would be cool. You know, I am dabbling with that I have been, I kind of dropped out for fifteen years, I have not really talked to anybody you know. 1:11:28 SM: I think it would be really good on college campuses, there is just this whole- 1:11:34 RD: My answer to that, you know, the choice of birth, who chooses the parent? Does the child choose the parents or whose parents choose the child? The answer is the child chooses the parent every time to choose is the death? The Mack truck that runs out of control comes across the divide and is heading right your way. And the truck drivers little drunk to boot, you know? Is that the accident that was completely? Or are you yourself creating this whole experience? Meaning the truck coming right at you okay, or her? Okay? Well, it is, it is very challenging at this stage of awareness to even hear it, you know, because the fact is, is that she created her own timing her own death, her own way of going out. It was probably created before she was born. By herself. 1:12:29 SM: The drunk driver that killed her. 1:12:30 RD: I am sure there was, but I know. So, what I am saying is that the entire world of victim is self-inflicted. No one is doing anything to you. Therefore, everything I did in the (19)60s was a misunderstanding. As soon as you blame anyone for anything in your life, you turn your power over. And this is a huge, this is huge and you know. 1:13:03 SM: This is the change that Tom was asking you about? Right. Tom was? 1:13:07 RD: Yeah. I mean, Tom does not know about this but yeah, I mean, it was. So, you know, I have been on my own journey to kind of come around slowly to a point of view. And I have been the beneficiary of a lot of understanding not unlike Einstein got his information in waking dreams. You know, Einstein did not figure out the speed of light all by himself without any scientific instrumentation any more than Mozart wrote a perfect Sonata at age six. first draft and no changes, you know. He had help, you know. So I have help too you know. And that is fine. You know, I am not trying to be anything with it. You know, I have messenger. So to speak. 1:13:50 SM: I have a couple more questions that I just had some names here. Would you like to have some coffee now? 1:13:56 RD: I do not know. I am pretty good, actually. 1:13:59 SM: Sure, you do not want coffee? 1:14:01 RD: What time are we getting to here, ten to four. I do need a little bit of time to you know, get oriented. 1:14:07 SM: We have got about another twenty minutes. 1:14:09 RD: Okay, that sounds good. Yeah. 1:14:10 SM: I want to ask you, when did the (19)60s end, in your opinion when did the (19)60s end and what was the watershed moment that made it end? 1:14:19 RD: Well, for me, it is more how I would answer it, then some sociological understanding. You know, the big blowout event was the student strike in the spring of 1970 over Cambodia and Kent State right. Then comes Time magazine with the cover story "The Cooling of America" and basically for some people they would say that was the end right there. I mean, you could not get any you could not get SDS. SDS was now down to the hardcore was not like a big mass thing anymore. Nobody came. I wanted to go to Washington to do civil disobedience at that time. And I was the coordinator of the antiwar coalition at that time. And the coalition rejected my proposal, because they just did not see how it was possible and that it would fail. And so I actually went out on my own. Now, when I went on to a campus, everybody was still right there, everyone wanted to know what was happening, and personality showing up brought I mean, you know, the smallest group I had was 10,000 people anywhere I went, you know. Nobody could get twenty-five people in a room, but they would all come and hear me. And so, I realized, so when the- we had the opening day of the demonstration, I have 350,000 people, and one week later getting ready to be arrested 100,000 people. So then at that point when that was over, I thought, okay, this, it is over. You know, I mean, whatever that magic was, it is over. But then I was watching television and on comes John Lennon and Yoko Ono, okay, sitting in a bed in Canada, somewhere and they are clearly I mean, it is a little strange press conference, but I realized they are coming into the movement. And so pretty soon I am you know, I am in John Lennon's apartment, and we are planning to bring a million people to the republican convention. And our first we are going to tour the country. John's going to play. I am going to speak we will all have speakers and entertain, you know, we will have guests, entertainers and now we have gone to Ann Arbor first 25,000 seat venue, the show sells out in forty-five minutes. Stevie Wonder is the unannounced guest entertainer, my guest speakers of the Chicago Seven, you know, and we are High Five, you know this. So suddenly, John Lennon basically, individually breathes life right back into the whole thing again. And then Nixon comes down on Lennon and basically pulls the plug and starts deportation proceedings, and John has pull out. And so, I for me, that is where I was. Now I kept doing things I went to, the republicans changed their convention site to Miami, I went there. But you know, we had like, 10,000 people, we did not have a million people. I did a forty-two-day water fast to try to give a little, you know, oomph to the whole thing, you know, then, when Nixon was inaugurated, we did put 100,000 people on the ellipse or whatever, that the White House area. And then I went to Paris to be a part of the peace talks, or the signing of the Peace Accord. And I would say, I mean, to me when John Lennon left, that was it. We had 100,000 people at Nixon's inauguration. That was a little last fling, you know, and after that for me personally, it was over. I mean, there were subtle stuff going on things but not, you know, whatever it was, it was done. 1:18:31 SM: Just you are, this does not have to be an in-depth response. But all of those movements that happen that the antiwar movement, obviously in the civil rights movement, the women's movement, Chicano gay, and lesbian, environmental movement, they all came about around that time, how important were boomers and all those movements? 1:18:48 RD: Totally important. 1:18:49 SM: Because some people say, criticized the boomers as not being that important in the civil rights movement, because basically, it was already done, by the time they were eighteen years old. 1:18:59 RD: Yeah. Okay. Maybe? Well, it is true, maybe from a definitional point of view, see, I just see it all as one continuous thing. And I am not so fixated on these ages, the fact that people were in high school, when, you know, I was doing, you know, Cambodia stuff. You know, I just saw that whole spectrum as the same thing. You know, the, the civil rights movement had gone on for a long time. But it was the popular base, it was the country and that is now what do we want to call these? I mean, do you want to call the (19)60s generation the boomers? I mean, to me, 1960 up to 1973 is the period that we are talking about here. And for me, it was all one thing you know, now you are trying to do a book on the boomers and maybe the boomers are a more specialized element or component within that spectrum. And that is for you to sort out, you know, but for me, the sense that we are together, the sense that we are changing, the sense that we are experimenting, that we were open, we were, were exploring big picture thinking much like the founding fathers, were, we were about changing ourselves to change the world, we were going to change the world, we are going to make the world a better place. That was a thirteen-year window. That for me was one thing, the group that came in, you know, and did all this did not seem to quite fit the boomer age requirements or something, you know. It was 1960 college students, 1973, which included boomers, adults, you know, all kinds of people all through society, they've been brought along by that whole momentum, that entire constituency, is what turned on and then turned off. 1:21:06 SM: What do you think? You told me your story about with your dad and the farm and so forth in the 1960s but what happened in the 1950s, to these children during their elementary school years and beginning of junior high? They were given everything by their parents. Well, you know, of course, you are talking about, you know, you can talk about economics, that you talked about poor whites, and Appalachia talk about African Americans, the United States, their story, obviously, is quite different. But a lot of white students at that particular time were given a lot by their parents, because they've been through the Depression. Why did these young people who basically had everything rebel against like, I always think of that IBM image of five people of walking out of a house with a hat and going to work and everything. The IBM image. 1:22:00 RD: Yeah, well. 1:22:02 SM: They went to the university, and they, the multiversity. 1:22:06 RD: Well in, in the way that what you have been calling the baby boomers created a cushion and popular climate for black people, women and all these political movements to get a get a footing and get things going. The parents of the students, that it created a certain economic security, middle class life, that sort of thing. So that money, was not worried about, you know, money was not something, you grow up, just, you know, you know, you start farming when you are eight years old, and you know, it is day and night day and night. That, that sense of survival was removed. Thank you, Mom and Dad. And, and so it became possible to have a mindset in the, as a student, and particularly in the (19)60s, where you did not worry about it, you know. And you criticized the parents for being you, whatever, you know, put a spin on it. But the fact is, it created a base for. It is very similar to any society that begins to create a little bit of leisure, a little bit of relax. Time for a vacation, you know, an opportunity to go on a sabbatical and a retreat, you know. I think it can go degrade but also it goes creative, into philosophy and reflection and big picture thinking and, you know, positive human things. So, I, I do not see it as a negative at all, I see it as a steppingstone of evolution, I see humanity through the eyes of evolution. And I see that this whole (19)60s period as a precursor to something else that is coming. Call it change of awareness. 1:24:10 SM: One or two more questions that I just had and just quick responses, and we will finish here. This is the issue of trust, because you got into the issue of healing. One of the things I found in the, from the time I first interviewed Eugene McCarthy, just about every interview for Vietnam vets and activists like Tom Hayden is this issue of trust is something or lack thereof, many of the boomers had. Trust of leaders 1:24:35 RD: Of leaders yeah. 1:24:36 SM: And I say this because it is not just Lyndon Johnson in the Gulf of Tonkin. It is Richard Nixon and Watergate. It is as we bring you read and even the time we have learned about John Kennedy and what happened the Diem. We have learned we saw on national television, U2 the lie that Eisenhower. I mean, he lied to the American public on TV in 1959. And I know he went to his grave regretting it. But this ongoing there is no trust in religious leaders, no trust in university presidents, I know in our campus any administrator, no trusted anybody a position of responsibility no matter what they were, the question I am asking you basically is, is this a characteristic that has gotten within this group? And has this been passed on to their kids and their grandkids now? So that we have now three generations with lack of trust. And I can remember a psychology professor and my 101 class in college saying in the very beginning doctor Price at Binghamton he said, if you do not trust in your life, somebody, then you are going to have a pretty miserable life. You have got to be able to trust somebody. Just your thought on this trust businesses, even part of what we have been talking about here today. 1:25:55 RD: I do not think so, you know, I went to Vietnam, I saw Hanoi being bombed every day, I came back and made statements to the press about what I saw, the Pentagon came out and said, I had been brainwashed. And I was in shock, because I realized that this is a government agency, communicating to the public something that I absolutely know, from my own direct experiences is, is a lie. It is not, you know, there is a manipulation going on a public opinion, that I found at that stage of my life to be, you know, shocking, and startling, you know, because I did not think that really existed that way, you know. And so, there were many things like that that occurred in the (19)60s that sort of deepened that. I would say, though, that distrust of big government is also, you know, what you are seeing a lot with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Tea Parties. You know, it is, it is all over the place. The real question is, does a president let us say, if you do not trust the president or the government, that you elected, okay, is, what is the real relationship here? Is the is the trust inside yourself? That basically all that is really happening is you do not really trust yourself therefore, the, the government that represents you, you do not trust that either. It is a mirror principle; it is mirroring back to your own lack of trust. Now, lack of trust, from that perspective, seems to define every single generation of this country. It is hard to find a single generation that had trust, I mean, maybe periods somewhat better, but or, for that matter, the entire human condition of the whole of humanity has been. Here is the belief: bad things happen for no reason at all. If one thing does not get me something else will. And victim is the nature of this world. Bad things happen for no reason at all. And is this really the nature of our world? Well, the answer is, of course, it is the nature of this world, as long as this is our own residual self-image. Because the world reflects back to us whatever we however, we see ourselves as a physics principle. So will humanity at this stage of evolution run off the cliff and kill herself off? Maybe, you know, maybe, and will those contributing to it be the traditionalists are the baby boomer? Both. It is not about which side you are on. It is about side taking itself. It is about the attack of whatever you condemn is what you are going to experience. Let us put it that way. Whatever you fear is what you are going to attract. Let us put it that way. So this does not, this understanding does not presently exists in human awareness. You know, there has been little philosophy, seeds drop from time to time, but I am saying that this is the way it works. Okay. And that this will be discovered. And will the baby boomers be able to get it. Those that are basically doing this reflective work this inner work as personal growth would be the place that I would put my best hope right now, for a group of people being able to heroes. Oh, I will lay this out tonight. And this group will, you know, they will have a few people might have a problem because they came to hear about the (19)60s. But for the most part, even if it is a small group, everybody will be there. What they will appreciate is that I am so thorough, and I have such a commanding understanding of it. And I am so formidable in the details that it is a breath of fresh air. But the big thing is I create my own reality. If you want to change the world, you have to change yourself these themes, okay, are already there. They are very small. They are an underlying river of the group that we are talking about here. And this is really where humanity is going. Okay, one day, there will be no judgement at all of anybody. Humanity is currently in a stage of awareness that I would call the journey of good and evil. I am right, and you are wrong. ok? As opposed to whatever I am experiencing, I am creating myself, I do not like it, I change myself. That is a completely different way of thinking. A million years in the future, everybody will understand what I am talking about. 1:26:17 SM: I think a lot of people fear what is upcoming. 1:31:13 RD: Yeah, and the fear brings it off. 1:31:15 SM: I think, for example, last night on the news, because of the situation in Iran, and nuclear, ok? They are talking about another cold war now. I am saying another fifty years of Cold War [inaudible] Iran out because [inaudible] of course if they do, then who knows what could happen? So, we are really heading into a really. 1:31:38 RD: Absolutely. We are going into hysteria. That leads to war, that is the current direction. What I am trying to say to you, which if you will, really 1:31:52 SM: Testing 123 testing. 1:32:03 RD: This is a very, very- 1:32:05 SM: I have some questions for you to kind of respond, just insert responses and just your feelings. What does the wall mean to you? What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you? And when you went to the Wall for the first time, what kind of effect would that have on you? 1:32:22 RD: Well, you know, I did not quite get caught up in the emotions, probably of the family that lost their son, or, you know, that that sort of thing. I have just as much regard for the, the, you know, the Vietnamese that lost their lives by maybe 1000 to one over with the Americans, I do not know what the ratio is, but you know, it was a lot, you know, so, you know. It was a tragedy, you know, there was no doubt about it. And to remember the fallen and those that died and sacrificed their lives, you know, seems to be, you know, appropriate. Quite honestly, in my picture, though, it is, I would, I would feel the same way about the wall that I would feel about all the monuments of World War II all the monuments in World War I, all the monuments of everybody that died in inquisitions in the Middle Ages, and all the way back. I mean, we are a warring species. I also know that people choose their own time of death. Okay, and so therefore, I do not get all guilt ridden and blame oriented over any death. Okay. In the history of the universe, no one has died so far. Which is quite a statement, you know, and so, so I do not really quiet, I do not mean to see callous, because I am not, you know, I would like to end the dead zone entirely. I think. Death is a human creation. You know, death is the issue, that humans have created that as a collective. And so what we need to do is to get out of our anti- life strategies in thinking and into a pro-life strategy. And I do not mean the life thing of the portion move right at all, you know, I mean, to the abortion people, I would say that all abortions are chosen by the child, not the mother. I mean, that would be blasphemy, you know, and there is reasons for it, you know, so the, the morality of the thing is just confused. People do not even understand the fundamentals of death and what happens, no one knows what happens when you die. Or the idea that the soldier chooses his own time of death, goes to Vietnam to do it is just wow, you know. 1:34:40 SM: I remember, Elisabeth Kubler Ross is the one that was very popular talking about death. 1:34:45 RD: Yeah. 1:34:46 SM: Then she finally died. 1:34:47 RD: Right. Yeah. That seems to happen everywhere. 1:34:50 SM: Yep. 1:34:50 RD: So, I have a little different thing with it, I guess. 1:34:52 SM: I guess. What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? 1:34:56 RD: Well, I mean, it was a trigger point, and it was shocking, you know, American citizens being shot by National Guard troops was amazing and Jackson State was another trigger point. So, I do not know, I do not really have much of a story about it. I mean, I was a part of the Chicago seven, we call for a nationwide student strike in response at Kent State and 90 percent of the universities in this country walked out of school. So I could say I was, I was involved. I remember it. But right now, what I care about is how can humanity survive? You know, so going down memory lane, okay, over a bunch of misunderstandings in the first place, you know, does not really draw me in, you know, I mean, it is, it is all fine. But 1:35:49 SM: What does Watergate mean to you? 1:35:51 RD: [laughs] Well, it is back to that trust issue, I suppose or back to, you know, my coming back from Vietnam being horrified that, you know, the Pentagon would actually issue misstatements about, you know, things that I knew better. It is, it is very easy to keep the blame on Nixon. Okay, and basically, that Nixon was a control freak, who abused his power as a president, and, you know, ruined the legitimacy of the office, by senseless act of burglary, you know, against the opposition party, is one of the great stains on the democratic tradition. I mean, everybody would probably say something along those lines, you know. I would say that Nixon was a reflection of the American people. The things that Nixon was doing, was basically being represented by the aggregate of thoughts inside the country. If you wanted to understand the petty theft, the burglary, the disrespect for other people's personal property, the horrors that you want to push on the Nixon, then just look at yourself, because the American people are the origin of Watergate. Nixon is merely a mirror. Nixon is merely a reason I am not, you know, saying he did not do it. I am not saying anything like that. I am just saying, what is the origin of the things that we get so upset about? Watergate - the origin is ourselves. So, and now, if we could ever understand that, that is a future world. Okay, that is what is going to transform this planet. And it is pretty hard to imagine, but one day, it will happen. Well, I 1:37:53 SM: Have right here because I know your name the year 1968. Yeah, just that whole year, and of course, the Democratic Convention and then, of course, Chicago eight and Chicago seven, could you reflect on what happened in Chicago that year and then the trial? How do you look at it now? 1:38:15 RD: Like a past life! I would say that, you know, I like the fact that when I go speak, I would get a large turnout, because people sort of thought that I was important to hear or something like that. And I had that pretty much from the get-go in the (19)60s. But then when Chicago started, everything was transformed. I mean, I was on I was doing a press conference, it was carried by all three networks, pretty much every single day from mid-July, through the convention. And then after that, I was indicted. And after that, I was, I was in a presidential size press conference for six months. And so that changed my relationship to the public. You know, when I came to Washington, DC, like we are right now, I would, you know, I could not really sit here like this. I mean, people would come up, you know, like, like a celebrity, like a Hollywood type of thing, you know, what my autograph or have something mean to say! Or, you know, everybody, I was a recognizable figure and that for me personally, that was more how things changed, okay for the trial and Chicago you know. And then May Day too. After that things sort of wore down a little bit and I like that, you know, looking back now it is interesting. You know, it is it is a part of my life, I grew from it and so forth. But I so love where I am now. And, and everything for me has been a steppingstone to right now. And so I feel I finally have maybe something to actually contribute for the first time in my whole life right now. So it is not so much. I look back and you know, get all teary eyed or, you know or nostalgia about how the great days in the past. 1:40:08 SM: I have always wondered how a person like you and Tom Hayden and a lot of the other, a lot of my friends were arrested too in smaller protests but, feelings of being arrested, going to jail, and you ever thought, even when you were young, this is going to have a negative effect on me when I am fifty? 1:40:30 RD: Yeah 1:40:30 SM: Which is what a lot of people are writing about today that the reason why young people are not like, people, the (19)60s or the boomers is that they want, they do not want anything on their record, and it will be on the record, and they will never be hired. 1:40:44 RD: Yeah, right. I can, I can understand how the nature of social consciousness sets in and so forth. It was just a different time. And especially for someone like myself, I mean, a lot of people went to jail, and you know, if some got beaten up and tortured, you know, for their protest against discrimination or racism. It was, was not that way with me. But when I went to jail after the trial, we went to jail for two weeks, basically, until we raised money for appeal got out on bond. I mean, the, that night, there were 30,000 people outside the jail. When I went in, it would be like being Al Capone. Okay. I mean, in a positive way, to me, the inmates saw me as a hero, you know, for standing up to the judge. It was not like it was some oppressive, terrible. I mean, no, I was like, they were the whole prison was a fan club. You know, it was the largest riot in American history. The night I went to jail. I mean, more people rioted okay. I mean, burned down banks. And you know, I am not saying that is a greatest thing. I am just saying, we produced the largest riot in American history. But when we look at it, you felt before and whenever I have gone to jail, it was more, theatrics and support, you know, it was not like, the way everybody else goes to jail. You know, it was not so I cannot really have I do not have any complaints about the times I have gone to jail. You know, it was all kind of cool. Really. 1:42:22 SM: Just real quick thoughts here. Your thoughts on hippies and yippies. Just a, because you knew Abbie, and you knew Jerry, just your thought on the whole yippie group. 1:42:34 RD: Well, there was a cultural phenomena going on, you know, dress, love, trust, you know, probably some pot in there too. You know, it was a cultural thing, young people. And you know, Abby and Jerry were a little bit more like me. They were political but their base was more the culture. And so, what they were trying to do is to politicize the culture a little bit, get them a little more into the issues, but at the same time, give voice and expression to the culture. And so, you know, I am sure in a drug induced night, you know, they came up with youth international party. And then they called it 'yippie' you know. 1:43:27 SM: Jerry Rubin in his book, "Do it." Remember that? 1:43:29 RD: Yeah. Yeah. 1:43:30 SM: He said that. They were they did not know what the name their group, and then somebody was yelling in the background, "yippie" and he was like, there is, the- we will name it the yippies. You know it is interesting. this is just an anecdote. If you knew Abbie. A lot of people make fun of him. And that really upsets me because I remember when he passed away, he committed suicide and it was over in Bucks County now apart from Philadelphia. And I remember they did a bigger article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about him. And he had left the note when he killed himself, and he supposedly had only $2,000 in the bank. And in the note that he left was "no one is listening to me anymore." How sad. Because when you, because I remember when you came on the Phil Donahue show, after he came out of hiding and changed his nose or whatever. He had been working on the Hudson River, saving the Hudson River for years, unbeknownst to the American public. And a lot of people said that worthless son-of-a-gun. You know, he just a, but in reality was a person of substance. I felt- 1:44:35 RD: Yeah. 1:44:36 SM: And it was sad that he killed himself. 1:44:38 RD: Well, I do not know. Sad, I mean, maybe. We create our own experiences out of, out of. So, you know, basically, his ego got inflated in the (19)60s and then when it went down to being a normal person again, his ego could not handle it. So let us check out. I do not have a judgment about it. I do not call it sad, but I do not call it egotistical either. I you know, it just the way he chose to unfold himself. What I would say about Abby that I truly appreciated it was that Abbie taught me the great value of humor. And I saw I mean, we were, he came out and supported me during the May Day demonstrations when no one else did in the coalition. And as a result of his support, it was the two of us that got indicted for that. And we got off, they dropped the charges, but we are facing twenty years in jail. And on the day of the big arrest, you know, I mean, it is the biggest arrest in American history. We were arrested and we were being taken into the Justice Department, by the FBI, a large number of the maybe twenty men, okay, and Abbie was behind me, and I was in front, and we were marching down this empty corridor. And I would say, it was a fearful environment where the, the level of seriousness and hatred for us, okay, although professional, okay, was just, you know, I mean, it was not time to crack jokes, okay. It was, it was more like being in a concentration camp. I mean, it was a pretty serious moment, we are facing twenty years, we have no idea what is going to be dropped or anything like that. It was a very serious moment, I thought. And Abby just started making jokes with the guys that were with him. And, and he was just, it was breathtaking. I mean, in no time at all, he had the entire group of FBI agents, just friendly, laughing. Just, I mean, he just disarmed the whole mood and tenor of the whole thing, you know. And I saw him do that quite a few occasions. And I, I found that part of him to be totally inspiring. I mean, I tried to do better in that department myself, but I could not I could never compete with him. He was the best. He was, he was great. He was funny. He was a funny guy. And he was full of love and life and joy. 1:47:19 SM: "Steal this book" 1:47:20 RD: Yeah, Steal this Book. 1:47:21 SM: A lot of people stole it! 1:47:22 RD: Yeah, I am sure they did! 1:47:25 SM: The Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Young Americans for Freedom, which were conservative, just your thoughts on those groups. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War kind of took over for SDS because SDS was waning, and they kind of took over the antiwar movement in those early seventies. 1:47:43 RD: I do not know, SDS was more to me, taken over by The Weathermen. 1:47:47 SM: Oh, yeah well, they kind of, violence. 1:47:50 RD: The vets, you know, the vets um, you know, everything kind of sort of went downhill a little bit as the ending occurred, you know. The, I mean, you had the John Kerry event, at the May Day demonstration with veterans to turning in their medals. You know, it was a pretty, you know, in a way, their way, a high minded thing, and bitterness and anger and that sort of thing, you know, as the dominant theme that came a little later, you know. And the Young Americans for Freedom was, you know, the current, I mean, sort of, you know, it was just a right wing group that, you know, were trying to hold on to traditional values. And, you know, use attack, and defend mode, it was a local thing, I do not really have a comment about that just side taking again you know. 1:48:44 SM: I am going to throw names, and then real quick responses and then, that is it. I am going start with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubins. 1:48:52 RD: Well, I told you about Abby, I think Abbie was pretty cool. And, you know, and I know, he checked out and they went that way. You know, I guess, you know, would have been nice if I could have talked to him before that. But I did not so you know, it is what it is. I do not have any judgment about it. You know, Jerry, same thing he checked out, you know. I mean, Jerry went into trying to make some money, you know, and, you know, network marketing. He was kind of cool, but he fought a lot. Very analytical thinking, pretty intense, you know, this is broke, something was wrong. 1:49:26 SM: He was killed jaywalking. 1:49:28 RD: But he just, you know, he was not paying attention to the world that he was in and he- But, you know, it did not mean that he was wrong. It did not mean that he did not choose to die in that way. That is how he chose to leave. So that is fine. 1:49:43 SM: How about Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda? RD: Well, I went on to a military base, I think it was in North Carolina, we had a coffee shop that I had helped organize to support GI's called SOS, Support our Soldiers. Jane came down and you know, came to the coffee house. She was with Tom at this point. I mean, and Jane said, well, let us go on to the base. And so, we went on to the base, and you know, and in a second, we were surrounded by 20,000 troops. And it was, it gave me an appreciation but I thought it took a lot of courage. You know, I mean, I, I had a lot of courage too but I never expected it from anybody else. Jane Fonda I mean you could have lost your life right there. You know, he was very intense. And so I like Jane, and I thought she stood her ground. And she was, you know, spoke what she believed and, you know, she has moved on like everybody else now. I tip my hat to her for her courage and courage is what stands out for me about Jane Fonda. Tom is a friend, you know, Tom, and I were partners all the way. You know, I, I know I disappointed him when I kind of took a turn on the road went inward. And that even today, and it is not really, you know, understood, you know what happened. And I do not understand it really about it. But I know that I disappointed him. But he was mature. And he has kind of moved on. So, when we see each other now from time to time, you know, he is beautiful, you know, I put on an event at the summit. And, you know, at 1992 I guess it was in Brazil and you know, Tom flew down to be a part of my event. It was really cool. SM: He has gotten a brand-new book out to you know? "(19)60s Activism" yeah. 1:51:53 RD: So that is what it is called? 1:51:54 SM: He did the book "Reunion" which was very popular in paperback, then he wrote a book on Ireland because he loves the Irish. 1:52:01 RD: Yeah, he does. 1:52:02 SM: Then he has gotten involved with the gangs, talking about the guns in LA. 1:52:05 RD: Is that what his current book is on? 1:52:07 SM: No, no, no, this has nothing to do with the gangs, it is about the whole (19)60s movement, the (19)60s period. Putting it all in a capsule. 1:52:14 RD: He is a good writer, and a great speaker, and I you know, he is a smart guy. 1:52:19 SM: How about Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. 1:52:24 RD: I like Gene McCarthy. I really did. You know, I was so surprised by what happened you know? I mean, I thought we would bring a half million people to Chicago. But you know, I also thought Linda Johnson was going to be the nominee. 1:52:37 SM: Oh, I know! 1:52:38 RD: Ben Johnson withdraws and then Gene McCarthy comes in second. And I mean, or wins I forget, when did it come in second, or win? 1:52:45 SM: Well, he came in second. 1:52:46 RD: Second, yeah so anyway, you know, it was just like, wow, you know, suddenly, you know, everything was moving back into power to electoral politics, you know, which was not where I was at, at the time. But, you know, I, you know, and then just recently we, in 1996, the Democrats went back to Chicago, and I was a hermit, you know, I was living in the Grand Canyon, and I had not talked to anybody, you know, and I did not talk to an adult for four years. And so, I was really inward, you could say, but I felt to go, and I did and, and, you know, immediately I am on Larry King Live, and there is Gene McCarthy, you know? And, you know, I thought he was a good man. Really. I liked him. 1:53:37 SM: How about McGovern? 1:53:38 RD: Yeah, well, I, you know, I liked him, too. I mean, he had the courage to make the run and the fact that, you know, it was an overwhelming, you know, point of view, different point of view by the country. What it takes to come to that level, I do not care who you are, I mean, you may be number two, but the when the party's nomination and the make a run for president is exhausting. It is exhausting. It takes everything to hold yourself together and articulate yourself over and over again, and, and make it credible. You know, I tip my hat to anybody who, you know, he attempts that and pulls that off. And so, you know, and then he and he stood for, you know, I thought good things. And so, yeah, I have nothing but fond memories for McGovern. 1:54:29 SM: The Kennedys. Certainly, Bobby and John and Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. Could you get an interesting contrast between those four, just thoughts on those four gentlemen? 1:54:41 RD: Well, I thought Kennedy captured the spirit of the, of the of this group that I am talking about, you know? We ourselves may have not seen it that way. You know that. But he did. You know, he was the hope, he was the new generation. He was, you know, America trying to reach for its highest best philosophical side. And, you know, in that way, I think he is similar to Obama, you know, I do I thought for that time and everything. So you know, and he, I really respect the fact that he did so well, in the job that he had while going through so much physical pain. Pain is very tough to handle in any job. And as the President Roosevelt too, I mean, that is, that takes you know, as my admiration really does. Part of the king was a friend, I really thought highly of him. He also had the Mahatma Gandhi view, let us change yourself to change the world. You know, I met him first in Chicago, he had come to do an open housing march in Cicero. And he was very impressed that I was able to bring several thousand poor white people to that marsh. He went out of his way to; he just did not believe it was possible. But it was, you know! He kept hearing that we were coming and it was like, no way. And then when we showed up, and the people were cool, too. I mean, they were really there. Completely. They were not, you know. 1:56:26 SM: His Vietnam speech, too, was just incredible. 1:56:28 RD: Oh, it was incredible yeah, totally incredible. He was just one of those chosen guys. You know, mean, he really was. I never knew Malcolm X truthfully. So I mean, I followed his course and I did become good friends with Bobby Seale and sort of in a certain way, the Black Panther Party, and Malcolm X had a similar track. They were kind of on I guess. 1:56:55 SM: Your thoughts on the black power challenge of people like Dr. King and Byard Rustin and James Armour, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins. There was a challenge to that group. Black Power all of a sudden, your time is past. Stokely Carmichael. There is a historic picture. We have only got five more minutes I know you are getting tired. But you probably remember that picture Stokely standing next to Martin and Martin was like this. Martin was pretty upset, because his time was passed. 1:57:25 RD: It is tough, you know, when you are when you are basically trying to build a nonviolent movement, and you know, within your own ranks there emerges, pick up guns, and, you know, let us, let us fight back and that sort of thing. You know, it is threatening your fundamental identity. And you try to put a good face on it, because, you know, they are important. They are young people; they are important to the movement. I mean, we had the same thing ourselves when I was trying to hold together a nonviolent coalition and in comes The Weatherman. And you know, and it was similar, you know, it was and these were friends and people I knew, and yet, there was a big disagreement on strategy and tactics. So you know, those are challenging moments and they are for anybody. 1:58:12 SM: I remember Dr. O'Neill from well, I interviewed the professor who wrote "Coming Apart" said he was the adviser to SDS at the University of Michigan. Then he went to Wisconsin, and he said, I did not know what I got myself into. 1:58:25 RD: Its very true. 1:58:27 SM: LBJ and Robert McNamara. 1:58:30 RD: What about it just reactions? 1:58:32 SM: To both Johnson and McNamara, Spiro Agnew, that whole group? 1:58:36 RD: Well, they are not all, to me they are all very different. You know, I think I was pretty judgmental about Lyndon Johnson in the (19)60s. But I do not feel like judgment today. I, you know, I think he was a hard working politician. Who just got over his head with Vietnam, as all Americans did? And, you know, it just more showed the lack of understanding of other cultures. You cannot win in Vietnam. You know, you could make the same argument. You cannot really militarily win in Afghanistan too. I do not know about Afghanistan, but I do know about Vietnam. And, you know, it was, I mean, the French were there fighting for 100 years, and then their military defeated at the Dien Bien Phu know, and when you study that, I mean, West Point studies that battle its brilliant. I mean, it is incredible. I mean, here is this, here is a society that can mobilize 3 million people at one time, you know, just no country can, you know overtake it. And when you understand their culture and how they have been doing this for 3,000, 2,000 years, you know, they defeated the nephew Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century, and people out in the rice paddies tell that story like it was yesterday or something. They just did not understand what they were dealing with. 2:00:01 SM: I think that Obama is going to find out the same thing about Afghanistan. 2:00:05 RD: I mean, that is the concern that people have. I do not know about Afghanistan. But so you know, and then Johnson, you know, withdrew. And, you know, I do not know, I never really, you know, what was interesting to me was McNamara who was so bright and, you know, groomed in the military way of thinking and everything, rises to the level of Secretary of Defense, you know, becomes certainly the architect of how to do it. And then basically has a reflection period and, you know, rewrites history and comes out, you know, criticizes himself with the whole [inaudible]. And I, you know, we were also superficial, in a way in our criticism of our archetypes, you know, for any human being to do that, we would all do well to reflect on doing that ourselves. Okay, that is to really look at yourself, and then let the whole world you know, see 180-degree shift, okay. And where you are, you know, you are basically saying that I was wrong, you know, on a matter involving 1000s and 1000s of lives, you know, it is pretty incredible, really. So I kind of feel inspired by McNamara, truthfully you know. I hated him in the (19)60s. I mean, he was the bad guy. But not now. I say that was pretty- 2:01:37 SM: When I interviewed McCarthy, it was right after "In Retrospect" came out, In Retrospect came out in 1995 and 1996 was when I interviewed McCarthy. In my first interview McCarthy says piece of garbage, and I will not read it. I mean, he was pretty critical of it. 2:01:52 RD: Then Spyro Agnew, I mean, he called me the most dangerous man in the United States on national television and from that point of view, I mean, he kind of made my career, you know, I mean, it was probably the best thing that ever got said about me. I do not really think it was an accurate statement, all things considered, but it certainly helped me with my base. 2:02:17 SM: The two last people are groups, the Barrigan brothers, just your thoughts on the Barrigan Brothers. 2:02:22 RD: They were, they made a real contribution. They brought a certain morality and spiritual religious side onto things. They were very courageous. They went to jail. And I, they were never really close into the coalition. It was interesting. They kind of did their own thing. They were always a part of it, but not quite what I, you know, I was about the coalition, and they were sort of there but really, you know, but I always tip my hat you know, I think well of them. 2:02:51 SM: The last, the last ones are the women leaders, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug of the feminist movement. Because the thing is, when you read, the feminist movement came about because in the antiwar movement, it was run by men. And so women got sick of the men being dominated, dominating those movements, and then created the women's movement. Now, your thoughts on that statement number one, and just your thoughts on their effectiveness and their value? 2:03:21 RD: I think it is sort of the traditional role of a movement, you know, your social change movements tend to identify with a particular constituency, they then look around and see what is suppressing that constituency. They do not really say start off by let us change ourselves to change the world, they said, let us change, man, let us change the races, let us change them, you know. And that is, that is pretty standard and usually, it, it starts by trying to have some coalition building and conciliatory, you know, like, like, Obama would love to do get a bipartisan something going. But, you know, over time, I am more, you know, a more focused approach tends to emerge, you know, and his writer writes, it is like, the difference between King and Stokely Carmichael, that sort of thing. And so, Betty Friedan, kind of gives rise to Gloria Steinem. You know, and then from there it goes even more that way. I do not, I do not have a judgment about anybody's politics. That is right and this is wrong, you know, I do not really do that anymore. I used to but I do not buy it. 2:04:46 SM: You are evolving. 2:04:47 RD: I am evolving! That is it. Yeah. 2:04:49 SM: I think that is a word. I think it is a word we ought to use more too because some of the things you said, I have been in university for 30 years. 2:04:58 RD: Yeah. 2:04:58 SM: And I have seen things. 2:04:59 RD: Yeah 2:05:00 SM: I think you are right on. I think you can really appeal to a lot of the young people today. 2:05:05 RD: Yeah 2:05:06 SM: The spirituality is important. 2:05:08 RD: Yeah, yeah. it would be cool. 2:05:09 SM: Why am I here? What is my purpose and all of those kinds of things? 2:05:12 RD: I am very good at those kinds of questions. 2:05:15 SM: Was there any question I did not ask you that you thought I was going to ask you before we end? 2:05:19 RD: Not really, you know, I had no idea what we are going to do truthfully. I was all good. I thought you were well prepared. Well done. And I wish you all the really sincerely the very best with your effort. I know it has been a big effort. You have talked to a lot of people and, and, you know, wherever I fit in, it is completely up to you. 2:05:37 SM: No, you are going to be in there. (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>. 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 Rennie Davis Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Davis, Rennie ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Chicago Seven Trial, Chicago, Ill., 1969-1970; Political activists--United States; Davis, Rennie--Interviews Description An account of the resource Rennie Davis (1940-2021) was a spiritual lecturer and an activist. Davis was an American anti-Vietnam war protest leader of the 1960s. He was one of the Chicago Seven defendants. He appeared on several shows, including Larry King Live and Barbara Walters, and provided business advice for Fortune 500 companies. Davis was an alumnus of Oberlin 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 2009-10-10 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.10.2016.68a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.68b 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. 125:41 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3e552a490b720ba705c15a53280b95a8.jpg 8c6abded810844a07a8626191148c1bf https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/af782958240fefecea9e978be9369600.mp3 4bfdc68517a109c5d509bc853a49dff0 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. <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 1997-07-23 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed F. Forrester Church Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church IV (1948 - 2009) was a minister, theologian, and author. He eventually became a prominent advocate of Universalism. He wrote 25 books, most of which were about religion in his life. Church was a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Divinity School. He earned a Ph.D. in Early Church History from Harvard University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13057,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"15":"\"Calibri\",sans-serif","16":11}">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church IV (1948 - 2009) was a minister, theologian, and author. He eventually became a prominent advocate of Universalism. He wrote 25 books, most of which were about religion in his life. Church was a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Divinity School. He earned a Ph.D. in Early Church History from Harvard University. 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 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Body politics; Music; Laissez Faire parenting; Voting; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Black Power Movement; Watergate; Activism; Elitist; Generation gap."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Baby boom generation; Body politics; Music; Laissez Faire parenting; Voting; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Black Power Movement; Watergate; Activism; Elitist; Generation gap. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 57:13 Subject LCSH Clergy; Theologians; Unitarian Universalists; Church, F. Forrester--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Frank Forrester Church Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So Date of interview: 23 July 1997 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 00:11 SM: First question I would like to ask you, for churches. There has been a lot of criticism recently, even the last couple of years about the boomer generation, looking at the problems in America today, whether it be the breakup of the American family, the increase in drugs, the lack of trust in elected leaders, lack of respect for authority. Basically, zooming in on the boomer generation, that generation that grew up between (19)46 and (19)64. And that is the reason why we are having problems in America placing all blame back on that particular group. What are your thoughts on the criticism that oftentimes comes from the media, and even not political leaders placing blame on-on a generation that the (19)60s and early (19)70s in particular? 01:01 FC: Well by definition, because of its numbers, the boomer generation, as you call it, is a dominant or I imperialistic generation. I call this the python in the snake. Each decade as this disproportionate number of people go through life, they according to their age, and interests, disproportionately affect the lives of all the other Americans. So, in the 1950s, when the taking the snake was a child, everything was-was suburbs, churches and education, it was a passive time, the child was demanding an enormous amount of his parents’ attention. And this led to a sort of domestic period within our, within our history, in the 1960s, to pick as an adolescent. And as all adolescents do, it rebelled. And so, with a greatly disproportionate number of adolescents, at times of crisis, the crises were made more spectacular, whether it be the response to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement. Again, the peak was right on schedule. Expressive, rebellious, and by virtue of its numbers, very effective in the (19)80s, and (19)90s, to take those to the snake further. And we have the me decade, the decade of the (19)20s when people are all of a sudden, looking to their own interests and needs and sort of dropping out from groups and finding their own way. And in the (19)80s, the greed decade, where the pig is now moving on, into its (19)30s. And through its (19)30s. And thinking of rather selfishly having an enormous impact, I think this enormous number of 30-year-olds who happen to be disproportionately in the marketplace out there wheeling and dealing and cutting, jabbing. There is no question that the bat process to a degree was driven by this unusual, predominant number of young, hungry, green and somewhat callow executives. In many cases, what you have now, in the (19)90s, which could not become a decade, it is hard to know, is that the pig has in many cases settled down has children of its own, there was almost a reprise to the (19)50s. But with the memory of the (19)60s intact, the (19)60s and tact, there is a return to religion, there is a return to family values as a stronger set of concern for community values, individual. expressiveness is less treasured than group togetherness. And so, every level and through every decade, there is no question, but this generation has had a remarkable impact, sometimes for good, sometimes pretty ill mostly for both. And I see this process continuing as the pig goes on to the end of the snake and becomes enormously imperialistically demanding of rights of support of benefits. And at that point, perhaps we More than any other in the course of this generation’s life, the body politic will be taxed by the hunger and demands of the boomer generation, we have at this point for a decade or so have the opportunity of seeing the mature take, perhaps at its best and doing for others more than doing for itself. And almost every other point, with the possible exception of the (19)60s, where others, at least idealistically with a goal to be served. The tape has been a narcissistic one, it seems for a time that we are going to have the benefit of this large generations. That time will again pass as the needs of the older boomers are, weigh in. And I use the term pig with-with amusement, but nonetheless, not without a certain amount of rhetorical or metaphorical effect. Because there is no question that this generation by virtue of its size, its appetites, and its power has been the major feeder at the American trough, from the very beginning. 06:28 SM: Excellent, I just want to double check me anyways. That is acceptable or has- 06:36 FC: To be spun, spun out. 6:38 SM: Okay, this leads right into the next question. And that is, it is just a very vague, vague, but also very general question, what has been the overall impact of the boomers on America through 1997? Knowing that boomers are just turning 50. Because the group that was born though, front of this generation is now turning 50. This year, they certainly got many more years ahead of them. But they are still in now in midlife. If you look at 197-1987, as we are heading into 1998, what has been the overall impact of boomers on America? 07:10 FC: Well, as I said, and each-each decade of our life, our impact has been due to the particular needs of our age. We today are concerned about health, longevity, fitness. And that movement is being tremendously driven by people who are getting old and refusing to accept the fact; there is an economic driver in every generation. And as- put another way, there is this economic driver that the boomer generation pushes through each decade. And there has been a disproportionate amount of power success. And influenced by this generation, to the extent that others, both previous and following have been and rightfully so, somewhat jealous of the impact that this remarkably large number of people has had. Let me give you an example. In the 1960s, when the boomers were adolescents, oldies in music, were from the 1950s. No one in my generation listened to anything of our parents’ music. We had no interest in our parents’ music, we have noticed movies in the (19)30s, the (19)40s, up to (19)55. (19)55 on those things were interesting because they were the precursors to the Rock and Roll, we were here in the 19(19)70s oldies became (19)50s and (19)60s, in the 1980s they became (19)50s (19)60s and (19)70s in the 1990s, there (19)50s (19)60s (19)70s (19)80s and early (19)90s. So, what you have here is a generation of people, which has imposed its own taste, its own memories, its own experience upon the entire country. There still are no oldies from the (19)40s or the (19)50s the (19)30s in the (19)40s. But so long as this generation is alive, the oldies will begin when they started to listen to music. Now that is a fascinating cultural example of the imperialistic overweening power of my particular age group. We have determined not so much the tastes of everyone in the country. But we have imposed our tastes upon the country. 10:09 SM: What are your thoughts on the impact that boomers are having on their kids and getting it back that in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, the boomers were involved with or course trying to end the draft, they were fighting to get the vote. The old slogan at that time was, you are old enough to send me to war that I should be old enough to vote. So, they got the right to vote, get the boomers really have not used. voting records among boomers has been very poor. And it is even poor amongst their children, which is today's current college generation, the generation I am dealing with, could you kind of reflect on the impact that boomers have had on their kids with respect to the aspect of activism, which so many took part in their youth. But we do not seem to be seeing that amongst today's youth. And we are seeing some of the characteristics that have been passed down from parent to child. 11:04 FC: Well, if one were to take the, the selfishness, low teeth, and play it out, I would say and this is far too general to be applicable to an entire generation, because you have so many different people here to try to make generalizations. It is great mistake, that I would say that having blamed all of their own problems on their parents, and therefore becoming so aware of how vulnerable parents are to the criticism of their children. Our generation decided to liberate its children, and excuse itself from responsibility. So that we have not both ways, we blamed our parents, but we will not accept blame for our own children's lives choices in future. So, you have, in some ways, a more passive group of parents who have been to a degree and again, one has to be very careful with generalizations to a degree exculpated themselves from responsibility by providing the freedom that they felt that they were not given as children, and then washing their hands of the consequences of that kind of laissez faire parents. 12:42 SM: Going back to a mindset as a boomer, what, and looking at the generation, then and now, you changed your opinions of boomers over the years. You were a boomer; I think you are in your late (19)40s. And what have been your you have been pretty consistent on your thoughts about boomers from over the last 30 years or- 13:13 FC: When you are, when you are part of a phenomenon, you very rarely examine it objectively or critically, you take it for granted. I have never thought of myself as a boomer. I occasionally recognize the advantages that have come with being a part of the pig to the snake. But I have I do not I do not think of myself in those terms. 13:32 SM: Using some adjectives, what are the qualities, the positive qualities that you see? And some of the negative qualities you- 13:38 FC: See, most of them are the same qualities that exist in all people at all times. I do not think that the group is any different than any other group. Quality is different qualitatively, which means, again, that the impact that has at any given age in any given decade is going to be to a large degree determined by the interests, passions, concerns of 10-year-olds, 18-year-olds, 28-year-olds, 38-year-olds, 50-year-olds. So, we are not talking about a group different in kind, only different in size. So, one might more correctly ask, what would any group of 18-year-olds tend to have in common with one another? And if you have an awful lot of them around, how is that going to change society? That is certainly what happened in the- 14:48 SM: Statistics differently different size. I have read that there were 65 million boomers and then another book that I have read material say that we are (19)10s [inaudible]. That is a big gap there but- 14:59 FC: It is still in the taking this thing, there is no question about that. It has been a larger generation than its parents and a larger generation than, than the ones have following it by-by a considerable amount. 15:15 SM: Two of the major issues facing boomers’ life in fact, I read a book recently defining the difference between the activism of today and the activism of say 30 years ago. And the activism of 30 years ago really concentrated in two major areas, and that was fighting this war in Vietnam and civil rights movement. And then many of the other-other women's movement, the environmental movement, were offshoots of learning from the Civil Rights Movement. Could you comment on? How important the students were in ending the war in Vietnam? Your thoughts on why the war ended, the major reason for the war ending? And how important are the young people that are worried anymore? 15:58 FC: Well, I think, I think the war ended primarily because of the unrest in the streets. I think that my father Frank Church, held the same view, I felt that until there was the ongoing threat of societal chaos. The American people were not concerned about a little war, halfway across the globe. Indeed, its casualties began to bounce. More and more families were intimately involved. But had it not been for the student protest movement, the war would have continued, my guess is much longer than did certainly Lyndon Johnson would not have been replaced as president in 1968. 16:53 SM: Smith, from ABC News, I interviewed him last summer. And I was there for five hours getting a one hour one hour interview. Yeah, I will be back. But it was good interview, and it gave me the time. I really appreciate it. But you are caught on to the reason why the war ended. Because middle America saw body bangs. And that is politicians realize what middle America was against the war in the war had to stop your thoughts on that. 17:24 FC: I am sure that the body bags as they began to pile had an effect and impact is no question about that. But I also think that the ripping of the societal fabric was tremendously destabilizing for the leadership of this country. And let them find it to recognize that so long as they were to continue sponsoring this war, they were going to be sponsoring chaos. 17:53 SM: Back to your commentary, when what your father said about the unrest in the streets, from growing up with the distinguished senator, and hearing the talk, probably coming he was coming home and sharing it with the family some of the discussions in congress and the feeling that he had. How close were we? You know, some people will say, well, you can never compare the (19)60s, early (19)70s to the Civil War. Nations coming apart, but some will say leader this close to come into power. How close were you? 18:27 FC: I do not think we were nearly as close as the students. I believe we were I mean, I and my friends all thought there was about to be a revolution. We were a bunch of idealistic pipe dreamers in part, I suppose, because we were a bunch of hedonistic pipe smokers, but there is no comparison between the 1860s and the 1960s. On the other hand, because of the disproportionate number of adolescents acting out appropriately and age appropriately, there was heightened sense of drama, urgency and crisis that helped us finally move along the civil rights movement and extricate ourselves- 19:17 SM: From the threat in the civil rights. And again, I have interviewed quite a few people so far, and some of us have different opinions. How important are boomers in the Civil Rights Movement, knowing that Freedom Summer really took place in (19)64? And that was that (19)64 was and-and I think boomers were 18 years old, the oldest group was 18. So, a lot of things like civil rights that already happened. So, some people try to downplay boomers’ impact. 19:44 FC: I think they had next to no impact in the early years of that movement, but there certainly was a strong contribution of Black Power adolescents in the mid to late (19)60s and early (19)70s. In helping to define and continue to define the Civil Rights Movement in a sharper and more confrontive manner that has been defined under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. 20:16 SM: What are your thoughts on Dr. King respect to the fact that he was one of the few people that saw the linkages between the war in Vietnam and civil rights and how we treat people at home and how we treat people abroad and of course, the division of the Black Power Movement and many people that were posted after King really criticized him for making those statements I believe in 1967. 20:34 FC: Dr. Martin Luther King was a large roundabout soul he was not in any way parochial. He was one of the few prophets we have known throughout the past 50 years. 20:48 SM: A lot of things that are regarding looking back, it is this issue of trust. Trust is an issue that seems to be a problem in America today, for obvious reasons, but historians and analysts will say it goes directly back to that era of the (19)60s when Lyndon Johnson and McNamara were in charge of the war in Vietnam and for the line the American public and actually seeing the news media. For the first time were critically critical of the government. Of course, Watergate is very obvious. So elected officials being dishonest. How, what are your thoughts on this issue in America today? The issue of trust and the lack of it, and how can we really be as successful nation around this? 21:43 FC: [audio cuts] The lapse of trust has directly to do with my opinion, not just Vietnam, but Watergate, and the empowerment of the investigative press. There had always been an old boy compact between the politicians and the press, which protected the politicians and to a degree protected the innocence of the American people. We lose something when we when we become so avidly interested in the peccadilloes of our leaders that we lose sight of their potential greatness. Here is, here is an interesting progression for you. In in the 1900s of this country, this century President Wilson was so completely incapacitated, that his wife was president, in effect for months at the end of his term, and no one knew. In the 1940s and (19)30s. When President Roosevelt was president, he was physically incapacitated, but no one knew because no one pointed out and no one known that he was physically incapacitated, he may never have been elected president [inaudible] was elected three times. In the 1960s. John Kennedy, a great national hero and-and in many ways, fine president was morally incapacitated by a strong sex drive and pension for womanizing, which was never shared with the people of the United States. Today, the smallest thing that anyone does and many things that a person does not do are fodder for gossip columns, the subject of commentaries, it is no wonder that a relatively ordinary man, although enormously talented, such as Bill Clinton, is the constant subject of innuendo, of character assassination. This would never have happened before. So, we have moved from a situation which was in many ways much more dangerous to the republic, actually having a president who could not think with no one knowing or having a president who could not move carefully without anyone knowing was the president who was acting wantonly without anybody knowing. And now, everything sucks. There is no question but that has an impact upon our trust level. It is not just because rumored quote unquote generation has so many people who were turned off by government in the 1960s that we are all a bunch of untrusting people. As a matter of fact, this iteration has as predictable moved from being radical to being conservative as it is become more money. So, you do not have a group of people who are, by definition permanently radical out there changing the trust quotient. You have a changing, set not of mores, but standards, which may in fact become impossibly hard. And if we are going to go back to a time when we took pleasure in and respected our leaders, we may have to be a little bit less prudish and a little bit more forgiving the human foibles that every human being including our greatest leaders that we manifest. 25:48 SM: This it gets right into the whole issue of cynicism. Now, I again, I read quite a few people so far. And one, when that question was asked, if you were to define one of the major weaknesses of the boomer generation, again, relating back to history is that that is the most cynical group I have ever seen in my life. Cynicism has is, of course was linked to trust. You know, I do not know how you feel about that. But well- 26:14 FC: I do not I do not sense that my generation is any more cynical than the one that was followed, or the one that was following that. I think cynicism is growing pace. I call this cynical chic. And it is combined with something I call sophisticated resignation. And he knows so much about the problems that face us, that we resign ourselves to the fact we cannot do anything about if anything, my own generation is more willing to attempt solutions and change. Because we were raised at a time when our impact was so great, that we have not forgotten that. So, I would say, yes, there is to be a label placed upon this generation. While cynicism is growing across the board in this country, I would not call this the cynical generation. I would, I would call it the imperialistic or confident generation. And therefore, when we have opportunities to work together and do something, we tend to rally and do that. 27:26 SM: You were to look at you made some commentary about the size; we know this is the biggest generation American history. And the fact is that a lot of the books that I have read sociology, books, history books will say that when you look at this generation, they will use this term 15 percent are really involved in any kind of activism. And the rest of them decide what their daily lives wherever. And so, and thus, what they are trying to say. And these are some of the critics of the generation again, we will come back and say the problems. It was really just a bunch of elitist snobs and elitist schools that are involved in this many have gone on to politics or whatever. And they credit downgrade anything that was positive about that period. 28:03 FC: 85 percent of any generation is self-absorbed and unconnected and not involved. However, 15 percent of a very large generation is going to make a disproportionate impact over 50 percent. However, 15 percent of a smaller generation. That is, it. This is why I mean generalities. Of course, 85 percent were involved, or interest never, never will be; that does not change that much from one generation to the next. If you have a lot more people though that 15 percent ways given with a much larger and more powerful voice. 28:43 SM: Do you feel that many people within the boomer generation and then this gets directly back to our conversation from the interview started with Senator Muskie that a great portion of this generation are have a problem with healing from the visions when they were young. I am specifically gearing toward the Vietnam War. Those were for the war those were against the wall. 29:06 FC: I think they will be served. The people who have had the hardest time with healing or those were the soldiers the Vietnam veterans. I do not sense that being a problem outside of that group, in any kind of- 29:27 SM: I have been to the wall several times in the last couple of years Vietnam memorial and tried to get an ambience and a feel for what they really truly are healing which was the goal of the wall in Washington still sent just from overhearing conversations and talking with veterans that they come on with-with this going along. Because there is- 29:46 FC: We will never be completely healed, and there is so much scar tissue there. Among the victims of the Vietnam War, perhaps the-the-the most neglected and therefore damaged group, at least among American citizens, with the veterans themselves. 30:17 SM: Again, I am just trying to get a feel for the people under so those who were against the war, I had a chance to interview Senator Gaylord Nelson, last summer and he said that I do not see anybody any boomers walking around with, I have not healed on their sleeve. But he said there was no question the body politic has never been the same thing. It was dramatically changed, right? 30:40 FC: It was dramatically changed. But I do not think those people who protested the war came away feeling at least most of them anything other than to a certain degree, morally superior and idealistically smart. With age and [audio cuts]. With age and the tempering of experience, we have mellowed in our pretensions, and attained, I should hope, greater humility. Again, I am speaking here of the 15 percent of people who were active, and I must, my friends were among one. And I have I have certainly noticed a mellowing that I take simply as a growing cynicism, I see it as a sign of maturation. 31:51 SM: Thoughts, and I want to emphasize this point, because a lot of what I am trying to do here is to interview people to metaphors, their feelings, so we better understand the times better and respect different points of view. Do you think there should be efforts made to bring together again, either through university symposium or through the media, better understanding of the divisions of those times, so that we can share why we felt that way? Because those were intense times with intense feelings, and is one Vietnam veteran said to me, I do not know, I am not upset with a protester if there was a sincerity in the protest, of sincerity. And that just running off to Canada, and I am just saying that I have talked to people with the wall and there was many guilty people because they did not serve and they have not gotten older and they brought their kids to the wall. There is that feeling, oh, my God, they did not have any of the young, but they have not now, maybe I could have served should there be efforts made to bring those who served those who did not serve together try to understand education wise. So, feelings of right time so that so that will not only help history but will also be an educational tool for future generation for future generations. 33:15 FC: For people who desire this and to take part of that I think that is that can only be for the good, I would put it low on my own set of priorities for tackling the present and future problems. I-I, however, was not traumatized. As many people were people who have been traumatized need to get together with other people to go work on their, on their problems, so that they can become more functional and happier and more fulfilled and less embittered humans. 33:56 SM: Define the generation gap as designed back in the (19)60s, and the generation gap of the (19)90s. 34:07 FC: I think that because of the size of the adolescent generation in the (19)60s, there was a greater sense of solidarity and power, which made it easier in a corporate manner to reject the preceding generation. Today, I see it more individualistic and idiosyncratic. Remember that the parents, today's children, are also continued to be the dominant group, even though they were the dominant group when they were the children of their own parents. That has to have an impact on the relative sense of empowerment and entitlement that the two generations feel Again, I speak of this as the imperialistic generation because it was, it was far more powerful as children than were its parents, at least in a, in a relative sense to other groups of children. It is now far more powerful as parents than its children in a relative sense. 35:23 SM: Can you feel that is a very important term, because in higher education terms, we are trying to work with students’ day in and day feeling self-esteem and empowerment. Now- 35:32 FC: That is why I call it the pig in the state, right? It is, it is a pig in more ways than what- 35:35 SM: I sense today's young people do not feel that many getting a scenario in 18 years of working with college students. And you probably see that I do not know, seeing this from the church. But the fact is that when young people today look at that period of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, to come away with two fields, either they come away with I am sick of hearing, you guys live in the psychology of right time, I am tired of it or I wish I could have lived in that time. Because I do not see the issues today like their work. 36:04 FC: The point to remember is that in either case, they are still defining their own experience, according to that of their parents. We in the (19)60s did not define our experience, according to that of our parents when they were young. We could not have been less interested in our parents when they were young. Our own children are fascinated by us when we were young. And that is because we continue to have the power. And the- we set the scene we set the stage, I could not have told you a single song that my violin parents had sung, I could not have identified it, I could not have cared less. While kids sing along with me as I am playing the Beatles on the radio. That is a huge difference. And it is not just a difference because of a change in communication styles and times and things. It is a difference because this big imperialistic generation, as has set the cultural political scene where the entire country by virtue of its disproportionate size. 37:14 SM: Let me just double check here. You referred earlier to the fact about size that we are, the boomer generation is their size, has tremendous impact on anything that needs to spread generation itself. When I was a young person on college campus, one of the terms kept coming up over and over again is and I do not know, the pace. on college campus, we are the most unique generation American history. In other words, there was, he might say almost an arrogance that it really did not have anything to do with size. It was just it was a feeling within it was within the mind that we were going to change the world for the better. 37:49 FC: I see. Again, I will disagree, I think it has enormously to do with size. There is, there is a disproportionate demographic, cultural power that comes with numbers. Take a look today at the focus of the major magazines, they have to do with health, and people in their (19)40s (19)50s and (19)60s, being young when you are 50. But we were in our 30s people in their 50s did not exist in the cultural media. Everybody was in their 20s and 30s. I think that this sense of entitlement has predominantly to do with the size of the generation. Also, the fact that the generation was pampered in the 1950s. It was pampered in part because of its size again. The- this my generation helped to shape the character of the (19)50s as much as it did in the (19)60s. And the character of the (19)50s was a very child friendly environment. Relatively speaking, where this generation by virtue, its number and its demands, was treated. Specially that to a degree has something to do with the sense of entitlement that followed in the (19)60s. But the generation was not just blown from the Prowler Zeus is some kind of special group of people who arrived at a critical point in history and made a difference by virtue of being different from everyone else. It has to do with size. 39:49 SM: If you to pick the one event in your life when you were young that had the greatest impact on you. When you were either in your teens or early during college. What was that incident what event the greatest impact on your life? 40:04 FC: Probably the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. 40:14 SM: Where were you at that time? 40:15 FC: I was at Stanford. 40:18 SM: I asked this because people that you described where they were, how did you find out about where were you at the moment? 40:30 FC: In both cases I was in my dorm room or house room and was called by in one case friends and in another no and in the Robert Kennedy case I campaigned for Kennedy for the Democratic primary, and I was actually watching the returns and the other in the other case, I was called the telephone for the television by friends. 41:04 SM: Did this event have any impact in terms of the direction you want your life saving here as a minister? 41:10 FC: Because I already I mean, it confirmed me in my own path, which was not that kind of vocational path. It was, it was a path to make the world a better place, less violent place. A more companionable and neighborly place. This sharpened my passion and-and confirmed my commitment, rather than doing the opposite, which would be to lead to despair or citizens. 41:57 SM: Which on, again, have an impact on society, do you feel that you personally have had an impact on society? What is the greatest impact? 42:05 FC: I have had a small impact on society, but I believe you save the world, one neighbor at a time. And the institutions are far more powerful than individuals in making a difference in society. To what extent I have had any impact it has been through the-the collective work of this 1500-member congregation. Which is far greater than anything I could possibly do on my own. 42:36 SM: Some names of individuals from (19)60s and early (19)70s and just your thoughts on that. 30 of them okay, go ahead. How many minutes we got here? 42:48 FC: I have got a I have got to be. I have got about a half an hour. 42:52 SM: Okay. Okay, you are okay, because I have another interview for clients. The other side of town. Great, good. Good. Just your thoughts on these individuals Jane Fonda. 43:05 FC: Frivolous. 43:06 SM: Tom Hayden. 43:19 FC: He was, um earnest. 43:24 SM: Eddie Hopper and Jerry Rubin. 43:27 FC: Lightful and tragic. 43:30 SM: It is takeoff to Eddie Hoffman, he-he is outside of Philadelphia, and he let them know that no one is listening to me anymore. And [inaudible crosstalk]. When-when I read that, I was wondering how many boomers feel that way. Then they get abominations that no one's listened to them anymore. 43:57 FC: Very few. That, that is a function of celebrity and the and the withdrawal pains when one is no longer one of the 50 most talked about people that has nothing to do with the generation. That is true of any individual who has his 15 minutes in the sun. And then the sun is covered by clouds, and no one can see it feels as if he is invisible, whereas most people would never expect to be visible in the first place. 44:33 SM: The Black Power advocates, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seal, Huey Newton, [inaudible] 44:39 FC: Strident and powerful. 44:43 SM: Political leaders and there were some really good probably political leaders at that time, but they have a lot of things wrong for them too. And that is I am going to start with John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. 44:59 FC: Kennedy was charismatic and inspiring. Johnson was powerful and tragic. Richard Nixon talented and sinister. 45:30 SM: Gerald Ford. 45:31 FC: Kind and pathetic. 45:40 SM: George McGovern. 45:42 FC: Humbly moral and everlastingly decent. 45:44 SM: He was on our campuses this past- Yeah. Eugene McCarthy. 45:51 FC: Narcissistic and supercilious. 46:03 SM: Bobby Kennedy. 46:05 FC: Great and [inaudible] 46:14 SM: Jordan Wallace. 46:19 FC: A-a creature of his time. 46:32 SM: Luther King Jr. 46:34 FC: Inspirational and worldly brilliant in the highest sense of the term. 46:45 SM: Malcolm X. 46:51 FC: Dedicated and powerfully impressive. 47:02 SM: Hubert Humphrey. 47:05 FC: Joyous and irrepressible [inaudible]. 47:16 SM: Ralph Nader. 47:23 FC: Earnest and grim. 47:26 SM: [Inaudible] Larry. 47:28 FC: Irresponsible and delightful. 47:32 SM: Doctor Benjamin Spock. 47:40 FC: Complicated uneasy. I knew him pretty well too. 47:47 SM: Barry Goldwater. 47:51 FC: Solid and dual integrity. 48:01 SM: Gloria Steinem, Abigail Adams and Shirley Chisholm, people that were leaders of the women's movement. 48:11 FC: Gloria Steinem, basically indefatigable, courageous, idiosyncratic. 48:24 SM: Mohammad Ali. 48:25 FC: Endearing and amusing. 48:33 SM: Richard Daly. 48:38 FC: Born in the wrong century. 48:44 SM: Robert McNamara. 48:48 FC: Brilliant and heartless. 48:52 SM: Spiro Agnew. 48:55 FC: Second rate. 49:02 SM: Daniel Ellsberg. 49:07 FC: Accidentally important. 49:11 SM: Woodward and Bernstein. 49:16 FC: Dedicated and self-absorbed. 49:21 SM: Music of the (19)60s. 49:26 FC: Ruthlessly delightful. 49:29 SM: I know there is so many but if you were to pick your favorites, the musicians that you personally love and secondly, music that may have had the greatest impact on the generation and future generations. Who would those musicians be? 49:43 FC: Head and shoulders above all others I would say Bob Dylan both in terms of personal impact and impact upon generation. He is in a class of his own. culturally I would say that the Beatles the Rolling Stones were also in a class of their own, but if there is one if there is one thing here to stand out in the music, the (19)60s it is Bob Dylan. 50:12 SM: He was sick recently. He is okay-okay. Something, yeah. People around Richard Nixon, John Dean, John Michell [inaudible] 50:28 FC: Pure blind bureaucrats. 50:31 SM: Sam Ervin. 50:33 FC: I mean that is Dean Mitchell was just an egregious narcissist. 50:43 SM: Men and [inaudible] man in that [inaudible] 50:45 FC: Era in the, in the third line bureaucrat. 50:50 SM: Sam Ervin came in that [inaudible] 50:58 FC: Just a real country original. 51:05 SM: Senator Fulbright. 51:06 FC: Quite complicated and courageous. 51:14 SM: Senator Muskie. 51:17 FC: Steady as the day with law. 51:21 SM: Gaylord Nelson. 51:25 FC: A man who cares but also enjoys life. 51:36 SM: Dwight Eisenhower. 51:42 FC: A lot better than he seemed at his job. 51:49 SM: Senator Church. 51:54 FC: I would say [inaudible] patriotic, passionate, 52:17 SM: Most of the questions because we doubled over on one but I want to end by repeating myself. Please apologize for my doing so, but I am trying to get a grasp on the healing and regeneration as a minister, a person that worked with your parishioners you deal with this day in and day out as you started in the opening of your book lifelines, that letter that was left under the door about dealing with adversity. I want to, if you do not mind, I would like to read this. And-and again, I am repeating myself, but I must get clarity on this before some say that the Civil War generation went to their grave, still bitter toward the other side. And then again, it is going to should efforts be made to prevent this from happening again, because Senator Muskie really alleviated to this in our conversation. And he felt personally that this generation is even though it may not have been the same thing as a civil war, as you brought up. Still, it is his perception that many people in this generation are going to go to their graves, still bitter. And you know, as a minister, obviously, you know what bitterness can do to someone. And so, I am trying to do is try to understand this better. Because during my numerous trips to the wall, I have witnessed several ceremonies with veterans in the audience, some still openly hate the president. They hate Jane Fonda. They hate still the people that were protesting against the war. As the I interviewed a gentleman last night, who was the head of the Vietnam Veterans of Pennsylvania, and he says, I still I use the term hate, I will never forgive those who were against the war, who protested the war. I mean, they are a bunch of other words, they are just feeling guilt now because they did not serve. 54:04 FC: I know, I do not see how we can possibly legislate either forgiveness or reconciliation. Obviously, time will heal to a degree and people getting together as a positive thing. But if you were to talk about this generation as a whole, I would say that the-the healing between parents and child that is to save the child who that was to say adolescent in the (19)60s and now as a parent him or herself and his parents are getting older, or dying, is by far the more existentially pervasive gap because of the sense of entitlement of many people in this generation. And the obvious disappointments that have followed normal life development. The amount of blame afforded to parents given that there are so many children doing the blaming, I would see as the number one healing issue. Beneath that and well beneath it but-but-but probably more dramatic would be the healing that one might hope could commence or continue to commence between those who serve this country and Vietnam and those who oppose the war. I think the passion play is played out mostly in the minds hearts and souls of the Vietnam veterans, not in the minds hearts and souls of the war protesters. 55:52 SM: Again, when the best history books are written, and the best history books are always written 25 years after an event because the best World War two books are being written right now. Like Steven Ambrose’s D-Day. We were only 25 years removed 30 bucks. And then that 50-year period goes forth what will be the lasting legacy in the boomer generation, how will history treat this, how will historians when they sit down and write it the Doug Brinkley is of the world when he is writing. 56:24 FC: As creative, narcissistic, demanding and influential within every decade of their lifespan according to the needs and desires their age may not be clearly put you know what I am talking about having heard me for the rest of the year. 57:04 SM: Any final thoughts? Thank you very much. (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 1 Microcassette 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 Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Church, F. Forrester ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Clergy; Theologians; Unitarian Universalists; Church, F. Forrester--Interviews Description An account of the resource Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church IV (1948 - 2009) was a minister, theologian and author. He eventually ended up becoming a voice known to speak for Universalism. He wrote 25 books and most of them involved religion within his life. Church was a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Divinity School. He earned a Ph.D. in early church history from Harvard University. 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 1997-07-23 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.10.2016.10 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 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. 57:13 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d5c72d9d541f5973b0d3b756e0688c8c.mp3 53c12e7263995f5d71510a394c025345 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 Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov 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 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> 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 2018-03-19 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Reverend Canon Claudia Wilson Year of Graduation 1965 Biographical Text Reverend Claudia is a semi-retired priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Yonkers. Before her ordination into the priesthood, she worked in publishing. At Harpur College, she was the first woman elected head of SDC (Students for Democratic Change), the progressive student government. Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Student Associations, Students for Democratic Change; Harpur College – Alumni in the Episcopal Church; Harpur College – Alumni in Publishing; Harpur College – Alumni living in Yonkers, NY 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>. Subject LCSH Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Student Associations, Students for Democratic Change; Harpur College – Alumni in the Episcopal Church; Harpur College – Alumni in Publishing; Harpur College – Alumni living in Yonkers, NY 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 Alumni Interviews Interview with: Claudia Wilson Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 19 March 2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) IG: 00:01 Okay [inaudible] CW: 00:03 My name is Claudia Wilson. I graduated from Harpur College in 1965 I am going to be 74 on July 12. I am currently a retired- I am a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of New York. I retired from active ministry, but I am a priest associate on a voluntary basis at St John's Church in Yonkers. IG: 00:26 Okay, so and we are currently interviewing you for the oral history project. CW: 00:37 Yes. IG: 00:37 Okay, so, tell us where you grew up. CW: 00:42 I was born and raised in the Bronx, and was my family was still living in the Bronx when I was a student at Harpur and um, I- after-after school, Terry, then [inaudible] now sailor, who was also an alum, and I rented an apartment in Manhattan, and I went to work in the book publishing business. After two years, I took a year off and got a master's degree in English from the University of from Toronto, University of Toronto in Canada. Came back and I had essentially a 23-year career in the book publishing business, mostly in college textbooks. Finished up with 11 years at Harper and Roe, now Harper Collins. And then I decided, I think partly because I never went into the Peace Corps or any of those things, that I would do some good work. And I went became the volunteer coordinator at God's Love We Deliver, which was doing people with AIDS. And then I felt a call to the diaconate in the Episcopal Church, and I went to work for an Episcopal Church for two years as their parish administrator of St John's in the village. That was in 1990 to 1992 which was a very interesting experience. I continued to volunteer for God's Love We Deliver. And of course, this was at the height of the AIDS crisis, and village was the epicenter. And I delivered, delivered meals to at that time men with AIDS during my lunch hour. And that was quite an, quite an experience, I have to say. And then after, in 1992 I was ordained to the diaconate, and I was a deacon at my church, which was sending nations of Antioch on West End Avenue in Manhattan for two years. And then I had moved to Riverdale from Manhattan, and I came to St John's Church here in Yonkers as Deacon. I was Deacon here for 12 years. I was also as soon as I was ordained on the staff of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. And then after a while, after 10 years as a deacon, discerned a call, a change in vocation to the priesthood, and I went to Seabury, Western seminary. IG: 01:56 When was that? CW: 01:56 That was in 1990 to 1992 which was a very interesting experience. I continued to volunteer for God's Love We Deliver. And of course, this was at the height of the AIDS crisis, and village was the epicenter. And I delivered, delivered meals to at that time men with AIDS during my lunch hour. And that was quite a, quite an experience, I have to say. And then after, in 1992 I was ordained to the diaconate, and I was a deacon at my church, which was sending nations of Antioch on West End Avenue in Manhattan for two years. And then I had moved to Riverdale from Manhattan, and I came to St John's Church here in Yonkers as Deacon. I was Deacon here for 12 years. I was also as soon as I was ordained on the staff of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. And then after a while, after 10 years as a deacon, discerned a call, a change in vocation to the priesthood, and I went to Seabury, Western seminary. IG: 03:03 Which is where? CW: 03:04 Evanston. Evanston, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. I was 60 years old when I went to seminary. IG: 03:04 Wonderful-wonderful. CW: 03:10 Very interesting too. It is a totally different educational experience to go to college in the (19)60s and seminary in the in the 2000s let me tell you, was wonderful. Anyway, after two years, I was ordained to the priesthood. I was priest on a halftime basis in a church, church of the Holy Communion in May, a pack and continued to work. IG: 03:31 I know where that there's a Russian Orthodox convent. CW: 03:34 Yes, right across the street from my church. IG: 03:36 Wonderful, what a coincidence. CW: 03:39 Yes. Anyway, I was half time at Holy Communion, and half time working for the diocese as a camp for congregational development. And then in in 2016 I became 72 and the rules of the church said, church pension fund always say, you have to retire from the pension fund collect a pension. But if you are a priest in charge of a congregation, you must leave that congregation at 72 and I had already been working for 50 plus years by that time, and I just decided to retire. So, I retired, but I came and I lived 10 minutes from St John's Getty square, came back here. Knew the priest in charge. He was somebody I knew from the Cathedral of St John the Divine, and so I am now priest associate here. So, in a nutshell, that is my 50 years of working after school. IG: 04:29 Thank you, thank you for that very succinct synopsis of a long career. CW: 04:36 Yes. IG: 04:37 A very diverse career. CW: 04:39 Yes, I feel like I have had I have been very fortunate. Many people do not find like do not are not able to find one thing they like to do. And I had two distinct careers of things that I really loved. So, I feel very fortunate in that way, IG: 04:53 And you are still doing it. CW: 04:53 Yeah, I am still doing it. Yes. Right. IG: 05:01 Engaged. So, let us return to a deeper past, which is your childhood and upbringing, and tell us a little bit about your parents and where you told us the Bronx and your upbringing and whether they went to college, if they encouraged you to pursue your education? CW: 05:25 Yes-yes. My mother was from Louisville, Kentucky, and my mother did graduate from college. She went to Miami University in Ohio. She was a social worker before she got married. My father was in the New York City Police Department for 32 years and retired as a captain in 1968 they met because my father, early in his police career, was in the emergency squad, and my uncle by marriage, my mother's brother-in-law, was also in the same squad, and fixed my mother and my father up for a date, when my mother came to New York to visit her sister. My father did not go to college. His parents, they just could not afford it. Even-even going to City University, which would have been free, they needed his income. So, which is unfortunate, because my father was a very-very bright man, really, very intelligent man, lover, great lover of music. Great opera fan, very good with languages. When I was in high school, I took Spanish, and my father used to coach me on my on my Spanish homework he had gotten. My father went to Stuyvesant. He got the Spanish medal every year he was in Stuyvesant. And even then, 40 years later, he remembered it. Do you know, he really just had that gift, you know? IG: 06:43 Well, he also probably had occasion to use it, living in New York. CW: 06:45 Yes-yes, no, Bronx. I think you know; you have to understand that when I was growing up in the Bronx, the neighborhood that I, that we lived in- IG: 06:49 It was very different. CW: 06:55 -was product was white. IG: 06:57 Yes. CW: 06:58 It was predominantly Roman Catholic with a significant Jewish population. In fact, when I went to elementary school, these were the days that they did not close the schools on the Jewish holidays. And literally, I was the only girl in my fifth-grade class. And there would be a handful of us in the whole school. So it was, which was good, I think, because I kind of grew up, unlike a lot of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, not feeling like I ruled the world, if you know what I mean. And I had, you know, most of my friends were either Roman Catholic or Jewish, and I went to a Presbyterian Church, which was about the only time I came into contact with other students. So, you know, so it was, it was in we lived in University Heights, and at that point, NYU uptown, which is where Bronx Community College is now, it is just down the block from us. And the Presbyterian Church I went to had been founded by-by NYU faculty members back in 1901 so I was very fortunate. I mean, I went to public school in the Bronx, and I went to-to Junior, what was then Junior High in the Bronx, but I went to high school at Hunter College, high school in Manhattan, which changed my life, really. I mean, in a way, first of all, you know, I got out of the Bronx, in a sense. But also, I think Hunter, the work we did at Hunter, really prepared me for Harpur, in a way that I know I saw a lot of my classmates who came from smaller, consolidated schools in upstate New York, you know, where they wrote essays about what I did my summer vacation, and then he got, they got, you know, to Harpur, and they were asked to write an essay about Dante's Inferno. We had sort of been doing that kind of thing all the time, and I had, I had gotten some AP credits in English and history. So, I think Hunter was a very-very significant- IG: 09:02 I know, friends who have gone. CW: 09:04 Yes, exactly. And, of course, you know, one is proud of the fact that Supreme Court Justice went to your high school. And various other people, and also people I knew at Harpur, Deborah Tannen, who's the link. IG: 09:04 Of course. CW: 09:19 She-she was a year behind me at Hunter, at Hunter and Harpur, so I knew her. IG: 09:23 How interesting. CW: 09:25 Yes-yes. So then, you know, so I think the time that I went to Harpur, there were a lot of kids there who could have gone to an Ivy, Ivy League school, but, you know, maybe did not qualify for a scholarship, and certainly parents could not afford it. I had my best friend in high school went to Cornell, and we were shocked that it was going to cost her $2,000 a year, you know, because people did not have that kind of money, you know. So-so I think that also made Harpur a kind of unique experience at the time that, you know, there were a lot of people there. Who were very bright, very bright, you know, and could have been in other places, but you know- IG: 10:06 How did you choose? how did you end up choosing Harpur? CW: 10:09 My father, who did not go to college, was very firm that I should go away to school, because he said to me that if you stay home, it is just going to be like an extension of high school. And quite frankly, you know, my policemen did not make much money in those days, not that we were, I mean, I never considered us poor, but we certainly, you know, could not have afforded $2,000 a year, you know, at Cornell so Binghamton Harpur offered, you know, a really good education. And, I mean, I think my, I think, was like $500 a year or something like that. And so, it was well within, you know, our means, IG: 10:49 and you probably got a Regents scholarship. Do you remember? CW: 10:52 I do not remember. I do not remember, to tell you the truth, but I probably did, I do not remember, I really do not remember, you know. And of course, it was, it was away, but close enough, you know, although, of course, you know, it is thinking back on it now, you know, we did not have cell phones and we did not have the internet, and, you know, I called my parents once a week on Sunday. You know, my mother and I wrote letters to each other, letters in envelopes and stamps. Nobody does that anymore, but that was the way, you know. So, in a way, it was good, especially if I am an only child. I think it was good for me because I really had to be on my own, so to speak, you know. And I think my father was absolutely right, you know, that it was good for me to-to get away and, you know, be on my own, because I was very spoiled. But, you know, managed. Okay. IG: 11:40 Did you have an idea of what you wanted to accomplish at Harpur? Did you know- CW: 11:45 I think in those days, one was not quite as fixated on education as the means to a job did you know? IG: 11:54 Yes. CW: 11:54 I mean, I graduated with a degree in humanities, you know, with English literature, and I went, you know, and I interviewed at like, five or six publishing companies. I mean, yes, they were, you know, jobs as secretaries. That is how you started in publishing. But they were there, you know. I mean, I- it was very different time in terms of the in terms of the opportunities that were available to people, especially people with liberal arts degrees. You know, I mean, I do not know what I would do now, you know- IG: 12:24 [crosstalk] time when you could actually aspire, you know, to any right profession, to any [crosstalk] CW: 12:31 I mean, I went into publishing because I had been an English major, and it just seemed like the natural thing to do. And my friend, Terry, whom I roomed with, was going to library school, she became a librarian, as a matter of fact, and wound up, ultimately- IG: 12:45 What is her last name? CW: 12:46 Now, Shorttail, she became, eventually, she went to work for the Public Library system in New York, and then eventually, when her husband worked for the New York Times in Washington, and they moved into Maryland, and she went and became, I think she, she became a librarian at University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the one that, you know, the, I think it is the place that that just won that big, you know, NCAA title, or whatever. But anyway, she became a librarian, [crosstalk] we could do that. I mean, you know, my salary was like $85 a week. I took the job because it was $85 not $75 that everybody else was offering. And I do not know, I do not remember what she was making. She was working part time as a librarian, and but, you know, I mean, we paid $200 a month for a furnished apartment in Chelsea, which was not this fancy then as it is now. And, you know, we ate at home a lot, and we saved up enough money we gave a big party the first Christmas, we were, it was Christmas of (19)66 not (19)65, Christmas of (19)66. We had enough money saved up that we could, you know, kids cannot do that these days. You know, they are living in their parents’ basements. So we were, I think we were very fortunate. IG: 14:00 Yeah, it is a different world. So, you know, in publishing, you worked as an um- CW: 14:08 I work for the I started out at the McMillan company as assistant in the permissions department, and then I moved to the contracts department, and then I moved to the school book department as a kind of production editor assistant. Then I then that was, went right after that, but I took off the year and got a master's degree in at University of Toronto, came back and went to work for-for the Prentice Hall. IG: 14:36 And as-as what? CW: 14:38 As a production editor, you know. IG: 14:38 As a production editor. CW: 14:40 Yeah, right. IG: 14:41 I know exactly what that is. CW: 14:42 Oh, you do, okay, yes, words and I became the Prentice Hall at the time, did this series of books called spectrum books. You probably had them. You probably, well, maybe not, but they were paperbacks that were like supplement, supplementary text, you might say. So, we had like 20th century views, which was 20th century views of major authors, and [crosstalk] and we had a series on film, and a whole bunch of series, and I eventually became the sort of managing editor for the production editing department for for that. And then- IG: 15:17 Interesting material. CW: 15:19 Very interesting, very-very interesting and sideline. It is not really probably important for this, but many years later, when I had my church in map pack, my organist, who's actually a jazz musician, on how we got to talking about it, it turned out his father had been one of my authors, which was really weird. His father was an expert on Godard, and we had a book about a Godard [crosstalk] IG: 15:42 [crosstalk] was interesting [crosstalk] So as a production editor, did you get to read this material? CW: 15:51 Yes, well- IG: 15:51 Were you just more interested in people- CW: 15:55 Well, I mean, obviously we had, we had proof readers, and we had things like that. So, I was but I got very especially the film books. I got very interested in the film books, and I felt like I did more than just, you know, kind of shuffle traffic things around. And I had a lot of contact with the authors at that point. And then later became an editor at Prentice Hall, and what was then called their managed book division. Managed books- was a big thing in the (19)70s where you had a titular author, but you also did an enormous amount of research about what the other competing books were like, how much, how many words they how much space they gave to certain topics, and all of that. And so, I became a, became a development editor, and eventually became a development editor at at Harper and Roe, oh, I went to work very briefly for something called the Franklin Library. They did those leather-bound volumes, you know, that you see on people's shelves. And that was good because they paid a lot, which enabled me to get a job that paid more. So eventually, a man that I had known at Prentice Hall, who had gone to Harper and Roe in the College Division, hired me to be their-their development sort of head of their development department. And then- IG: 17:16 What does the development [crosstalk] CW: 17:17 Well, what we did was what we did was work. There was the odd quote author, and then there were also professional writers. And so, you-you arranged, you oversaw the research that was done for the book. You worked with the author, you know, on the outline and sort of work with you also arranged for, you know, professional reviews of the of the of the of the manuscript by, you know, other-other academics, and then sort of saw it through production. You were not the production editor, but you were the person in house that the production people worked with. But then eventually Harper and Roe had a terrible time with its biology editors. Two of them sort of failed quickly. At that point, they- we had a-a textbook for anatomy and physiology for two-year schools for people who are going to be eight, you know, not nurses. Well, could be for nursing, you know, could be for technicians. You know, whatever was the best-selling book in the department, and very expensive to do. Not only made a lot of money, but cost a lot of money IG: 18:28 What were the years of doing this? CW: 18:30 Oh, okay, I became the development, I became. So eventually, they asked me if I would be the acquisitions editor, the buyer for the biology list that was 1981 and they wanted me because I understood what it meant to do these lavishly illustrated, you know, books, and I had a good reputation for my dealings with authors, you know. And so, I did that for seven years, I guess. And then then became the Executive Editor for Sciences at Harper and Roe, and then left that in at the beginning of 1989 IG: 19:05 Did you have any science background? CW: 19:09 But biology, unlike a lot of other sciences, you need to do these words, you know what I mean. And I had some really wonderful authors that I liked very much. And of course, I traveled around the country, you know, visiting, visiting university, you know, colleges and universities, and I really, I really enjoyed it a lot. But as I say, I eventually I had, I had my-my parents did not go to church, but they sent me to Presbyterian Sunday school. I went to Presbyterian Church all in high school, I went to Presbyterian church for the first two years I was at Harpur, and then my very best friend at Harpur, Susan Calkins. Now Susan Calkins, Ritas, was an Episcopalian, and I visited her during the summer between our sophomore and junior years, and she took me to church of the Advent in Boston, which is very famous for its high church liturgy and incense and smells and bells, as we say. And I was so swept away by the liturgy that I decided to become an Episcopalian on the spot. It was actually-actually confirmed while I was at Harpur. And uh- IG: 20:16 So, tell us a little bit about that environment. And- CW: 20:19 Yes, I mean, it was, it was not a lot of people went to church. I was, in some ways, sort of an oddball in the way, you know, I was president of the Student Government. IG: 20:31 No, I did not. CW: 20:32 Oh yes. IG: 20:33 I did not know. CW: 20:33 Yeah-yeah. I was the first woman elected to be President of the Student Government. That was in (19)64 and I am sorry, (19)63 and we-we had a group called Students for a Democratic community, which was a take-off on a democratic society. And this is just my opinion, check with other people. But I think one of the reasons that they, that group sort of nominated me to be President of the Student Government was because I was a good girl. Do you know what I mean, it was, I was the kind of person that the administration, if they did not like what STC was doing, they could not really fault me. Do you know what I am saying? Good, very good grades. IG: 21:19 And maybe you were [crosstalk] CW: 21:21 Yes, exactly. I mean, I believed in what stood for, but I was not personally a radical kind of person, you know what I mean? [crosstalk] So I was, I was kind of difficult to be sidelined because I was, you know, a rebel or, right, what you know, whatever. So anyway, but so, yeah, well, you know, at Harpur at that point, I think I can tell you a story that will give you an example that will kind of illustrate something of what it was like. I was thinking about this as I was thinking about coming here today. I had a friend. This is freshman year, I guess, or maybe sophomore year, I do not remember who lived in I lived in O'Connor. She lived in Johnson, and I used to go over there occasionally to visit her. And every time I went over there, one of the girls who lived on the floor was playing Johnny Mathis', Wonderful! Wonderful! 24 hours a day next door to me in O'Connor was living a girl who played Joan Baez, is House of the Rising Sun, 24 hours a day. And that was sort of what it was like. You know what I mean, we had very distinct groups. We did not call them hippies. We call them sickies, so, you know. And it was, you know, graduating in (19)65 the Vietnam War, we had, like, I think, one protest toward the very-very end of the time that we were there. So, we actually went to class. Do you know, do not, I am saying we did not? And you also have to remember, if you entered Harpur, I was like, 17, okay, in 1961 well, I had spent most of my formative years in the (19)50s, you know, we were kind of on a we were, in a way, a transition, I think, to what came later. And our thing was, really civil rights was a very big thing, civil rights club. We had a civil rights club. We also went to Buffalo to protest the hearings. HUAC had hearings about the State University. I think in Buffalo, we went to protest that. IG: 23:27 What was thought about? CW: 23:28 Well, you know, HUAC House, on American Activities Committee was looking into, I guess, what they thought were communists in the state universities. IG: 23:35 Meaning the faculty[crosstalk] CW: 23:36 Yeah, I would assume Buffalo, this is Buffalo. Buffalo, well-well, I think it was in our sophomore year that Buffalo joined the State University, you know, because originally Harpur was the only liberal arts school, and then buffalo joined, Stony Brook joined, and they converted Albany into from being a strictly teachers’ college into even what they call the university center that was also a liberal arts school. So, there were four of them liberal arts schools by the time we-we left. So anyway, we, you know, we protested about that. I think the only thing- IG: 24:11 So, you were politicized? CW: 24:12 Oh yes, we were, we were, but when you talk to people who graduated later, Vietnam was, there was a very big thing. It was not for us. No, it was. I mean, although I certainly had friends who-who you know when you know we were in the draft and you know or not and all that, but I think for us, civil rights was probably the biggest thing, because you have to understand that we were in in school during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, Martin Luther King's, you know, the speech in Washington, the Civil Rights Act, the voting right wrote Rights Act, all of that was and we did have people who went south in the summer, you know, to teach and demonstrate and-and whatever. So that was very important. The only thing that really stopped classes for us was Kennedy's death. Of course, Kennedy died while we were there. And-and, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis was in the fall of our son is in the fall of our sophomore. IG: 25:13 What did you think about that? CW: 25:14 Well, we actually watched it on television, and we did not have to understand, in the dorms, you know. So, they had, they had it, yeah, they brought in the TV. They brought in a TV for The Beatles too, [laughs] IG: 25:29 On the Ed Sullivan Show. CW: 25:30 On The Ed Sullivan Show, yes, we watched it. And, of course, for Kennedy's funeral. I mean, you know. So no, I think people you know, thought that conceivably, that for the Cuban Missile Crisis, that this could have been World War three, you know. And who knows what would have happened, especially being in New York. I mean, we all grew up, you know, with the duck and cover drills when it was just so ridiculous, [crosstalk] especially in New York, come on. IG: 26:01 But this was the thing the past at Harpur College. None of, none of the drills [crosstalk] CW: 26:07 We had grown up- IG: 26:08 I understand. CW: 26:08 -you know, we had grown up with the idea that the Russians were going to come and bomb us, do you know? And I mean, blow us up. IG: 26:14 But did you believe that? CW: 26:16 I think as a child, I remember we went on a summer vacation, and we went to Gettysburg. We saw the, you know, the battlefield at Gettysburg and the ray caverns. And we were coming back, and we're staying overnight in this motel someplace in Pennsylvania, I guess. And in the middle of the night, a siren went off, and I thought it was an atomic attack. Of course, it was the volunteer fire department. You know, so, you know, we grew up with the notion that the siren was going to go off and, you know, the bomb was going to come down. Of course, my father, when I was in junior high school, we had early dismissal drills. Instead of the duck and cover, we had an early dismissal drill so you could go home and die with your family. And I always thought, Well, my father's a cop. He was not going to be home. No, so anyway. But it was, I think, you know, things that would seem petty. Now, like, you know, we had a demonstration against the rule against wearing shorts in the dining but it was, it was very much a part of that development of the 60s mentality. IG: 27:29 Right. And yet, and yet, you know, you, you participated in the duck and cover. I know that everyone did. And you believe that, you know, the Soviets were possibly a threat [crosstalk] And you were also, well, my protesting at Buffalo against you are, yes, so how does that? How does that kind of there? There must have been some kind of transition in awareness and political awareness. CW: 27:52 Yeah, I think, I think also now I grew up my father, who was not he was a cop, but we are not Irish, and we were not Catholic. And he was a Republican, very unusual. So- but, you know, as, of course, you know, Kennedy was elected when I was in high school. And I think, you know, that was sort of the beginning of-of more of a political, you know, awareness, and I never voted for Republican in my life. I voted for a Democrat. I voted the first vote I ever cast was in 1965 in New York City for John Lindsay as the mayor my father hated and so, you know, I voted for Lindsay. I got my mother to vote for Lindsay, you know, so, I mean, I was, I was more of a, I was a Democrat, you know, fairly early on right now. And I think at Harpur, you know, there were a lot of people who were very politically aware and very politically active. And of course, you know, I fell in with that group. IG: 29:01 Do you think that you're thinking altered about the world and how you perceive politics in the world at Harpur College? Or did it occur before? CW: 29:11 Probably it became- yeah, I would, I would say yes. I would say that I met more people in at Harpur who were politically active than I had certainly ever met at Hunter High School. I do not think, I do not remember people being especially politically active, although, you know, at Hunter especially, and probably also at Harpur. At Hunter, there were a number of girls whose families had been--two of two of my best friends at Harpur were from Latvia and had been displaced persons after the war, and whose parents had been whose-whose father stayed behind in order to get his wife and children out and other--we had a girl from the Ukraine. We had girl. We had people, you know, who were whose lives, families' lives, certainly if not their own. Because I am most of my classmates were born in (19)43 or (19)44 so we're talking about people who were born during the war, especially if you were born of European parents, either your parents were refugees or, you know, or you were yourself, I mean, in some way, as an infant, anyway. So, I think that I was certainly conscious of political developments. We had a course at Hunter I remember in my senior year about the developing nations of Africa, do you know? And so, you know, I think one was aware, but I was not, I was not really an adult at that point. I think, you know, at Harpur, you became an adult, and I think that made a difference also. IG: 30:53 And you gravitated to political activity because of the seeds that were planted early on- CW: 31:00 Yeah, I think so. And just because of the friends that I made at Harpur. You know, my friend Susan Calkins, it was, I said it was my very best friend. Was very politically active, and still is, for that matter. So, you know, I- IG: 31:15 What kind of, do you remember the kind of conversations that you would have? CW: 31:18 I am sorry, I do not. IG: 31:20 You do not of course. I know, I know [crosstalk] You know what you know a question I thought of you went you mentioned that you went to seminary at age 60. CW: 31:33 Yes. IG: 31:34 How was that experience different from attending college at 17? CW: 31:39 Yeah, well, last time before I went to before I went to seminary in 2004. I had not been in a formal classroom since 1968 when I got my master's degree at Toronto. So I was, just, say, a little bit apprehensive about how this was going to go. And of course, the technology was entirely different, you know. So anyway, got into class. Now a lot of a lot of people were also people who had had other careers. So, although I was among the oldest in the group that I was in, you know, a lot of people were in their 40s and 50s, but we had some people who were in their 20s, you know, and 30s, and we had a lot of good laughs, I have to say, because our life experiences had been so-so different. I remember in my Old Testament class, my Old Testament professor, who was probably in his 40s at that point, was very big on bringing in examples from current culture, especially music. And he was into the discussion. And he was very big on multicultural interpretations in the Bible. He was originally his family was Korean, I think yes. So anyway, he would bring in these references to these groups that I must confess I had never heard because, you know, music is the great divider. IG: 32:57 Of course. CW: 32:58 Until one day in class, he said something about Simon and Garfunkel and all of us of a certain age, clap. [laughter] But I really, I really enjoyed seminary. I enjoy, I always enjoyed school. I mean, you know, class and all of that, and it was nice. It was like using a different part of my brain and taking a rest from all the other things that I had ever done. And as I said, you know, we, especially some of the younger kids in the in the class, we really appreciated each other, I think, you know, so it was, it was, it was good. I was I was really because it was funny when I, when I was accepted into the ordination process for the priesthood. I never expected that the bishop would say to me, you have to leave New York. But he was right, because I had been working for the diocese for so long, and I never would have gotten away from it, you know. And he had been the dean at Seabury Western before he became the Bishop of New York. So, he said to me, "How about Seabury?" And I had, I had promised myself that whatever he said, whatever it took, I would do it. And so, I picked up all my stuff and the cats, and I moved out to Evanston for two years. So. IG: 34:10 You mentioned attending Presbyterian Church in Binghamton. CW: 34:15 Yes. IG: 34:15 What was that like? Were there students, or was it- CW: 34:18 There were few students. I mean, the problem was, if you look at our yearbook, there was a group called Young Americans for Freedom, which was sort of the Goldwater type. And I was not like them at all, you know, just not like them at all. [crosstalk] No, not particularly my church. But I just meant being-being known as a Protestant that went to church, you know, right, a little right chance I always thought. But then, when I went, when I be, when I decided to go to the Episcopal Church, my friend Susan was there. And so it was, you know, I felt more-more comfortable. IG: 34:54 And where was the church? CW: 34:56 And it was in John, actually, the church I went to that I was confirmed at was in Johnson City. There was also a church in Binghamton that we went to occasionally. So, in fact, I went because when I was confirmed, my family was not there. The rector of the church invited me to come to dinner, and I had dinner with his family and the bishop, Bishop Higley, his name was, who was the Bishop of Central New York, who confirmed me, so, yeah. IG: 35:22 Was there a great division between town and gown, between the student community and Binghamton [inaudible] CW: 35:32 Yeah, probably, I think, you know, do not forget, we did not have cars. IG: 35:38 So how did you get around? CW: 35:39 Well, eventually a bus. I mean, some people did, right, very-very few, eventually they ran a bus line that came up into the campus. So, you know, you did not, I mean, except, you know, to go to, you know, to go out on a Friday night or something like that. You really did not get into town, into town, per se. I mean, I was not, I did not feel very aware of Binghamton. Do you know what I mean, as a town, and there were, there were some people who lived, I mean, other than students who lived in Binghamton, but I mean people who were from Binghamton, who were in in school, but there were not that many. I did not, I do not think I could be wrong about that, but I do not think there were that many. And do not forget how small Harpur was also at that point, when I graduated, there were 900 people there. IG: 36:24 Oh, my God, so I did not, yes, I did not realize that small. Because- CW: 36:29 Yes, absolutely, in fact, our last year there was the first year that that they had graduate, any kind of graduate enrollment. But yes, oh, 100 students, roughly when we graduated. So, I mean, like, for example, I went to all of the reunion, all the 10-year reunions, you know, and when we had the 40th, the place had changed, but they were still, think I still recognized it when we went back and, you know, in 2005 for the for the 50th, or 2015 I should say, for the 50th, we could not find our way. We could not find our way around. It was just totally different. IG: 36:29 And now there are three campuses. CW: 36:31 Oh, really? IG: 36:31 In Johnson City, there is the schools of pharmacology and nursing. CW: 37:12 Oh, yes. And of course, there were no professional schools at that point. IG: 37:20 [inaudible] professional it was a liberal arts. So let us talk about your education. CW: 37:26 Oh, yes. IG: 37:26 Did you remember any outstanding classes faculty made a particular [crosstalk] CW: 37:33 Yeah, well, as you know, but when we were there, there was still a number of faculty who had been part of the sort of University of Chicago group you know that- IG: 37:42 Yes, I heard about that. CW: 37:44 -because, you know, Bartle had hired all these people from, more or less from the University of Chicago, and the curriculum was really more or less based on this model of the great books, you know. So, for example, we had, you know, two years of what they call lit and comp literature and composition, where you read something and you wrote about it. Essentially, I had, I had placed out of the first year for my AP course, so I started in the second year. And it is interesting because I had also placed out of a year of history, and I was not sure at that point whether I was going to be a history major or an English major. And I just, I remember Mario DiCesare taught the comp course that I took, and I thought he was so wonderful. And unfortunately, the history teacher that I had was not as good, so I sort of opted into English. And, you know, we had Dr. Huppe [Bernard Huppe], who taught, who taught Chaucer, I mean, who was a legend. And I do not know the I thought the English faculty was especially strong at that point. So, and then I also took German and for three years, and the German faculty was good. So, you know, that is, those are the things I remember the most. IG: 38:57 Did you have anything similar to an immersion? Did you speak program in German? Did you speak German outside of the class? CW: 39:05 No, I did not. I did not. I have a girl, woman that I roomed with at the very beginning. She and I had both gone to Hunter. She became a German major, and I am sure she had more, you know, than that. But I really liked German. I have to say, IG: 39:20 It was a language lab. CW: 39:23 We had a language lab. We listened and we spoke, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we spoke in class. But it was more it was not. It was, I mean, conversation was not the sort of main thing of the course. The more it was a literature it was really reading, you know, IG: 39:24 Reading and discussing. CW: 39:29 Yes. IG: 39:31 English? CW: 39:41 Right-right. You know, well, I remember very distinctly what the Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka, which is strange enough, when you read it in English, but when you are a student and you are reading it in German, you are saying that cannot be what it is you know-know, so, and, of course, poetry Heine and, I mean, German poetry is really beautiful. Yeah, I still have, I still have my German poetry book at home, you know. So, yeah, so it was more literature based than actually, than conversation, you know, at least what I what I did. I mean, there may have been a conversational German, course, I do not remember if it was. IG: 40:23 How did you spend your free time? You were part of the student- CW: 40:27 So, well, the senior, but my, you know, junior, senior year, being in, being involved with-with student government, that took up a lot of time. I do not, I do not really. Now, you know, when we first moved in the dorms were not finished all of them, and so we tripled up. So, I was in with two senior girls my for the first, like, first semester. But I do not remember what we did other than, I mean, you know, the curriculum was, was, you know, was strenuous. It was not, you know, you could not just sort of look at something the night before a test. And, you know, and that was it. And we wrote a lot of papers, I mean, a lot of papers. And, oh yes, actually, in my junior-junior year, yes, junior year, we started a magazine called The Humanities Review, and I was- Bob Posick was the editor, I think, and Francis Newman was the faculty advisor. His sister was in my class, by the way, Frances new or the class after us. I cannot remember. Francis Newman was the faculty advisor, and I-I was something. Maybe I typed it. I cannot remember, but I remember, yes-yes, the humanities review I was involved with that. IG: 41:54 I wonder if it still exists. I heard of it. CW: 41:57 Oh yeah, I do not know what happened after we graduated to tell you the truth. IG: 42:02 But, and what kind of, what kind of articles did it run? Do you remember? CW: 42:07 I do not. I do not really remember [crosstalk] IG: 42:07 Was student writing? CW: 42:07 Well, there was student writing, yeah, I think mostly, I think it was mostly student writing. I cannot honestly remember to tell you the truth, right? And, you know, we had a lot of creative people, you know, Andy Bergman. And Bergman, who was the movie person was, and his best friend, Richie Walter, became the head of the UCLA Film-Film School. So, they were and another guy in the class, Alan Goldsmith, he was the he was the editor of the yearbook. I got in terrible trouble. If you look at the (19)64 yearbook, you can see why it was very different, very different from anything that that had been and then, you know, you know, we have what it was also interesting was that, for example, Mike Tillis, who was part of the STC, you know, sort of what you would call hippie group. Also played basketball, which, you know, we do not think of that, but he did. He is now a rabbi, by the way, in Israel, Orthodox rabbi in Israel changed his name, yeah, I have not he wrote in Israel. He is in Israel. He is an orthodox rabbi. Now you would never have guessed. Never in 1 million years, have guessed. Everybody went to the basketball games. I mean, everybody that was the big sport. We also interesting enough had soccer because [inaudible], I think was his name- IG: 43:36 Did girls play? CW: 43:37 I do not remember. I know the boys played. But I do not remember the girls played. But we had a soccer team because we had a kid from Norway who had played soccer in nor you know, at home, and you know, he played. So. IG: 43:52 Were there any other international students? CW: 43:54 I was just about to say, yes, there was one poor boy from Africa who came. IG: 43:59 I think I have heard about this poor boy from any [crosstalk] CW: 44:01 He thought it was going to be close to New York City. [crosstalk] Yes, I cannot, I cannot remember his name now, but I felt so sorry for him because, I mean, he was all we were all white. I mean, you know, almost, almost all white. But you know, it is like, [crosstalk] like when I was, I say, when I was in, when I was in public school in the Bronx, my entire public school-school was white. There were no black kids when I was in junior high school in the same basic neighborhood, there was like two black girls now, Hunter was more it was more diverse because we had girls from all over the city. Do you know what I mean? So, we had, we had, you know, black girls, we had Asian girls, we had girls, you know, whose families, you know, were refugees. You know. I mean, it was we and we had girls. It was not only diverse, although the majority were white, but there was enough. Significant number of non-whites that you-you know, it was diverse. But the other thing that was really diverse about-about Hunter was the economic background of students, because we had girls who lived on Park Avenue, girls were on welfare. And then a girl who's who lived on Park Avenue, because her father was the superintendent of the building, you know, on Park Avenue. So, it was and everything in between. IG: 45:25 And you have, you did not have that economic diversity at Harpur? CW: 45:29 I do not think so. I do not, I do not think so. IG: 45:31 What about the Upstate students versus the New York City, or they were all from kind of a [crosstalk] CW: 45:38 Well, there was a, yeah, I mean, the mid there was probably what, 60 percent of the students were from New York City, I think. I mean, it was an overwhelming number. And I remember meeting a girl who had gone, who was from upstate somewhere, who had never met a Jew before in her life, you know, so it was, you know what it was. And as I say, there was another girl who was, who was on, came to Harpur, probably had been, you know, in the honor roll in her high school started was getting D's because she had never done the same kind of work. You know, it was not that she was stupid. She was not she transferred to Fredonia; I think it was--got on the Dean's list. So, you know, it was very different. You know, Harpur was really different than because everything else was a State Teachers College. And I do not mean to say that all the Upstate kids were like that, but there were a number of people who, just because of the kinds of schools they went to, did not have the opportunities that, like, say, I had, you know, and of course, we had kids from city, kids who were from Hunter, who were from Bronx Science, who were from Stuyvesant, who were from Brooklyn Tech, you know. I mean, you know, it was a there were some people from elite kind of high schools that public, you know, very few private school people, I think, but public. IG: 45:38 What were some of your best experiences at Harpur College? What do you remember with the most fondness? CW: 46:11 I do not know that I remember any individual experiences, but you know, there are people that I met there, like Terry and like Susan and like Bob Freeston and Ryan Goldsmith and Andy Bergman and people, just people who were really interesting and really creative, and we had fun. Do you know what I mean? We had; we had a good time. We worked hard, but we had a good time. I do not, I do not remember anything, you know, a particular occasion, but I was very happy at Harpur. Do you know what I mean? I was really, really glad that I went there. Now, not everybody was. I had a couple of people. One girl who, you know, transferred out after her freshman year, went back to the city because she just missed New York, you know, more than anything else. And I think she was also very young. And I think that was also hard being away from home, and you know, all of that. IG: 48:04 So, do you think that, you know, maybe Hunter College kind of set the level of your political engagement at Harpur College? CW: 48:20 I do not know; I really would not say that. I think what it did set was the level of my ability to take advantage of the of the of the education that was there, you know that really and truly, even if I had to choose, I would have to say that Hunter changed my academic life more than more than Harpur did, just because it, it was sort of like I went to Hunter for three years, 10th grade to 12th grade. It was like three additional years of Harpur educationally, you know, I mean the level of what you, what you, you know, the kind of education you got. IG: 48:59 Did you notice that there were different expectations for men than there were for women at Harpur College? I think maybe not for you, because you have a Hunter College experience. CW: 49:10 Yeah-yeah. I never felt that. For me personally, there was any difference. And of course, at Hunter, almost all the teachers were women. I mean, we had a couple of men, but three or four, I guess at Harpur, they were mostly men. I am, in fact, I think, actually, in my entire four years there, I do not think I had a single woman as a teacher. I think all of my teachers were men. I do not remember any woman, and I think I would, because they should have stood out, and there were women there, certainly, but-but I, you know, it is funny, I do not think we were aware of it, do you know, because that is just the way. It is just the way things were. But I do not, I never felt at all that I was, you know, discriminated against, or-or somehow, you know, not appreciate. Educated or whatever, being a woman, I really did not you know it was interesting, because when I got out of school and I went, I remember this one very distinctly, interview for a job, $75 a week, a publishing company, which name I have forgotten now. And I went, and it was an assistant kind of job, which they all were. And so, I said to the person that I interviewed with, and "Could you tell me what the you know, what are the opportunities, you know, for advancement?" They said, "Oh, do not worry about it all. The girls get married and have babies." Well, nobody would say that today. And I did not go there, not because of that. Well, that was part of it, not because of what he said about women, but just because he more or less said, there is no opportunity for advancement. I mean, you know, but also because, as I said, they were paying $75 a week, and I found a job for 85 you know, so in a department run by a woman, by the way, which was interesting now that I think of it. But anyway, no-no, I did not feel it. Now, you might get an entirely different, you know, experience from somebody else. But I-I was, I was never shy. Let us put it that way, in class, ever. IG: 49:11 How do you think your classmates would remember you me [inaudible] period? CW: 49:11 Me? IG: 49:11 Yes, CW: 50:28 Probably as a good girl. I think probably somebody intelligent and, you know, and to a certain extent, I was, I was a leader, but I do not, I did not feel and being the first woman elected as the president of the Student Government, which I suppose, was a big deal, but it did not seem all that big at the time, you know. So, I enjoyed our 50th reunion, I have to say. IG: 50:47 Were they astonished to learn that you had become a priest? CW: 50:52 No, because I had been, I was, I was ordained 25 years ago to the diaconate. 26 years ago, to the diaconate. So, I had already been to reunions where I was in an ordained life. So, it was not that, it was not that strange. But the funny thing was, when we did our 50th reunion, Jeanette Mayer Luzasky put together this video, you know, for our and she asked me if I would be the narrator, because they figured I was not afraid about getting up in front of people and talking. Since I did that all the time, you know, and I have never been afraid of public speaking. We had, I remember when we were when we had the race for the USG president, it was Richie Walter and Jesse, something or other, and myself, and I have always been good on my feet, do you know? And so, I think I kind of surprised people and maybe surprise myself at, you know, being able to sort of hold my own, you know. And Richie was very, very bright, you know, very smart and very quick. So. And then, of course, when I was in publishing, when I was when I was in the acquisitions part, I had to do sales meeting presentations, which I have always said was one of the best [crosstalk] IG: 53:03 What do you think owes to that ability to speak? CW: 53:06 I have never. I have I do not know why, but I have never been shy about it. When I was in the sixth grade for our graduation, I had to recite Emma Lazarus poem, you know, in front of the whole auditorium, and I was fine with it. Just never was afraid of it. I do not know why. Maybe because my parents, my parents were very encouraging. Do you know what I mean? They always sort of thought I could do anything. And I think you feel that when you know, when you are a kid, if you are you know, if you get that kind of support, IG: 53:37 Right. If you get that kind of support, I, for one, have acted on the stage. I have no fear, all right about and yet, public speaking is a very different matter. CW: 53:50 Yeah, what was good, was good training for preaching. [laughs] IG: 53:53 It was very [inaudible] Do you ever look back on your years in college to draw lessons that you want to impart to your children today. Do you ever look back at yourself during those years and draw material for your service? CW: 54:12 I do not know. Not-not necessarily. No, I do not, I do not remember. I do not think I do that, but I do. I do look back and I think how fortunate I was to be able to get a first-class education without bankrupting the family. Of course, no debt. I mean, we did not have debt. Then thank you. You know, I have, I tried to take out, I took out a loan when I went to seminary, and, you know, so I now paying off a student loan, but I never had any of that before. My entire education was practically free. I mean, up until seminary and University of Toronto, I got a I got a scholarship there, so that also helped, and it was not that expensive either. I think I just, I was glad for the people that I met. I was glad for the good, very good, you know, teachers. That I had, and just forgetting, frankly, for having a liberal arts education, I really, I find it, you know, kind of sad that children, practically in preschool, have to choose a career, you know, and all they are doing is being trained like, pardon me, seals, to do something. And you know that to me, that that was not what education was for. I mean, it was, you know, when we were, you know, young kids, young adults, it was kind of the last time that you could just do something because you wanted to do it. Do, you know, they did not, you did not have to do it because it meant you could get a promotion, or you did not have to do it, because this was part of the job, whether you liked it or not. I mean, you know, and-and you had a chance to maybe explore and learn things that you did not even know, you did not know, [laughs] which- IG: 54:13 Small college community yes were given that opportunity. CW: 54:13 Yes. And, of course, the other thing is, and I asked this question when we went to the 50th reunion, because now that Harpur has, what, 16,000 students, or something like that, that is everybody. It is not just the undergraduate. But, you know, the classes that we took were taught by full professors. We did not have TAs you know what I mean, we did not. I mean, yes, they were large lectures, but even the discussion classes were led by real faculty members, you know, and I always felt that. And I asked the president of they had a question-and-answer thing. I said, you know, that was one of the great things. In fact, both Susan Calkins had gone to Purdue for the first year, I think, and-and-and Terry Shortell had gone to Penn State, they both transferred in. And one of the reasons they transferred in was they said we were in these huge rooms, but the professor was way down there, and all we saw were teaching assistants, you know. So, I mean, in that one-on-one interaction, and I always thought that that was one of the best features of the Harpur that I knew was that you really got the benefit of up-close work with somebody, you know, and- IG: 54:13 Probably after class extracurricularly- CW: 54:49 Yeah, to a certain extent, but yes to a certain extent. But I think that was important. I really do. I think that, you know, it was a, it was a really good liberal arts education, and I was very glad that I had it. IG: 55:31 What-what are, what were some, you know, life lessons that you can share with I know that that the educational experience now is very different than when it was in your time. But what advice can you give to- CW: 55:31 Oh my God, you are going to miss your train. IG: 56:56 Oh-oh. CW: 56:56 What time, what time is your train, 4:57? IG: 57:25 4:57. CW: 57:25 We are not going to make it. IG: 57:25 We are not going to. I will take the next [inaudible] CW: 57:25 What-what time is it, you know? IG: 57:25 I will have to [inaudible] CW: 57:25 I guess, I guess, the thing I would say is, you know, and obviously we, most people, especially these days, start out with an idea of where they are going, you know. And I would just say, be open to the possibility that you may change your mind and to not just you know, not just to take you know, courses that you think fit in with this career that you have chosen for yourself, but maybe take something that is a bit of a more of a challenge, or just that might interest you for some reason that you know, you know, because, as I say, it is probably the last opportunity to kind of just do something because you want to right now, and not because it is necessarily prescribed. I mean, I have no idea what the you know, how much, how many required courses there are these days and how they you know, because we had sort of two years basic education, and then from then on, it was kind of what you want, you know, what you chose to do, you know, with distribution requirements and that sort of thing. But I would, you know, I think that would be my major advice is to, you know, try things out while you are there. You know, while you have the chance to do it before. You know, you have to support yourself, and you have to support a family or something like that. You know. IG: 57:25 Do you have any concluding remarks? CW: 59:22 No, as I, as I said, I am very I am very grateful for the for the experience, the education and the experience that I had at Harpur, and for the people that I met and the faculty members that I met, and, you know, to be able to have a first-class education within the means of someone, you know, who's not well and does not have to come out with this. There were no, there were no debts then. But I mean, in other words, that the opportunity was there and you were not constrained by, oh, I cannot afford that. You know, that was, I think that I felt that that was really. Really important that it was a really first-class education that did not, you know, bankrupt my parents so and, you know, again, having the residential experience, I think, was also very important to, you know, really sort of be, you know, with people, and also you know, you know, as an only child, I sort of had to learn to take care of myself, and you know, and I did, basically. IG: 1:00:31 Thank you very much. CW: 1:00:32 You are very welcome. Thank you. (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 Reverend Canon Claudia Wilson Subject The topic of the resource Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Student Associations, Students for Democratic Change; Harpur College – Alumni in the Episcopal Church; Harpur College – Alumni in Publishing; Harpur College – Alumni living in Yonkers, NY Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Wilson, Canon Claudia ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource Reverend Claudia is a semi-retired priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Yonkers. Before her ordination into the priesthood, she worked in publishing. At Harpur College, she was the first woman elected head of SDC (Students for Democratic Change), the progressive student government. 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 2018-03-19 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Claudia Wilson.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-19 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 60:33 minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/f42946497b4ccd14e4f3f3cdf303d1d0.jpeg f0db2db354631aa8008da3ccdd0cb2ae https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ba464a1b2da686cd2cdb84d0a10e2aeb.mp3 e51ac5c9396f824557fb64615dd72540 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-03-19 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rex Weiner Language English Biographical Text Rex Weiner, a native of Brooklyn, New York, is a writer, editor, publisher, and journalist based in Los Angeles and Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, MX. Weiner began his journalism career in the underground press of the late 1960s and is a co-founding editor of High Times magazine. His articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review, LA Magazine and Capital & Main. He is Executive Director and co-founder of the Todos Santos Writers Workshop, where he teaches creative writing. With Deanne Stillman, he is co-author of The Woodstock Census: Nationwide Survey of the Sixties Generation (Viking Press). Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 171:44 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Paul Robeson; New York University(NYU); Students for a Democratic Society; Communism; White Panthers; Jerry Rubin; Abbie Hoffman; underground press movement of the Nineteen sixties; Radicals; Yippies."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Paul Robeson; New York University (NYU); Students for a Democratic Society; Communism; White Panthers; Jerry Rubin; Abbie Hoffman; underground press movement of the Nineteen sixties; Radicals; Yippies. Subject LCSH Authors; Editors; Publishers; Journalists; Weiner, Rex--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Rex Weiner Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 19 March 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing. 1-2-3 testing. Very good. And again, some of this is basic information. I got a whole lot of questions. The interview itself is some general questions, but a lot of them are questions that I never ask anybody but you, based on your experiences. Rex, the first question I would like to ask is about your upbringing. I read your book, but the only thing I know about you is the great career you have had beyond the Woodstock Census. Could you give me a little update or upbringing? What was your upbringing in New York City? What was your was your life like when you were in elementary school or high school, and your college years before you ever got out to California? Just a little bit about yourself. RW (00:00:52): Okay. Born in Brooklyn, East New York, Brownsville. Parents, first and third generation, Russian-Hungarian Jewish. My father was a decorated war hero, Air Force guy who grew up poor in Brooklyn, was in the CCCs, the Civilian Conservation Corps, cutting timber in Idaho in the dark days of the (19)30s. Never finished college. My mom went to Brooklyn College, got a degree, became a teacher. My dad went on to become a journalist, a business journalist. And I have a younger brother, five years younger, who grew up to be an artist, an illustrator, lives in Minneapolis. We lived in Brooklyn up until the 1955. I am a mid-century man, born in 1950, so. We moved upstate about 50 miles north to the farthest reach of the suburbs in a rural area of northern Westchester near Peekskill. SM (00:02:34): That is where my grandfather was a minister. RW (00:02:36): All right. SM (00:02:37): Yeah. My grandfather was a minister in Peekskill from 1936 to 1954. RW (00:02:44): So was he around when they threw rocks at the- SM (00:02:49): He must have been because he died in 1956. And I was very young. I only remember going there to the church to see my grandmother and grandfather. My dad grew up there. Then he went off to college in World War II. So my dad was not around. He was married and raising kids at that time in Ithaca. So. RW (00:03:10): Do you know the story of- SM (00:03:13): Bayard Rustin. Not Bayard Rustin, Paul Robeson. RW (00:03:16): When Paul Robeson came up and they threw stones at the buses and called them communists and so on. So it was the Hudson River Valley. And from (19)55 to the early (19)60s, that is where I grew up. But went back to the city as soon as I could. I graduated from high school in three years, gained entrance to NYU. And let us see, I guess that is when I got back to the city in 1967. The area where I grew up was just crazy (19)60s suburbs, cars, girls. And before even marijuana made its entrance, for some reason speed and heroin came to town. So I had a friend working in the local pharmacy who got us bottles of all kinds of pills. And so I grew up in a crazy teenage scene doing lots of drugs. And when I went down to the city, I continued doing that. SM (00:04:37): At NYU were you an activist student there at the college? RW (00:04:42): Yes. I majored in striking and chanting. SM (00:04:46): A lot of us did. RW (00:04:52): And I sort of hung out with a group of SDS street gang organizers who called themselves Up Against The Wall Motherfucker. And this was in the days when Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were doing the Yippies, and there were the Diggers and all of that stuff. Up Against The Wall Motherfucker was a much tougher brand of things, combining street smarts with the leftist ideology. And so I joined up with them. I mean, there was no joining. You just went and hung out at the forefront. SM (00:05:31): What year was that? RW (00:05:33): That was 1968. SM (00:05:40): Yeah. After what happened at Columbia. Yeah. RW (00:05:43): Yeah. And yeah, these guys were out of Columbia. And so we did things like took over the Fillmore East. I think that was the night that Bill Graham got cheese whipped up on stage. SM (00:05:59): Oh God. RW (00:06:00): We did some crazy stuff. And these were heavy times (19)68, (19)69, (19)70. In (19)70, one of my best friends from my hometown was killed in Vietnam. And I just decided having a student deferment was cowardly. Either you stand up for principal, and become a conscientious objector, or you fight against the war, do something. So I dropped out of NYU after three semesters, much to my parents dismay. I had a professor of Marxism, one of the few classes where I did really well. And I went to him, I said, "So what do I do? Give me my assignment. Oh, communist master." And he said, "Well, there is a group of kids out in Brooklyn who need your help. They are putting out an underground newspaper called the New York Herald Tribune." And basically that paper, that official paper had gone out of business a few years earlier, and these guys just took the title and thought it would be funny to put out a paper called the New York Herald Tribune. It was a high school radical paper, and these were high school kids in their last year at the top high schools in the city, Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant. And they were all militant and intellectual and interesting. And I was the oldest guy there, and there were a lot of cute young girls there. So I sort of became their mentor. I took over a storefront on St. Mark's Place, made it headquarters for the group, and then we became somehow affiliated with the White Panthers in Ann Arbor, and John Sinclair became a good friend. And so it was the White Panther headquarters, New York, and we were armed. I grew up with guns and have no hesitation about them. Knives, all this stuff. We had stuff in there. We had tons of dope. I mean, it was just a crazy scene out of high school, kids floating through there. And it was a fun time. We stopped putting out the New York Herald Tribune and joined up, a few of us with the East Village Other, which at that time was the oldest underground newspaper in the city. And I realized, you know, I am a writer. I have always been a writer, and journalism has been in my family for a couple of generations. So we went to the East Village Other and became part of that scene. And I wrote some of my first articles. Actually, my first journalism experience was in the press room of a county newspaper in Mount Kisco called The Patent Trader. I worked in the press room there and watched as the technology went from hot type, that is linotype machines, hot lead slugs, to what they called cold type or offset printing, computerized type setting. And I witnessed a change in technology that has always impressed me. Because when the technology changed from very expensive forms of printing to a technology that anyone could afford, offset printing, that made the underground press possible in this country. And A.J. Liebling famously said, "Freedom of the press belongs only to those who own one." Today with the internet, we all own one. That is terrific. But in the late (19)60s, offset printing was the new technology. It was the internet of its day, and that is what made the so-called Underground Press possible, which started as a political counter-cultural movement. And that is where I found my home. The East Village Other was in its last days, and it folded. These papers were never meant to be a business, but they had served their purpose. And we went on. We took the staff, myself and a colleague named Bob Singer, who's known as on as Honest Bob, and we created a new paper called The New York Ace, and this was the first of what would come to be called the alternative papers. So we were still radical in outlook, embracing the counterculture, but we were also all about the editing and the writing, the design, the layout. So we were among the first to publish writers such as P.J. O'Rourke. And we had great illustrations by some of the great underground cartoonists. We always had a brilliant cover page, sort of an LSD version of the New Yorker perhaps. And in fact, we did a year's worth of issues. Somehow we cajoled John and Yoko, John Lennon and Yoko Ono to underwrite the cost of the paper. They gave us simple page ads, and I guess Apple Records footed the bill. And really, we made our mark. The New York Magazine article that they did on us helped a lot. SM (00:12:42): You were really into not only design, but obviously you sound like you were into substance too, combining the quality of the writing with the quality of the look, and the combination of the two brought substance. RW (00:12:56): I would not be surprised if we were the only paper of its kind where a copy of Fowler's English Usage and Strunk and White were prominently on every desk. SM (00:13:07): Do you have copies of all of them? Did you keep copies of every one? RW (00:13:12): Well, yes, we have copies of those. And they are also included in the Bell and Howell microfilm collection, the underground newspaper collection that was really initiated by a friend of mine, Tom Forcade, Thomas King Forcade, who was administrator of the Underground Press Syndicate, which was an organization, a loose organization, of all of the underground paper at the time. It essentially dissolved the copyright between the members so that anybody could reprint from any other member paper. And each paper sent two copies to our office. I also helped administrate the UPS office. And those copies were sent to Bell and Howell. They were microfilmed and put into a collection, which exists to this day. SM (00:14:15): When I was at Ohio State University. There was an excellent underground paper there too. I was there in (19)71, (19)72 to (19)76. RW (00:14:24): All right. SM (00:14:26): They were in the Ohio Union, and I went to Binghamton University. Did your underground papers ever get to any of the state universities in New York state? RW (00:14:36): Well, I would not be surprised if people, students passing through New York City picked up a few. We did have subscribers, but whether they got the papers or not. SM (00:14:51): I remember... In fact, there is a historic scene in Woodstock where Abbie Hoffman comes on stage, and I think he says, "Free John Sinclair," was not that? And Pete Townshend said, "Get off the stage, or I will club you with my guitar," or something like that. Made him really mad. RW (00:15:06): Well, he did hit him. SM (00:15:07): Oh, he did hit him. I know he was threatening to do it. RW (00:15:10): Now, Abbie was on LSD at the time and suffering from delusions of grandeur. A lot of us at that time, much to our chagrin today, were very almost Calvinistic about the entertainment aspects of our culture. If it was not about politics, if it was not for the benefit of the Black Panthers or some imprisoned colleague, comrade, then it was not really important. I think we would laugh at our... As Dylan said, "I was so much older then, I am younger than that now." But that is how things were. So Abbie at that time at Woodstock decided that this is bullshit. People here are not talking about the issues of the day. And he got up there and got himself hit. SM (00:16:14): It is interesting about Abbie too. From what I read about Woodstock for four days is the fact that he was also in charge of the medical area? Somehow he had been given responsibility for people who were sick or had OD'ed on drugs or whatever, that he was very good at that. That he was the man in charge. RW (00:16:34): No, he was not in charge of anything. Nobody was in charge of anything. SM (00:16:40): But were you there? RW (00:16:43): No, I was not there. SM (00:16:44): Well, a question I want to ask you is how did you get from New York to California? Because I know in your book, I reread the last couple weeks, Woodstock Census. I read it years ago, but I reread it. But how did you get to California and then what led you to write this book? But most importantly, how did you get to California? And maybe I do not want this to be, as you said in our first conversation, all the stories about and making it all look great. But what are three anecdotes or experiences that you had in California that you would like to share that people might have interest in? RW (00:17:25): Okay, so it was the summer before I was due to enter college at NYU. It was the Summer of Love, and I was not going to miss that. 1967 in August, I headed west to San Francisco. I had a beatnik uncle who was living there just off Golden Gate Park. That was my destination. And so I hitchhiked across. I have hitchhiked, I have been back and forth across this country, not lately, but in the old days, in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, I crisscrossed the country many times. But the first time was in 1967 in August where I headed west and got to San Francisco. My uncle lived just off the Haight. And there I was for the latter half of the Summer of Love when things sort of turned bad, as they say. And yeah, the streets were heavy and there was a lot of speed and a lot of weird shit going up. But I had a good time. But here is an anecdote. So as I am coming into San Francisco, I took a train from Chicago. The train is going slowly across a road crossing, and all the cars were backed up, and we were coming into California. And I saw a long-haired biker waiting for the train to pass. So I shoot him the peace sign, and he shot me back the one-fingered salute. And I realized, "Hey, it ain't all Summer of Love." There I was being a hippie, and he was being a Hell's Angel or whatever he was. In the Haight at that time, there were people handing out free food, the Hare Krishnas. You could go there and get rice and some kind of vegetable stew. The Diggers were handing out kind of spoiled rotten vegetables and fruit and whatever they could scavenge from supermarkets. But I remember eating brown rice for the first time and thinking that this was very exotic. And let us see, went to the Avalon Ballroom, heard the Electric Flag. Prior to that though, I have to say that I had experienced LSD, mushrooms, peyote even. And one of the ways I got to do that was my high school girlfriend and I would skip class, hop in my car and head north to Millbrook, where Tim Leary had his League of Spiritual Discovery ensconced in a huge mansion. And as we pulled in there, this was in (19)66, the sight of this glorious Hudson River Victorian mansion, the facade painted with a sort of Hindu God face. When they say, "It blew my mind," yes, that blew my mind that you could fuck up a house like this in such a glorious manner. And I had a friend of a friend who was living there at Tim Leary's place and sort of allowed us entree. So we did some mushrooms there, my girlfriend and I. Got to know some people there. We went there a few times, and that is where I first met Dr. Timothy Leary. I had read a lot about him. Who had not? Heard a lot about him. But then there he was when I first saw him outside the house, fixing a lawnmower, trying to get it going, and trying to get his son to cut the lawn, just like my old man tried to get me to cut the damn lawn. I thought, "No, this is real life here behind the fame of (19)60s radical." So coming into Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love, I had already had some experience with that kind of mind-expanding stuff and some vaguely semi-criminal activities, scoring dope, and bringing and entering and crap like that. Stealing cars, I knew how to do that. SM (00:22:55): Obviously. When you mentioned you had met Abbie, you knew Abbie, and you knew and you met Dr. Leary. Are there any other personalities of that period that you actually got to know? RW (00:23:06): Well, yeah. I met Abbie when I was at the East Village Other. He would come into the office every now and then. I met Jerry at that time as well. At that point, Tim Leary was in Algiers. He had escaped from prison with the aid of the Weatherman. And I would sometimes pick up the phone and there would be Tim Leary calling from long distance from Algiers collect. And of course, I would accept the charges and hand it over to the editor, Yakov Cohen, who was sort of an advisor to Tim. So Tim and I were to cross paths many times, and I will catch up with that too. But yes, Jerry, I got to know Jerry Rubin. I got to know Abbie. And my association with Tom Forcade brought me closer into all of this. Because Tom, have you heard of him before? SM (00:24:13): How do you spell his last name? RW (00:24:15): It is F-O-R-C-A-D-E. Thomas King Forcade. SM (00:24:22): No. I do not know him. RW (00:24:23): Key figure of that time. He went on to become the founder of High Times Magazine, and I was one of the co-founding editors. SM (00:24:31): Okay, yes. Because I read that about you. RW (00:24:35): But he was instrumental in the whole underground press movement. And he was an antagonist to Abbie and Jerry. He had a much tougher attitude. He was an ex-Air Force guy. He was not afraid of guns either. And he was basically a disruptive element within the counterculture, someone who was not about peace and love, not afraid to get into a fist fight with somebody if he felt strongly about something. And so he and I kind of fell together. And when it was time to create High Times Magazine, he called together a sort of inner circle. I was part of that and was a contributor to High Times up until the time of Tom's death, which was a suicide. Tom was a controversial figure, and I was helping. He had helped Abbie create the publishing structure for Steal This Book. And then they had a dispute, over money of course, and Tom was threatening to sue Abbie. So I was friends with both of them, and I said, "Why go to the establishment legal system where they will both look at you like you are mutants? Why not create our own little arbitration system and work this out?" So you will find an article in the New York Times in 1970, (19)71, something like that, (19)72, where we created a counterculture court. I constituted a jury of their peers, and I served as bailiff handling the evidence and procedures. SM (00:26:34): I think I saw this on a YouTube. RW (00:26:39): Oh, yes. SM (00:26:40): Yeah, I think I saw this. And you were on YouTube talking about this. Yes. RW (00:26:47): Yeah, yeah, I am talking about it. Yeah. You saw that there. And there was a New York Times piece, an editorial actually criticizing us for going outside the established legal system, which we were very proud of that criticism. Because actually I had modeled it on the ancient Jewish courts of the Middle Ages of the Sanhedrin. But in any case, at that time, I got to know people like [inaudible] of The Thugs. I played a little music at that time too, had a little sideline. So the recently deceased, Alex Chilton was a good friend of mine. He had nothing to do with the counterculture, but this is the guy who sang biggest hit of Summer of Love. "Give me a ticket for an airplane." SM (00:27:41): Oh yes. RW (00:27:42): The Box Tops. Alex was a neighbor of mine at that time. I got to know a wide variety of people. Let me see who else? John Sinclair, Abbie, Jerry. I would attend meetings of people at which people like Dave Dellinger would be there, Rennie Davis, people like Leslie Bacon, who was charged with bombing the Capitol, various members of underground organizations who today would be termed domestic terrorists. It was a heady mix of people. At one point, we took over a rock concert that was staged on Randall's Island, just off Manhattan. It was the Young Lords, the White Panthers, Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers, Yippies, a whole coalition of radical groups. And during that concert, yeah, I said hello to Jimi Hendrix, but whether he was enough out of his heroin days to say hello to me, I cannot remember. There he was. SM (00:29:21): When I interviewed Richie Havens about two months ago, Richie gave me almost two hours. And Richie said, he said what was unique about Woodstock. Well, we do not know all the story about how he had to keep playing and playing, and he was not scheduled to be the first act. But he said, "What made it so special is that they finally recognized us." And that is what he said. I said, "Please explain that, Richie. They finally." Yeah. Because he said, "I was in the village in the early (19)60s when Bob Dylan was there, and Mary Travers was there, and even little Jimi Hendrix kind of kind of walked in. He had been in the military." But he said, "Finally the country and people were recognizing that the students and the young people of the (19)60s, they were finally being recognized." So that is why he said he thought the (19)60s, I mean, Woodstock was very important. Because the musicians were getting the recognition that they deserved. RW (00:30:20): Oh yes, the musicians as well as the audience that followed that music. And there were many kinds of music at Woodstock. I would say that the music is the most important portal through which you can see the movements of those times coming together. And just to diverge a bit into my theoretical stance, but the (19)60s did not spring full-formed from the head of Zeus there. The (19)60s are part of what I call the ongoing-but-interrupted revolution that is essentially what America is all about. And you see that the business of human rights and women's rights and the business of desegregation, African American integration into society, all of these things, you can find their trace elements in the documents of the Founding Fathers who, because of circumstances were not able to instantly create the society that they visioned under the influence of the Enlightenment. But they created a structure... loose, spunky, unruly, chaotic... that would have enough structure, but enough looseness to evolve, but sort of institutionalize these movements. And so over the years, you see the women's suffrage movement. You see the abolitionists. You see even the sort of psychedelic culture, the spiritual elements in William James. All of these things are threads in our society from the beginning, including the communalism. That was the way this country survived its earliest days on the frontier. SM (00:32:58): I looked a lot of articles up that you have written, and you have a paragraph in one from a year ago that I think is beautiful. One of the questions that I have been asking all the guests is when Newt Gingrich came into power in (19)94, he always loves to attack the (19)60s generation or the period when boomers were young as a lot of the reasons why we had the problems in our society. And George Will, through his writing throughout the years, will always take shots at that period for breakdown of society, whether it be the divorce rate, or the drug culture, or lack of respect for authority or the beginnings of these different studies programs at universities, political correctness. They blame all this stuff back on then. But then you write, and these are your words, but this was the article you wrote in a year ago talking about Woodstock Consensus. And I would like to expand on this after I just read this: "The truly aberrant behavior belonged to their tormentors, those flag-waving ranks of ideologues, staunch segregationists, rabid commie hunters, and free-speech smothering censors bent on preserving their own quaint period of privilege, even if it meant radical measures. They were the un-Americans, the subversives undermining the principles that make America great, refusing to rise to the challenges set forth by our elite, longhaired founding fathers who created an imperfect union knowing it would be a struggle, but also knowing a day of reckoning must come. And come it did. It was called the (19)60s. And now even Newt is cool with it, speaking out on environmental issues and pushing green conservatism. Welcome to Yasgur's farm, Newty. See you at the hemp store." That is in a nutshell, you wrote. That is beautiful writing. RW (00:34:56): Well, thank you very much. SM (00:34:57): And really. I mean, I really am into this kind of stuff, and I thought it was so well-written in so few words. SM (00:35:03): I really am into this kind of stuff. And I thought it was so well-written in so few words that you hit it right on the target there, because he does make things. I tried to interview him for my book, and I have tried to do it twice, but he was always too busy. And then I hear rumors he may run for president. So. RW (00:35:16): Yeah. The thing is, and by the way, I want to give credit to my longtime colleague and co-conspirator Deanne Stillman. She actually looked over the piece, and added that last line about duty. SM (00:35:30): Well, I am interviewing her on Monday. RW (00:35:32): Correct. So make sure you tell her I give her credit for that. SM (00:35:35): Okay. Will do. RW (00:35:37): That very witty way to end my essay. But again, to expand on that, I tend to see American history as a continuum. And anyone who says feminism started in the (19)60s does not remember the women's suffrage movement. And even Abigail Adams saying, "Remember the women," all of the feminist occurrence from the earliest days of the Republic. Anyone who says environmentalism and tree-huggers were a product of the (19)60s, does not remember Teddy Roosevelt. SM (00:36:14): Oh yeah. RW (00:36:15): Remember John Muir. Does not remember all of the great efforts from the beginning to preserve this country instead of the spoil it. Anyone who thinks that the move for spiritual discovery, self-awareness is something born in the (19)60s does not remember that this country was founded by very self-centered people looking for religious freedom and organized as cults, called pilgrims or Quakers or Shakers who lived communally. And certainly the major theme of liberation in our country has belonged to African Americans who have been here longer than most people, have a longer history in this country than most recent immigrants. And their music is what ultimately, from West African chants, to blues, work songs, folk music, eventually rock and roll. This is the music that really, along with blue jeans and Bugs Bunny, this is what really brought down the Berlin Wall and dissolved the Cold War because these are things that everyone responds to. The idea of self-liberation, of joining with others, of the big embrace, and everybody in the world wanted to be part of that. SM (00:38:35): Where would you [inaudible]? RW (00:38:36): So that is why the music is so important. So when Richie Haven says they recognize this, yes, they certainly did, but it is even bigger than that. Our music, our call to action, to self-liberation, which requires the liberation of others. That was a cry that was heard from Prague during the Velvet Revolution, to Moscow, to Beijing and continues to be the liberating force in the world. SM (00:39:15): Where would you place the Native American movement, although it was kind of a (19)69 to (19)73 happening at its strength. And then the gay and lesbian movement, which oftentimes looks to the Civil Rights Movement as its guide and then the Latino Chicano movement because some people will say that movement is fairly new because of the fact that they are fairly recent immigrants. So it is kind of a phenomenon in the second half of the 20th century. RW (00:39:44): Yeah, if you look at the styles of the (19)60s, you will see that the trappings of the Native Americans was symbolic of the sort of spiritual, close to the land sensibility that people were cultivating at that time. I think that the biggest influence of the Native American movement has been on the environmental side and on the spiritual side. It is the one true native religion that Americans can look at for inspiration. The other movements have all been rooted in long in history. I live in a Mexican city called Los Angeles, which now also has elements of Central America and South America. Somebody who does not speak Spanish here does not know how to even pronounce the city's name or the names of streets and the Chicano movement and all of the Latin American movements from the Southwest are now spreading throughout the country. So there is not a restaurant in America that does not have a Mexican in the kitchen. Even Italian restaurants. So the thing is that the city, this country's cultural heritage, is one of its treasures. And as this plays through this out is it is we are coming into our own. Those who resisted and keep talking about, we want this country to be what we had when we were kids or our parents had, they are against the current of history. They are on the wrong side. The young people of the (19)60s who really came into their own in the (19)70s are the inheritors of the melting pot, but they were not intent on melting it and creating a sludge. They were interested in really finding and defining what was special about everybody and everybody's heritage. And I think so all of those movements come together. SM (00:42:36): I wanted to ask you, I have read the book, and I know that there is lines in there as your ultimate goals and why you did it, but why did you, first off, I do not know how you met Deanne. RW (00:42:49): Deanne, she will tell you, she read about me in New York Magazine. She was out in Cleveland or something and said, "Oh, here is a guy saying New York is like Paris in the thirties. I want to go get some of that." So she came and... SM (00:43:06): Well- RW (00:43:07): Publicity works, man. SM (00:43:08): Yeah, I guess it does. RW (00:43:09): You [inaudible] man. SM (00:43:12): Yeah. You met her and you decided to write this book. I would like to know what your ultimate goal was in this book. You state yourself that you only wanted activists in your survey. RW (00:43:23): Well, no-no-no-no. What we wanted was anyone who... In order to do this survey, to find out what the (19)60s meant to people who experienced them, you had to find people who defined themselves as (19)60s people, not necessarily activists, but people who say, "Yeah, that was my time. I experienced it. Let me tell you what it was about." So it was a self-selected audience on purpose. Deanne and I decided to do this book because after the underground press kind of puttered away, we both became journalists at the time of the new journalism, and we were writing for various magazines. I wrote for Penthouse, and I do not know, a lot of magazines. And we were paying attention to the media at that time and noticing that there was a backlash in the media against the (19)60s. People were saying, "Ah, look at Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman. They have put on suits and now they are corporate." Or they seem to be saying that because people got older and took on jobs and cut their hair, that somehow the (19)60s had failed. And that was the first wave of conservative undermining of the (19)60s message. They were trying to say that activism cannot succeed, that anyone who tries to push for progress is doomed to failure and using the (19)60s as some sort of example, or the (19)70s. And we thought that that was a very dangerous message. And so we sought to quantify exactly what it was people were talking about when they talked about the "(19)60s." SM (00:45:41): Rex [inaudible]. All right, go ahead. RW (00:45:48): Yeah, what were the (19)60s? So let us define the terms and then we can debate. So that was what we tried to do with the book to create an entertaining study of what exactly the (19)60s meant to the people who experienced it. So for instance, we had to define what people meant by the 1960s in terms of years. And so according to our survey where we asked in one of the questions in the questionnaires, when did the (19)60s begin for you personally, and when did they end for you personally? And again, we emphasize personal, not the popular idea, but the personal idea. And we also asked for anecdotes describing what it was that made that defined the beginning or the end of the (19)60s. And so the personal, very personal answers added up to really, for most people, the (19)60s did not begin until the late latter half of the decade, (19)67, (19)68, (19)69. And the (19)60s did not end for most people until really well into the (19)70s. So you have these popular media definitions of the (19)60s as being a cut and dry decade from 1960 to 1970, or the media saying, yes, the (19)60s ended without Altamont, that terrible concept. These were media constructs. But for people personally, the (19)60s really opened up late in the time, late in the calendar-defined decade, and continued well past the point that the popular definition of the (19)60s. So we kept coming up with answers like that are reasonable. It is rational, but that is the way it should work. Cause the way the word spread about popular culture in those days was much slower than it is today. [inaudible]. SM (00:48:19): Interesting about what I am trying to do is I am trying to work on the people that were born between (19)46 and (19)64. Yet during this whole process, the people that lived during that first 10 years are so different than the people that lived in the second 10 years. RW (00:48:34): Yeah. SM (00:48:34): It is a difference between night and day. Some people do not like labels of generations. I have been finding that out. They do not like boomers, generation X or any of this stuff. So I found a lot of that. And then one of the things too, because one of the criticisms of the boomer generation or the (19)60s generation or Woodstock generation is that really only five to 15 percent of the young people were ever involved in any kind of activism or maybe [inaudible]. RW (00:49:03): That is one of the things our survey tried to measure. And in terms of what we mean by the (19)60s, a lot of different things are meant. But in terms of the experiential nature of it, it is true that for the most part, the (19)60s meant nothing more than long hair, bell-bottoms, and a certain preference for rock and roll music. And beyond that, a lot of people had never marched in a protest, never participated in drugs or things like that. So the vast majority of people, I would say, in the country, let alone people who define themselves as (19)60s people, really experience the (19)60s by watching TV or reading a newspaper or something. And then later it seemed to them that the country was in turmoil, but they had never been in any sort of tumultuous situation. You see what I mean? SM (00:50:23): Yeah. RW (00:50:24): And in terms of the actual activist quotient, a very small percentage really organized or hand-lettered a protest sign or physically participated in the activist movement. If they saw a peace march going by and joined in, forever afterwards, well into their (19)50s and (19)60s today, they will say, "Oh yeah, the (19)60s, I was there. I remember that." But maybe they just walked a few blocks with a protest, but that is okay. That is fine. They were part of it. If they actually were part of the Freedom Riders, for instance, that is a very small number of white people, but the influence that they had was tremendous. So a person sitting in some small town in the Midwest who could never hope to participate in these things, but watching those protests on TV could not help but feel part of it somehow, either pro or against it. And so the decade really, it involved people emotionally, but whether it actually involved them physically and personally is a question. And how much, if you were in sympathy with the anti-war movement, but never carried a protest sign, never went on a march, does that still qualify you to be a... Well, I would say it does, if you lived your life in a way that contributed to peace, maybe voting for McGovern, maybe taking a pro-peace stance in an argument with a coworker at the factory. Whatever happened to you in that time sharply defined your identification with it. But what was troubling to Deanne and to me and to a lot of our friends in the late (19)70s was what they call a trope now, a repeated notion in the media that somehow the (19)60s, older, sadder, and wiser, the people of the (19)60s have now joined the "establishment." And everything that they did before was just a youthful whim, which isolates the activism of that time and the real gains of that time from the continuum of American history. And in fact, today, it is a widely held belief that the environment is worth saving. It is a widely held belief that it is not right to discriminate for reasons of race, creed, color, sexual orientation. It is a widely held belief that you can wear whatever you want to wear and not feel like you are ostracized. Many of the widely held beliefs of today that probably young people just think always were there, were hard fought for in the (19)60s and part of a continuum of struggles from the very beginning of this country. SM (00:54:32): When you look at, you talk about the late (19)70s, then you are talking about the (19)80s with Ronald Reagan and his very strong stand, we are back, which was really an explanation in his mind that we are going to go back to the way it was in the (19)50s, or respect for authority, spending more money on the military, that kind of an attitude. And then we get into George Bush at the end of the (19)80s. George Bush Senior, says the Vietnam syndrome is over. So there is all these little thoughts, again into Bill Clinton in the (19)90s, and then we have George Bush in the tens. Throughout this period, I think there is still that feeling that some people that are traditionalists and conservatives or have problems with that period, no matter what time in history, will deny exactly what you are just telling me. RW (00:55:28): Exactly. The word conservative means to conserve, to preserve something, and radical means something divergent. And so as you pointed out in my essay about the Woodstock Consensus, the consensus in this country is for certain underlying American principles of inclusion. And those who propagate the notion of exclusion are outside the current of American history. They are the true radicals diverging from the ideals that this country was founded upon. So how you can... There is no going back in history. We will not have restricted whites only country clubs anymore. We will not exclude women from the mainstream of American life, whether it be social, cultural, or commercial. These are things that have been ongoing since the beginning and will continue. And you cannot roll that back. SM (00:56:56): You say in that same article, I broke it down into sections here, because every single paragraph had something I thought was very important. RW (00:57:03): Thank you. SM (00:57:06): You say that I, well, second, you say that your respondents were motivated less by ideology than by finding a common cause with like-minded folks, the feeling of not being alone. There was a common spirit. That seems to be a quality found in human nature. And the thing is, and we always tell college students that they join clubs because they have similar interests and people join the Black Student Union because they are African American first. Their issues. I put a but here, because I have interviewed a lot of conservatives too in this process. Were the boomers that identified with the (19)60s weakened by not having more young people who disagreed with them. Since both individualism and community seem at odds, because there was the period in the (19)50s where segregation went to integration. And now on university campuses, we have seen to be going back to self-segregation. It was only through crises that we have seen to bring people together, whether it be 9/11, the Rodney King crisis in the (19)90s, or tragedy of Virginia Tech. These things bring people together because of their common humanity, but then they go back to their small groups. Do you think, and as some of the concerns have told me, these same people who were identified with the (19)60s who may have been activists and maybe not activists, but they identified with that period always talked about tolerance, but it was in effect, they were showing intolerance because as Phyllis Schlafly said to me, you know Phyllis Schlafly, she called them, "The troublemakers of the (19)60s are now running today's universities, and they have no tolerance for established points of view from the past, only their points of view." RW (00:58:59): Well, so we should have tolerance for people promoting bigotry. We should have tolerance for people saying society should be segregated. We should have tolerance for people who deny individuals their rights, merely because they happen to see the world a certain way. That is what people like Phyllis Schlafly are doing. And today's Tea Partyers are turning the ideals of the (19)60s upside down in order to impale the promoters of American ideals on their own [inaudible], which is ridiculous. You cannot say... Our society does allow Nazis to march in the street. All right? This is our tolerance, but you cannot restrict the club to exclude black people. If it's a public club. We will not include exclusionist. That is not what America is about. They can stand up on any street corner and say what they want. They can publish their own books, they can have their website, they can do whatever the hell they want, but they cannot exclude the inclusionists and inclusionists exclude. You know what I am saying? I am getting mixed up here, but basically they are saying, "I know I am, but what about you? So are you." It is a high school trick that they are using and they are using it to rewrite history, like Karl Rove in his book. These people are shameless, and basically everything they say is a coded message or exclusionist politics and cultural proclivities. These people hate the fact that America now has a big population of Hispanics who insist on speaking their own language, hate the fact that even though a woman like Phyllis Schlafly is out there as a powerful woman, she would put down a feminist saying, I am not a feminist, but she would not be here if it was not for feminists who fought for the right women to participate in the political process to vote. These are shameless hypocrites who want to deny that America is about inclusion and they just want to preserve their own white skin privilege. SM (01:02:10): We have people like David Horowitz and Peter Collier who have written a book called The Destructive Generation. You probably are aware of them. And he was one of the leading writers, both of them, of Ramparts Magazine. RW (01:02:24): I know. They did not write that book about the 1920s when there was another great surge of so-called radical movements. These were actually unionists and multiculturalists, Bohemians, they were called in the twenties and in the thirties, the IWW. This country has a long history of troublemakers and troublemaking generations, including the famous Boston Tea Party, which was really... They dressed up like Indians just like the hippies did to protest an authoritarian structure. Today's Tea Partyers, they pretend to adhere to the teachings of Saul Valinski. He would disavow them instantly. Every generation in this country has been a troublemaking generation. It is just that those in power have sought, more or less successfully, to suppress them. And in the (19)60s, you will see the stirrings of it in the (19)50s. You will see the people who... The reason why people long hair for the first time in this country's history was out of style was because if you had a crew cut in the early (19)50s, it proved that you had done military service. And it had been 10 years since anyone had let their hair grow. A crew cut was the common haircut. That was the style. And it seemed to be, at some point people forget the way things used to be. SM (01:04:19): Crew cuts and flat tops. RW (01:04:21): Yes. Well, flat tops. And anyone with long hair in the (19)50s was looked at as a weirdo or sexual pervert. But they forget that when you see a picture of General Custer, for instance, one of the great heroes, so-called, but he had long hair right down to his shoulders. Most of American history men had long hair. So why was there such a big fuss about long hair? Well, that is what it was. SM (01:04:54): In your opinion, because you asked the question to over a thousand people back in (19)77, (19)78, (19)79. When did the (19)60s begin in your opinion? And when did the (19)60s end in your opinion? RW (01:05:10): Well, again, if you are asking when did it begin for me personally, that is one thing. SM (01:05:15): Yeah, That is what I am after. You personally. RW (01:05:24): In 1959, when I was nine years old, I went to California for the first time with my parents. Went to Disneyland a year after it had opened and went surfing. It was a summer vacation, but my beatnik uncle was already out here having a good time. He picked us up at the airport in a Cadillac convertible with the top down and took us to our hotel. And then at some point during our time in LA, he took us to go visit a friend of his up in Topanga Canyon. Have you ever heard of Topanga Canyon? SM (01:06:08): Nope. I lived in the Bay Area. I did not live in the... RW (01:06:12): All right. Well, Topanga Canyon is just before Malibu. It is a- SM (01:06:16): Well, I know where Malibu is. RW (01:06:21): [inaudible] of the city where a lot of Bohemians went to live, and it is a beautiful area. But he had a friend there named Bob Dewitt, and Bob Dewitt, he lived... You had to cross a bridge over a creek. You parked up the road, and you crossed this bridge. And he had this shack, a sort of rambling shack. And he had three or four daughters running around barefoot, kind of ragged and dirty. And he had a beard and he was a potter. He made ceramics, pottery, and he was a hippie before there was the word hippie. He was a beatnik without calling himself that. He just lived a sort of free lifestyle. And I was just blown. I thought, this is how, I thought this was fun. I saw the young girls running around barefoot, not caring about anything, and that is a cool way to live. I said, "I want to live like that." And so I would say that would be the beginning of it. But the other part of that beginning was that after we left there, my dad made some cutting remark about Bob Dewitt-less. SM (01:07:43): Yeah. RW (01:07:47): Bob Dewitt-less, he says, putting him down. Well, as it turns out, years later, I found out that Bob Dewitt-less was not so weightless. He actually slowly acquired much of the land in Topanga Canyon, which grew in value immensely over the years. And he was able to sell off that land and buy himself a nice spread in Hawaii and lived a very nice life. But the point is, I experienced both a counterculture that was apart from the nine to five commuter life that my dad had constructed for himself and for us, as well as the backlash against it, which was a kind of envy, a kind of jealousy, a kind of bitterness that here was a life that my father and others like him had fought for during the war. And it seemed that people like this beatnik in Topanga Canyon were throwing that away or somehow casting doubt upon its values. And really in this country, that is where the (19)60s begins and ends. The people who wish they could live a life that is freer and hate, the ones who are able to do that, because it really undermines the value of their spiritual and cultural real estate. Their belief system is cast into doubt. So someone who says, "Your country club life is not for me. It is worthless. And it is even wrong because you do not admit certain kinds of people." People who believed in that strongly, who fought. RW (01:10:02): Believed in that strongly who fought during the war to attain that measure of success. Sure, they felt threatened, they felt offended, and they felt angry because somewhere deep down they knew that they had lost something. That the promise of the good life that they had fought for and believed in, and maybe on that island in the Pacific, or the Battle of the Bulge, or on the beaches of Normandy, that promise never was fulfilled, and never could be fulfilled personally unless all of society's promise was fulfilled. So how could you be a happy person in the suburbs watching TV in 1956 or (19)60 and watching black Americans being hosed down and bitten by these dogs? How could you feel secure in your own life if you knew that a part of society was not able to enjoy the freedoms that you yourself... There was a hypocrisy. People knew it. And how they reacted to it marked by the beginning of the (19)60s or the end of the (19)60s for them personally. Because either they got involved and did something about it or they did not or they fought against it. At the end of the (19)60s, they either realized some measure of self-liberation, but they did not. SM (01:11:54): That is a great answer by the way. And I know this has been a very difficult question for others because we were talking 78 million boomers here that were born between (19)46 and 1964. And I just read this recently, that there are now more millennials than there ever were boomers. There is almost 81 million millennials. So the boomer generation is no longer the largest generation in history, and that is a little shocking to some boomers. But is there any weight from the people that you know, and it is only based on your experiences now, because like I mentioned, there were 78 million, might all have different stories, of what you would consider positive qualities or negative qualities within the people that you knew that were defined by the (19)60s? RW (01:12:49): Can you rephrase that? SM (01:12:51): Yeah, if there are some negative qualities that you saw in some of your fellow boomers and some of the positive qualities you saw in the boomers. RW (01:13:03): I do not think any of the positives or the negatives are specific to the generation. If you want to talk about self-destructiveness, certainly we can talk about the drugs and suicidal behavior that many people in the (19)60s fell to. But then you would have to look at the same thing in any generation, drinking themselves to death, driving too fast, or behaving in an unhealthy manner. Even smoking cigarettes, which was so common in this country in the thirties, (19)40s, and (19)50s. That is pretty self-destructive, we know now. And the millennials too have their own self-destructive bent, beginning with Kurt Cobain, who was not a (19)60s person, would not identify I think with anything hippy. There are enough rock stars, and actors, celebrities of today's generation who are falling prey to self-destruct behavior. SM (01:14:34): Some of the people that really stand out from the (19)60s or for the boomer generation. I remember when Phil Oaks committed suicide and I was just shocked by it because he wrote those great songs. He was very committed to the end of the war, and then he did himself in. RW (01:14:54): Well, today we know more about bipolar conditions. Abbie Hoffman. SM (01:15:00): Yes, and that was sad. RW (01:15:02): Was very much prey to that. And my friend Tom Forcade was heavily bipolar and he also fell prey to that. But then you get somebody like Heath Ledger. SM (01:15:13): Yes. RW (01:15:14): And there are several musical stars who in the past few years have been self-destructive as well. So I do not see it quite that way. In terms of positives, those two are attributes. There was a certain... Because there was a prevailing notion of a party going on, if you will, there is more of us. We were all linked. And whenever there was the idea of let us do something together to improve the world, you were more likely to be joined in that effort than ever before. In the (19)50s, the theme of the (19)50s was alienation. You read J D Salinger. That is the way it was before the (19)60s. Angry, alone, weird. You thought you were the only one who thought like that. You thought you were the only one who felt like that. In the (19)60s, people felt freer to share their emotions and feelings and to join together in those. And that continues to this day. Saw the outpouring of expression and the money for Haiti, for We Are The World. All of these things were born in the show of numbers, the show of hands at Woodstock. So when Richie Havens says they recognize us, yes, they recognize, we all recognize one another. And what had once been a lonely identity, and it was the rage in the (19)50s to... What was it? The Lonely Society? SM (01:17:19): Yeah. It was The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman. RW (01:17:22): Yes, The Lonely Crowd. The theme of alienation gave way to a theme of a celebration of like interests. And that continues to this day. Today, no one will tell you that they were part of the crowd in high school. Today everybody says, "Oh, I was a weirdo in high school." Right? SM (01:17:48): Yeah. RW (01:17:51): Everybody is a non-conformist today and that is a good thing. We recognize our individuality, but at the same time, we recognize our unity as individuals and we are not afraid to join together as weirdos and idiosyncratic beings in common cause for something that is obviously important. So I can tell you that my mom, when she organized a cooperative kindergarten in our small town in upstate New York, she was labeled a communist and her car vandalized, including with anti-Semitic expressions. That would never happen today. Everything is cooperative. Everything is collaborative. SM (01:18:47): And I know that Phyllis Schlafly, when I interviewed her, we were talking. Somehow, we got under the environmental movement and she said, "Yes, they are all former communists." RW (01:19:01): The United States is a former communist country because it was started by communalists. So these labels are so meaningless. People like her, they would rather divide people into categories than to find what unites us. And if there is anything that unites the United States of America, it is our national parks are the first. There were never national parks in the entire world until we created them. And our recognition that the environment is a sacred treasure and a national heritage. Does she want to say that that is a communist idea? SM (01:19:52): It was just a quick response to a different movement. She did not go into any detail. I spoke to her, she was very nice. She has always been nice and she gave me the time. RW (01:20:00): Well, they are all very nice. But they do not realize the toxic nature of what they say. So in other words, Theodore Roosevelt was a communist for starting our national park system. These are deeply dividing, divisive terms. There has never been a left in this country in the same way that there has been a communist movement in Europe, a socialist movement. There has never been a right in this country in the same way that there has been a fascist movement in Germany and other places. SM (01:20:40): I can remember reading some place that critics... I like Teddy Roosevelt, I learned a lot from him, great quotes on leadership. But he was heavily criticized for killing animals in Africa. And until you found out more in-depth information as to why he was killing those animals, because we did not have zoos then and museums. And he was sending the bodies back to be used in museums. So he was not just killing them for the mere fact of killing them. He was killing them for educational reasons. People love animals. I can understand where they are coming from, but they do not tell the whole story about why he was doing it. RW (01:21:23): Yes, and the thing of it is those were different times. But certainly he was thinking in a direction that has benefited the country. And I think we need to abandon these notions of left and right, think in more five-dimensional. There are people who are following major themes in American history as described, as posed in the original founding father's documents, and those who are trying, digging in their heels and trying to slow that sort of thing. I think if you view current issues like healthcare and education and even taxes within the context of all of American history, I think it is quite clear that anything that embraces people and their welfare is where we need to go one way or the other. There are people in this country who say that taxes are an invasion of privacy and a violation of individual freedom. And I would hope that they never use a highway, never turn on a water faucet using the public water system, never use electricity, never use a telephone, never use anything that requires the cooperation of large numbers of people across state lines. Because if they do not want to pay for that stuff, call an ambulance, a cop, check into a hospital, if they do not want to use that stuff, that is fine. But do not deny others the right to. Taxes, you might say that is a socialist idea, but it is an idea that everyone contributes according to their... People are not debating these things within the context of America. They are debating it in terms of what is left and what is right, and that is not an accurate construct for debates to take place. SM (01:24:06): Did you have a generation gap with your parents? You already told me about that experience with the beat in California when you were very young. But did you have a real strong gap with your mom and dad during that time? And secondly, this is a general question, but obviously you are a dad and you are a boomer dad and you are raising kids. Have boomers been very good parents or even grandparents with respect to sharing what it was like then? The learning lessons that were important for the boomers, have they shared them with their kids? Because the question I ask as a person who has been in higher ed for over 30 years, obviously I do not see the activism we saw back then and- RW (01:24:54): That is a mistake. Again, that is one of the things. We never got to put that in our book, but we did want to. One of the themes of the end of the (19)70s about the (19)60s was that activism is over. Activism is more widespread today than ever in the (19)60s. And it has to do with not just the narrow definition of radical activism, but activism of all kinds, whether it is protesting campus budget cutbacks, or bunch of moms uniting to get a streetlight at a dangerous intersection, or collecting money for any particular cause, or volunteering to help nonprofits. This is much more widespread today and nobody thinks a moment about it. In the (19)50s, in the post-war period, anyone carrying a picket sign was automatically labeled a subversive because of the McCarthyistic nature of those times. People, they do not think twice about protesting or organizing to accomplish something, whatever it might be. So activism is one of those principles of the (19)60s that was anchored in all the previous years of American history that was dormant in the (19)50s and now is part of the fabric of our society. In any case, my son who is 21 and a college student and a rock and roll drummer and a very smart kid with his own idiosyncratic way, who knows what he and his crowd are going to be up to? But he recognizes, he has taken the time to go through my record collection so that he understands that the music of today is rooted in the music of previous generation. He is not like us. I thought the Rolling Stones, all that music, that that was theirs, they invented that. And then when I got down to it, I realized, "Oh my god, they are doing songs by Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf." And then where do they get their music? We had to discover it because that history had been suppressed. Today that is commonly acknowledged and much more accessible. SM (01:27:56): One of the things you mentioned early on here is the words. When you define the (19)60s generation, we use the words us and we, feeling a [inaudible], a camaraderie, a sense of community and ideas, ideals, shared experiences. But in later years, and Christopher Lasch wrote The Culture Of Narcissism, which was a very popular book in the (19)80s, actually it was the late-(19)70s. He said that us and we went into me. And so what was we became so into themselves, it was like the religious experiences of the (19)60s, what happened after the war ended, and then with the increase in violence, and that people burned out, they went into an inner spirituality where they believed in not necessarily a god but someone. RW (01:28:57): I will tell you, there are these generalities of burnouts and what a generation is doing at any one time. Let me change my- Very good. People make these statements, these generalities about what any particular generation is doing at any one time. One thing that you can say for sure is that people are born, they are young, they grow older, and they die. And along the way, people tend to follow certain paths. And statistically across a large population of people, you could say that a generation tends to act in one way or another. Certainly when you are young and in college and have no family obligations or job obligations, you can take the time to be an activist and protest and be somewhat reckless in your life. Certainly as you grow older and have to get a job, you will be more restricted in your activities. And as you grow even older, you will cut down on even more reckless behavior. And you may even start to look askance at such behavior in younger people. These are common human traits and behavioral tendencies. And it is not uncommon for people as they grow older to start questioning things and to seek spiritual answers. And America is nothing if not a religious country, or a spiritual country rather. And so naturally, as they entered their thirties, the generation that was most populous during the (19)60s tended to question and look for spiritual answers, which is part and parcel of the spiritual search that was part of the (19)60s counterculture, the Harry Krishnas. Look at The Beatles going to India, transcendental meditation. These are mainstream currents of every human life and very much part of American life. Spiritualism, the quest for spiritual answers, you can read that all through the literature, beginning all the way back to Nathaniel Hawthorne questioning the religious principles of his time. There was a huge spiritual movement in this country, spiritualist in the late-1880s and early-1900s with Madame Blavatsky and a lot of hucksters trying to contact the spirit mediums and so on. This has always been an American trait. So to narrow, to take the telescope and turn it around and focus so narrowly is at once a mistake, but it is also very correct. Yes, people tend to become more spiritually inclined as they grow older. So what? So what does that mean? They are selfish? Does it mean that the (19)60s never happened? That activism not only was a failure but was wrong? No. These things continue along with the spiritual quest. And it is not as if what is happening today invalidates what happened yesterday. What it does do is provide people like Christopher Lasch with a book topic that they can sell and go on talk shows and do interviews about. The (19)60s provided a lot of fuel for the popular definers of the age. Everyone wanted to define the age in which we live. Meanwhile, people live normal lives. They go through phases. And nobody says that because they are the way they are in their (19)50s, that somehow that makes their lives when they were 20 and 30 somehow invalid. SM (01:34:00): You make good points. And one of the things too is the kids of the boomers, because the first kids were the generation Xers. They were born after (19)65. And they overall did not get along very well with boomers in many ways. But they were the ones being attacked as being the yuppies. Remember? They were trying to make lots of money before they turned 30 on Wall Street. So what kind of parents were the boomers if they raised these kids who became yuppies? RW (01:34:31): These are easy terms to throw around and easy ideas, flap upside somebody's head. But in fact, because we enjoyed the affluence of the post-war period, what does that mean about our parents who struggled through the thirties and the warriors of the (19)40s? Did it invalidate who they were or what they did? They fought so that we could enjoy peace and comfort. And why hold it against us that we did? In fact, the notion that somehow we took for granted what had been hard fought, hard won is contrary to what actually happened, which is that the young people in the (19)60s were not satisfied with the situation. And they did try to extend their peace and prosperity to other people. And that should make people sit up and take notice. Yes, the greatest generation to call fought for our freedom, but is not it equally as great that the next generation was not content to sit and be satisfied with that wealth and prosperity and that peace, that instead be agitated? We became troublemakers in order to share what we had with everyone because it was not... There was a saying, "None of us are free unless all of us are free." And certainly as a young person traveling in the South in 1966, as I did with a friend of mine. We stole a car and headed south to go visit a guy I had met the previous summer who said he lived in New Orleans. He had some good pot. So me and my friend, we skipped school one day, stole a car, took his brother-in-law's credit card, and headed for New Orleans. Go visit our friend Pino and get some good dope. So we head down there to New Orleans, driving through the South in 1966. In about this time, springtime, when the red earth of Georgia was just breaking open and you could smell the Mississippi delta. We arrived in New Orleans, we go to the address that Pino had given me, and it is this little shotgun shack down in the Lower Ninth Ward. Woman answers the front door, sees these two white kids. And she was kind of coffee-colored. We said, "Hey, is Pino home?" And she said, "Oh, sorry. Pino is in the parish county jail." So we said, "Oh, we will go visit him." And we went and bought a carton of cigarettes because that is what prisoners like. And we went to the parish county jail and there was a sign outside that said white visiting hours so-and-so, colored visiting hours so-and-so. Well, I had never thought of this guy Pino as white or colored or what. I could not tell what she was. I know now she was Creole. But we were so ashamed and embarrassed to have to ask somebody if our friend was white or colored and which visiting hours that... My friend and I, we went over to the banks of the Mississippi, sat there, smoked a few cigarettes. And without a word, we got up, jumped into our stolen car and headed back north, defeated by a situation that we had no knowledge of, no part in. And no way to do anything about it because we were 16 years old in a stolen car and wondering what this was all about. And of course, in ensuing years we learned very quickly. And some of us tried to do something about it. But the point is that we witnessed a time in this country that was very different from now. And the way things are now are directly a result of people who were not satisfied with the way things were in 1960s and did something about it. Whether I did it or somebody else did, it does not matter. Somebody did something about it. And I am so proud to have been born at that time. I can sit here now and say I wept openly when an African American was elected president. Said to myself, like so many others, "I never thought I would live to see this day." And quite frankly, if a lightning bolt had come down and struck me dead at that time, I would have died with a smile on my face because I have lived to see the realization of much that was only distantly promised and so difficult to imagine becoming a reality. And today, my son and his friends enjoy this stuff and so they should. And if they want to continue to struggle with all of the issues that are remaining, and there are quite a few, then that is fine. SM (01:40:54): Yeah, it is interesting that we have African American- RW (01:40:56): That is my favorite story of the (19)60s by the way. SM (01:40:59): You see, that is a magic moment, Rex. That is what I mean, these things that come out in an interview. I am not saying I am going to use it for the book. It will be in the interview, but on the book title. But see, that is what I meant. Things that I did not expect that may have come out in interviews. I cannot believe some of the things that have come out in my interviews. And I have only had one person in 100, you are my 142nd person, and only one person said, "You better not put that in print." And that was a person who is very close to the Kennedy Family. And he admitted that he could not stand Bobby. And he says, "I cannot have Ethel know that." RW (01:41:47): My dad wrote speeches for Bobby Kennedy. And he could not stand him either because he finally met him and thought he was a jerk. Put that in the book. SM (01:41:56): Yeah, he changed that. The last couple of years, he was different than he was early on. You are a boomer. And as a boomer, just looking at a decade, you do not have to give me any in depth explanation, but boomers are now into their (19)60s. And they have lived through the (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, (19)80s, (19)90s, and what we call the tens, the Bush, and now Obama. If you were to go from the (19)50s and for each of these decades, just a few words as a boomer, what do you think of these decades? You do not have to go into any depth of what they mean. But if you were just coming in from outer space or something like that and you wanted to tell someone in a few words what the (19)50s was, what the (19)60s was, what the (19)70s was, what would they be? RW (01:42:51): Well, I would say that the (19)50s, the country was locked in a post-traumatic stress syndrome after the war, struggling to emerge. The (19)60s, we emerged and realized we needed more therapy and treated ourselves to a good time and a worthy time. (19)70s, we matured, paid attention to the demands of maturity. The (19)80s, we indulged ourselves in our success at every level. (19)90s, we got a little tired. And we continue to lapse into senility. But in everyone's life cycle, there are predictable phases. And all of them have been very predictable considering the circumstances. And looking at the times that we have been through, through the lens of knowledge that we have now about what happens after wars to people, what happens to people who are oppressed, what happens to people who emerge from difficult situations and are allowed to indulge themselves, what happens then. These are all predictable phases for most people. But within that, there are times, extraordinary times when. RW (01:45:02): ...times, extraordinary times when people show great courage and are emboldened to acts of bravery because they see everyone around them being supportive or there is a necessity for it. And I think the (19)60s were a time when all of the previous currents of American history came together at the same time that we enjoyed enough comfort and security to be able to turn ourselves to the task of the unfinished revolution that America started with. SM (01:45:59): In your book, you talk about in a section there about the heroes. Some of the people that are certainly defined who they are by their time in the (19)60s with names of people from the (19)60s and the (19)70s. I found as a college administrator since probably around the late (19)80s before I left a year ago, is that many of the Generation X students and Millennial students do not pick well known personalities, politicians, musicians, they pick their family members, they picked their father, their mother, their uncle, their aunt, a teacher, a minister. Have you found this to be true? RW (01:46:47): Well, yes. SM (01:46:47): Somehow heroes have changed from those that were in the news to people who are not known. RW (01:46:54): That is an interesting aspect. I do not know who my son's heroes are. And certainly they do not hold them up to such a high degree as we did. But I think in the (19)60s, the personality posters, having a poster of Che Guevara or Malcolm X on your dorm room wall, a poster of Bob Dylan, it was a way we had to sort of overcompensate for a lack of definition of who we were and what was going on. The (19)50s tended to enforce conformity and reduce the individual's profile in society. Perhaps as a reaction to the grotesque hero worship of the warriors. When having a picture of Hitler on the wall was compulsory or picture of Mussolini. So in the (19)60s, we sought to define ourselves by personalities like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez music and JFK as well, Bobby. Right now, I think people have won the right to be their own heroes, to not have such iconic beacons of selfhood. I mean, it would be embarrassing today to have a picture of Bob Dylan on your wall or Kurt Cobain, or God knows. I mean, my son would never do anything like that. He and his friends, they are their own heroes. They are heroic every day of their lives. We won the right for them to do that. So now they can be non-conformists like everybody else, and they define themselves. SM (01:49:15): What term do you feel best defines the Boomer generation? Because you use Woodstock census, and then you have Woodstock consensus. And of course there is many terms for this generation, Vietnam generation, the Woodstock generation, the protest generation, the love generation, the movement generation. The list goes on and on. RW (01:49:37): Yeah. I would- SM (01:49:37): Which one do you feel most comfortable with? RW (01:49:39): Yeah. Well, let us start with what I would reject. I would reject the protest generation because there was more protest in this country going on in the twenties and thirties than any other time. And certainly if you go back to civil war days, there were anti-draft protests, riots. This country has a tradition of protest and it did not start in the (19)60s. So I would reject that. I am happy with Woodstock generation because it is true that it was emblematic of our unity, our counter-cultural sensibility. The music was extremely important as a unifying factor and as a way of recognizing the contribution of African-American culture to our society. I think the Woodstock generation is apropos, but Boomer is slightly derogatory, baby boom. Yes. We were all a product of the peace and prosperity and therefore the fertile activities of our parents following the war. It is a common occurrence after war for a society of experience of a wide increased birth incidents because, hey, the soldiers are home. So was there a boom boomer generation after the First World War? Probably. So it does pay tribute to our accomplishments or activities. Because really the number of people who participated in the (19)60s as opposed to those who identify with it, those are two different things. I would say that I would hate to really define it literally. I am much more interested in those who identify with the American... Those who identify the (19)60s with American mainstream currents, historical currents. I am much more interested in them. And I am also interested in those who resisted those currents then and continue dangerously to resist them now. SM (01:52:30): So you would not have a problem with the Vietnam generation then? RW (01:52:34): Well, that is difficult because then you are calling into question your participation as either someone who served in the military during that time or somehow served in the anti-war movement at that time. That is a much more controversial and divisive way to define our generation. Certainly in Vietnam, there is a Vietnam generation and people seem to forget that. SM (01:53:18): Yeah, I am actually interviewing the top scholar in America at Harvard, June 10th. She teaches Vietnamese history and I am getting it from her side. RW (01:53:30): But what I want to know is what about the people who spit on the little black kids who tried to integrate schools in Mississippi and Alabama? What about the people who beat up the freedom rider? What about the people who excluded blacks from their country clubs? What about the people who sought to exclude hippies with long hair from what about the principals and teachers who threw kids out of school for having a Beatle haircut? Where are those people today? Are they listening to a muzak version of the times they are changing as they go up the elevator? Are they confessing to the fact that they really, during the (19)60s resisted and hated hippies and long hairs? [inaudible] confess to that today because they are the traitors. They are the ones who betrayed this country by not following the ideals and principles that the country is founded on. SM (01:54:45): This leads right into the... There is two big issues here that I have tried to do with each interview. One is whether we as a nation have a problem with healing. And I have gotten many, many different responses to this. Let me preface this by saying that I took a group of students to Washington DC about maybe 12 years ago. Senator Edmund Muskie was retirement and he was not feeling very well. He was working in some sort of law firm. And I got this meeting due to Gaylord Nelson, a friend of his former senator from Wisconsin. In fact, I am interviewing his daughter tomorrow on the phone. But the question was that our students asked him is, do you think that we are having a problem with healing from all the divisions that took place in the (19)60s, the division between black and white, between those who supported the war, those were against the war and all the other divisions that we saw throughout that timeframe, or as some people say, "Time heals all wounds," that we really do not have a problem with healing in this nation. And Muskie responded in this way. Everybody thought he was going to talk about 1968 and all the clubbing of the students and the police and the brutality in the divisions of the country and the assassinations and everything else. He did not even mention it. His response was simple. He said, "I just got out of the hospital. I saw the Ken Burns Civil War series," and he said, "We have not healed as a nation since the Civil War." And then he went on for 10 minutes to talk about why. RW (01:56:23): Yes, I was going to give the same answer. It has taken 100 years to recover from that. And we still find people who say the South should have won the war, and they fly the old Dixie and sing the song. And they are unrepentant and refuse to see the reality of what happened then. And we may not ever outlive that, but it is true. And then you also think, I think if you see things from the African-American point of view, people tell them, "Get over it. Slavery is over. The civil rights movement is over. Get over it." And then you realize that the Jewish people have been talking about their time in slavery in Egypt for over 3000 years and have not forgotten that. These are deeply traumatic wounds that take a long time to heal. SM (01:57:38): Yeah. Well, I bring up... The Vietnam memorial's done a pretty good job of trying to heal the veterans and their families. Although I go to the wall and boy, they still have a lot of healing. And then I have often... Some person asks, "Are you just basically talking about those who were against the war and those who fought in the war? Because I can answer that question." Some would say. And I have often wondered, when boomers who did, were in the end anti-war movement, go to the wall and the young kids ask them, "Dad, what did you do in the war?" And whether they say anything or they were against the war. I think about these kinds of things. And you just made a very important statement with all those people who kicked students out of classes, who the Bull Connors of the world who put hoses on African Americans and beat them up. Like John Lewis to me, is one of the heroes of America because he took it and never fought back. He just got beat up. Your thoughts? Do we have a problem as a nation with healing? RW (01:58:45): Well, yes. And this goes to another theme of mine that I will expand on in some other venue. But I do believe that we are a nation that lives comfortably under illusions and delusions of who we are and our denial of the great sin of the genocide of Native Americans. Our denial of these things, of the crimes that we have committed does not allow us to heal. No one wants to talk about the roots of 9/11 in the overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran in the (19)50s, the first democratically elected government in that part of the world. Our CIA overthrew him. And no wonder they hate our guts. Our overthrow of democratically elected governments in South America because our corporations needed to maintain their share of profits from those places. We have committed huge crimes as a nation meanwhile denying that these things are crimes. And even today, people were telling Obama not to go around the world apologizing. Well, it would do us good if we did, but it would do us more good if we admitted to the truths of our history and repented. Now I am a badass motherfucker and I would love to see a truth and reconciliation committee set up. It will never happen and probably divide the country even worse. But I am really pissed off at those people and I do not think they are ever repent, and I do not think they will ever be sorry. And I think the Phyllis Schlafly's of the world continued to lie to themselves and everyone else about who we are as a people and who they are as people. Phyllis Schlafly, does not she have a gay son? SM (02:00:57): I think she does. RW (02:00:58): Yeah. I mean this miserable cunt, I would slap her upside the head physically if I saw her. That is who I am. But it is probably a bad thing to do, the wrong thing to do. But people have committed crimes in this country that have gone unpunished and they walk around today and I just wonder what is inside their heads. SM (02:01:27): Rex, you are really bringing something up here and maybe you ought to pursue it because I would certainly support you on it about the... Because we have seen in the last maybe 10, 15 years, some of those people that were let off Scott free for the atrocities they committed in the South are now being brought to justice and being put in prison even if they are 75, 85 years old. RW (02:01:50): Well, yeah. SM (02:01:51): Part of it is happening, particularly the ones that killed Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney. I think they have been brought to justice, and I am not sure if they ever found the ones that blew up the church. I do not think they ever found them. But you raise a good point. But I am a firm believer that they are going to... If you believe in the power above, they are going to pay a heavy price in the power above. RW (02:02:17): Well, that is good to know. And I am with you on that. But I am thinking even the quieter crimes, the people who in their everyday behavior denied justice to somebody or some people or participated in the mobs that harassed or blocked civil rights or just behaved in a way that restricted someone else's freedom and liberty that was in a way, traumatic for that other person. So the principal of the school who threw a student out because he insisted on having long hair or had a poster of Bob Dylan on his wall or something. SM (02:03:03): I am a firm believer as a nation we have a lot of soul searching to do because things have come out since World War II regarding the Nazis and how some of the... We are not talking about the leadership, but we are talking about the underlings who committed some of the most worse atrocities in the world, worse than Eichman were brought into the United States and went on to live comfortable lives. And the government knew they were here and there were their information for whatever. There is a lot of hypocrisy going on here, and it is very disturbing. Another question is the issue of trust. The boomers have often, and the (19)60s generation, the boomers is not a very trusting generation for obvious reasons, because they saw leaders lie constantly, whether it be LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin or Watergate with Richard Nixon. Certainly nobody trusted Ford at the point that he was going to pardon Richard Nixon, even though they said he healed a nation by doing so. And then you had issues with the U-2, with Eisenhower lying on black and white TV and a lot of experience, the lies that McNamara gave to the American people about the escalating numbers, all the things. And I can see why many boomers did not trust their leaders, but you experienced it as I did. Boomers did not seem to trust anybody in a position of leadership, whether it be a rabbi, a priest, a minister, a university president, a corporate leader, anyone who was a leader. Just your response on that. And as a political science person, I was a history political science major, and we were taught early on that not having trust is actually a good quality to have because it means dissent is alive and well. So just your thoughts on the boomers or the (19)60s generation just did not trust people? RW (02:05:10): Well, yes. I think there had been a tremendous betrayal of trust in the years leading up to the (19)60s. And there was the reality of what we were experiencing diverged from what the leaders were saying. And the famous credibility gap of the Johnson years epitomized what was going on. But this is not to say that JFK did not lie to us or that he was not similarly under some illusion or in the control of powers that continued to manipulate our history to their benefit while mouthing patriotic platitudes. I do believe that there is a secret history of the country that has yet to be acknowledged. Our victimization of not only our own citizens at home, but of other countries, other people's economies. And this may never be acknowledged. And given that circumstance, I continue to define myself... How should I say it? It is what I identify with about the (19)60s is the willingness to resort to methods, unconventional methods, shall we say, to either protest or force a change. And I reserve my right and my resources and my experience to take that with me to the grave if necessary, but certainly to impart that to the rest of the world and say, as we said back then, if it comes to it, let us pick up the gun. And I am not afraid of that. It would be a terrible thing. But there are forces still alive in this country, part of the secret history of the country that want to turn the clock back, but they cannot do it. And that is what makes them so dangerous. SM (02:08:16): So as someone who may be different from you, I mean, your stand is correct in what you believe, but the fact that Students for Democratic Society went downhill after they started committing violence, even Mark Rudd said it is the greatest mistake he ever made in his life. Bernadine Dohrn has not made that admission. And then the American Indian Movement, they even realized when they started going violent at Wounded Knee, that was a big, big mistake. The gay and lesbian movement, when the Harvey Milk was murdered in (19)78, they committed violence. They regret the violence that happened two or three days later. The protest was okay, but the violence never went any... And of course, the Black Panthers and the Black Power- RW (02:09:05): It is all very regrettable and it is a terrible thing and people do get hurt, and when it is happening all around you, it is terrifying. I just happen to be in San Francisco during the protests when the sentence came down in the Harvey Milk. SM (02:09:28): Yeah, I lived out there. I lived in Burlingame. RW (02:09:30): All right. Well, I was there with my friend Paul Krasner and a bunch of- SM (02:09:34): Oh, I have read... He is a good writer. RW (02:09:37): You should be in touch with Paul. He would be a good interview for [inaudible]. SM (02:09:40): I do not even know how to get ahold of him. RW (02:09:43): I set one of the police cars on fire during that time, just because I could. And I will admit it now. Come and get me motherfuckers. SM (02:09:50): Oh my golly, I know the chief. No, only kidding. RW (02:09:55): You know what I mean? I just think that one of the things about America that is very American is it is violent nature and that is something we cannot deny. And I was never a peace and love hippie. I was a... What can I tell you? But in any case, I think that just as the NRA says, we all have a right to go around armed. I say, yeah, and I want to be armed against you guys because you are the ones who are the craziest with your crazy ideas. I mean, you never really hear of left-wingers shooting places up. It is always people with strange, strange sort of... I do not know. SM (02:10:57): What other things here? We only got about 10 more... You have gone way overboard with me and I want to thank you. RW (02:11:02): All right. SM (02:11:03): Time wise. Trauma is something.... I am very lucky. I am going to have an interview with Robert J. Lifton in July. He has written a lot of books on trauma, certainly amongst the Vietnam veterans. I am going to ask him about trauma regarding the boomer generation and a lot of the people on the other side as well. But you have already talked about all generations in American history have gone through trauma. Certainly when Lincoln was killed back in the Civil War as the North was getting so close to winning that war, and they won the war, but we went through so much with Kennedy and the other Kennedy and King and the riots, and then the Vietnam. (19)68 looked like the country's going apart, Kent State and Jackson State. Then in the (19)80s, we had the AIDS crisis where the president did not even care as probably half of the male population that were gay may have passed away. Certainly what happened with Harvey Milk and Moscone in (19)78 and John Monon in 1980? The only reason I bring these up is that whenever there seems to be some sort of hope or people who lead, who conspire, people that hope reigns eternal, that good things can come through persistence and hard work and believing in justice and equality and no man or woman is better than anybody else. And then there is murder or there is something. And of course, I always live by the philosophy like Dr. King is, you may kill dreamer, but you cannot kill the dream. That is the way I have lived my life. And I think if you asked any of these people that died, they would say the same thing. But I have often wondered, and maybe you and I are on the same wavelength as boomers. I have wondered what my fellow generation, I think about these things, what this trauma has done to them personally in their lives. And it is thinking beyond yourself kind of mentality. It is trauma, just your comments on trauma. RW (02:13:16): Yes. Well, there was the trauma of the Second World War that was inflicted upon our parents after the trauma of the Depression. And so we came into a world of traumatized Americans. They tried to shield us from that in the hopes that we would never experience anything like it. But the greatest generation created the Vietnam War. So there we had to go through it again and in a worse manner because some went and some did not. And it was just a completely traumatic time. The war alone just overshadowed everything. And I could not have the education that my parents struggled to provide for me because my own conscience would not allow it. So think about that kind of trauma. All of society was afflicted by matters of conscience there. The Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War, or so many of the issues of the time, we were traumatized by having our conscience provoked. We were forced to feel, forced to think instead of sinking into comfort and peace and comfort. Let me... All right, go right ahead. SM (02:15:26): So I think being forced to act as a matter of conscious being forced to feel and think these things felt traumatic because it was our right not to be afflicted by these things, I think. RW (02:15:45): The pictures often say of a million words. When you think of, I would say the first 30 years of boomers lives, (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s, maybe the early (19)80s, what are the pictures, the photographs that were either on fronts of magazines or within magazines or may have been shown on TV that really, if someone had never read a history book of this period, but looked at these pictures, they would understand? SM (02:16:14): They do not understand? RW (02:16:16): No, they would understand. SM (02:16:18): The pictures give meaning to the period. RW (02:16:21): Well, the photo from Kent State of the young woman kneeling, that shows the extent to which white people went to protest the war. Any of the photos from My Lai or any of the war photos of the terror, of the young men of fighting for what they believed in or thought they believed in. Certainly the photos from the Civil Rights movement, certainly the photo of the Great Mall during the Civil Rights... When Martin Luther King gathered everybody together in Washington. The photo of John F. Kennedy and his kids, which epitomized the ideal, the glamour to which we aspired, to be graceful under pressure, to have a great vision, to believe in ideals. These were things that he sort of epitomized. And never for a moment did you look at JFK's family and think that these were uninvolved people. He was the essence of activism and the essence of the interrupted revolution. SM (02:18:16): Two other pictures that I think stood out were the athletes at the (19)68 Olympics, which is Carlos and Tommy Smith with their Black Power fists. RW (02:18:26): Yes, there is certainly that. SM (02:18:28): And then the Vietnamese girl in running down who had just been burned, Kim Phuc, that was another one too. RW (02:18:35): Sure. And we forget that that (19)68 was a time all over the world where youth politics and culture were united. And in Paris, I had friends who participated in the street demonstrations there, and the great slogan in French to translate this, "The more I make revolution, the more I want to make love." To me, that was a very French interpretation of what we were all very much about. And certainly the photo of Woodstock and so many people gathered together there, naked smoking dope, sharing bottles of wine. These are all- SM (02:19:28): Yeah, that one picture of the two hugging each other with a blanket around them when it was raining, that was a classic one. And certainly the pictures of planet Earth by the astronauts. That was another one that is- RW (02:19:41): Right. And there is a photo that was on the cover of Life Magazine of a couple ecstatically dancing. The guy in that photo was a guy named Bantusi, who I have known for since probably 1970. SM (02:20:00): Wow. RW (02:20:01): And we continued to meet- SM (02:20:03): Wow. RW (02:20:03): We continued to meet up from time to time, but I was privileged to get to know people like Abbie Hoffman and to participate in events that were in the sort of electric current of the moment, riots and demonstrations. I played my own very small role in these things. I felt it was the least I could do considering others of my generation- SM (02:20:42): The- RW (02:20:43): ...Were risking their lives in some far-off jungle. But I never wanted to get to the age that I am in now and not be able to say, "Yes, I took part in that and I believed in what I was doing." SM (02:21:00): You stood for something. RW (02:21:01): I am pretty happy With all of it. SM (02:21:02): Yeah. You stood for something. RW (02:21:03): Yeah. SM (02:21:04): Yeah. The slogans from that period, and I have mentioned this, I did not mention it in the first half of my interviews, but I have since, particularly since I left the university. I felt there were three personal slogans that really defined the Boomer generation. Then a couple of people led me on to maybe two or three more. I felt that Malcolm X saying, "By any means necessary," symbolized the more radical elements within that period. Then you had Bobby Kennedy taking the Henry David Thoreau quote, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not," which symbolizes an activist, the more questioning role that people had in all those different movements. Then you had a Peter Max statement from his posters that were very popular on college campuses in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. This was actually hanging on my door at Ohio State. It said, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." Which symbolizes a hippie mentality. RW (02:22:11): Yeah. SM (02:22:11): Someone said to me, "We cannot forget, we shall overcome," because that symbolized the civil rights movement and what was going on. And then the only other two that have been mentioned are John Kennedy's, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." And then of course the Leary's, "Tune in, turn on and drop out." RW (02:22:29): Yeah. SM (02:22:30): Are there any that you have that I did not mention that really inspired you that I am missing here? RW (02:22:38): Well, I just want to say that the Peter Max thing sucks because there were people doing their thing that did not allow me or other people to do their thing. So hippie ethics was a bunch of bullshit. I would have to think about that one. SM (02:23:06): Okay. That is pretty inclusive I would say. I only have- RW (02:23:11): I do kind of like Che Guevara's thing about, "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, I would like to say that every true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love." I like that. It is sentimental and tough at the same time. That is how I like to see that time. SM (02:23:47): By you saying that, I want to recommend a book to you. I do not know if you are ever into Bertrand Russell. RW (02:23:52): Oh yeah. SM (02:23:53): Okay. Well, his biography, when I interviewed David Mixner, I asked him, "What was your legacy? What would you like your legacy to be?" He said, "Read the opening paragraph in Bertrand Russell's book, his biography, and that is all I have to say." Try to get it. It is great because when that man old age lived a life where I wanted to make a difference, and what he said about, and he brought in the concept of love is one of the three things that he wanted to be remembered for. One of the things that we are getting down toward the end here, and thanks again for going overboard. The sexual revolution, your section on it, I thought it was great. RW (02:24:41): Thanks. SM (02:24:44): One question I wanted to ask you, have you kept in touch with any of these 1000 and so people? RW (02:24:49): No, not really. We keep all of the original questionnaires somewhere and we are holding onto this stuff. SM (02:24:56): I wonder how many of these people are still alive? RW (02:24:59): Well, I wonder, I am still alive, but.. SM (02:25:04): The question I am asking, dealing with sexual revolution of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, particularly in the (19)70s, that even though a lot of the things happened in the late (19)60s, a lot of people look at the sexual revolution as that early (19)70s period. I have always felt that the (19)60s ended in (19)73. I think, because when the war ended and everything, I cannot see much of a difference between 1967 and (19)72. But the question is the AIDS crisis, which was the biggest crisis of the (19)80s and the loss of so many people, and certainly in the San Francisco area, in New York. I have made sure in the book process that I have interviewed gay and lesbians, I have interviewed African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, the only group I feel guilty on is Asian-Americans, but they really did not... It is the boat people, I am trying to get to interview some of them. But do you think that the sexual revolution led to the AIDS crisis? RW (02:26:06): Well, in our book Woodstock Census, we came to the conclusion that the sexual revolution was a lot of noise, but no real substance. It was not that people were fucking more or climbing into bed with strangers any more than in any other time. What was really at the root of the seeming wildness of it was that women were coming into their own and people were having the very unusual and sort of wild experience, guys mainly, of having a woman call the shots, having women controlling the sexual situation and being more frank and honest about their bodies and themselves to quote a book title. The women themselves becoming empowered to the point that it altered forever the relationship that men have traditionally had with women in this country from the beginning. That affects everything from the way women dress at work to their earning power, to their role in the home and to their roles in bed. That is what the sexual revolution was really about. Your question goes to the left or the right or above or below the real substance of what it was. It was not an increased licentiousness that made the (19)60s seem so sexually free. It was really the empowerment of women through the women's movement that made everything seem so radically new and sometimes pretty wild. SM (02:28:20): Very good. I got a quick question here about your career because I- RW (02:28:26): I have got a question about my career too, God damn it. SM (02:28:29): Well, your writing career is amazing, your work with Variety and of course High Times, and I did not even know about the underground newspapers. How did your writing career lead you into writing movie and TV scripts? The key question I have here is do your books and your plays and your scripts, are they linked to a sort... I cannot read my writing here. Is there some sort of a message or meaning that is some way connected to the times when you were young? Do you try to put messages in all of your work? RW (02:29:09): I really wish that that were true. If it is, I may not know it. I think I work to keep working is basically... I write to keep writing. That is my personal motivation. The piece of writing that took me from New York to California, to Los Angeles is an exercise in fiction called The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, which is purely a literary exercise in sort of detective noir writing. It seems to have no relationship to my activism or my (19)60s sensibility whatsoever. That has led me, at the time I wrote it, I was sort of at odds. I did not know what direction I was going in, what I was doing. I wrote that and became editor of Swank, the magazine for men, for a year. SM (02:30:29): Wow. RW (02:30:30): Got a call from Hollywood saying, "Let us make a movie based on these big stories." They did not make the movie for about 10 years, but in the meantime, I did a stint writing for Miami Vice, writing a few other things. The one movie that does contain political activism is one I did called Forgotten Prisoners, the Amnesty Files, which is based on the true stories from the files of Amnesty International and had their official imprimatur. SM (02:31:04): Ron Silver was in that, right? RW (02:31:06): Yeah. SM (02:31:07): And he passed away this last year, I believe. RW (02:31:09): Yeah, and Hector Elizondo, but the director is Robert Greenwald, who continues to be an activist director. That is the one piece of movie business work. The Miami Vice episode I did is related to my expertise developed during the High Times days of the underworld of marijuana smuggling. There is that. I would say, on the one hand, I regret not having a constant politically involved writing career. On the other hand, that could be very restrictive, and I am very pleased that I have been able to do widely divergent pieces that I have done, even if it does not have the sort of consistency that I would prefer my career to be defined by. SM (02:32:14): When you think of the (19)60s and the Boomers, throughout your life, what were the best movies that really defined the times when Boomers were young, and also any books that you read that really influenced you during that time, and any artist or artwork, because most people really are limited in terms of art and what they know about the era, even if they grew up in it. They know about Andy Warhol and they know about Peter Max and Lichtenstein, but they do not know a whole lot others. RW (02:32:47): [inaudible] SM (02:32:47): [inaudible] the ones that had the most meaning to you? RW (02:32:53): Yes. Well, I would use the literature of the (19)50s and early (19)60s, the beat literature, Kerouac, Ginsburg, going back even further to Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. These were the true literary lights of our time of the (19)60s. I mean, certainly Philip Roth captures beautifully the sensibility of the (19)50s and (19)60s. Norman Mailer, who I was very pleased to meet and hang around with, and Mailer's son, John Buffalo is a good friend of mine now, so I am very happy about that. The iconic writers, such as, what is his name? Tom Wolf, Pynchon and so on. Everyone has their favorites. Even cowgirls Get the Blues. That writer. These books inspired people and freed them from the restraints that they thought that they were alone and thinking that way. So those were all good things. SM (02:34:19): Did you read The Greening of America by Charles Reich? RW (02:34:22): No. Those are the books that I would flip through it and say, "Oh my God, how tedious." You would get the idea just from the review what his point was. At that time, you did not really need his examples. He had a point, and these were all pointing in the same direction that America was trying to free itself of past strictures. In terms of movies, the great movies of the (19)60s really came about in the (19)70s. You had Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I did meet Kesey as well. There was a great outpouring of popular literature in the (19)60s that I do not see today, which is regrettable, but it is all happening on the internet now. To discover an author and to pass that dogeared paperback copy of Salinger to somebody was a way of turning somebody. It was like handing them a joint. It literally changed people's lives to read some of those books or to see some of those movies. The usual pantheon of literature and art, I do believe that the most radical artists of the times were in music like Bob Dylan, for instance, was true. Even though he evolved from so many familiar sources, he really did change the paradigm of what it meant to be a popular artist and to go through phases and to have an impact on people's lives. But also, Andy Warhol, I would say, was one of the most radical artists of that period. He really had an impact on the way people did everything and many these are commonly accepted themes and methods, but in their time, they were so truly, truly radical in the sense that they diverged completely from any tradition, turned things on their heads in a way that made us see differently. I think he was probably the iconic artist, the visual artist of the time. SM (02:37:16): Where would you put movies like The Graduate, Bob & Carroll & Ted &Alice? The Sterile Cuckoo was another one. RW (02:37:26): Well, here is the thing. Since I have come to Hollywood and gotten to know the movie business inside and out, I know how Hollywood works, and I know that the people who made those movies and who allowed studios to finance them and distribute and market them, were all seizing upon what they saw as an audience for these ideas that were in the media, in the news, on TV. They were really looking to sensationalize or capitalize on these. They were looking to sell tickets, and there were ways that people could participate in the (19)60s without actually being in an orgy or actually being alienated or feeling only a little alienated. They could identify with Dustin Hoffman in the Graduate and yet not have to go through what that character- SM (02:38:35): Yeah, I think I learned a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder and a lot of things that happened in Vietnam vets through Taxi Driver. RW (02:38:44): Yeah. SM (02:38:44): Then of course you have criticisms of Apocalypse Now and... RW (02:38:49): Yes, well, you notice that these movies came about in the early to mid (19)70s, and that is the time lag. If you decide that something that happened in the news today is worth making a movie about, that movie will not come out for at least two years. It takes a long time for a movie to get made and for everybody who's there to say no to finally say yes. The (19)60s in cinema did not happen until the mid (19)70s. That is just the way Hollywood works. People forget that in the (19)60s, you had the Rock Hudson, Doris Day movies and a lot of crap out there that did not really reflect what was going on, just an attempt to capitalize on the surface material. SM (02:39:50): I got three more questions. I am not going to ask this section, because we have gone really long here. That is all the names and personalities and terms. I am not going to go into that. I only wanted you to respond to two, and that is, what does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you personally? Secondly, what did the tragedy at Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? Those two. RW (02:40:17): Okay, well, I will take the latter. Kent State and Jackson State, I was in the streets at that time and they tore the cover off and allowed me to engage in the closest thing I could say to domestic terrorism. I mean, I was out there in the streets battling cops hand to hand and throwing the tear gas canisters back at them and breaking windows and setting things on fire. Those things meant that the array of official violence facing us required more than just peaceful protests. And that is what it meant to me, rightly or wrongly, and sorry if I heard anybody, but fuck it. And then the first one, what was the first one again? SM (02:41:14): Vietnam Memorial. RW (02:41:16): Okay. Well, to tell you the truth, I have not been to Washington DC since the protest days. SM (02:41:23): Okay. RW (02:41:24): I just have no reason to go. I never liked Washington DC. I cannot bring myself yet to go see the memorial, but I will probably one of these days. At the same time, my son, when he was in middle school, he and his class went to Washington DC on a class trip and I sat him down and told him the story of my high school best friend and gave him the name. I said, look at it, when you go to the wall, look it up and do a rubbing and bring it back. He took it seriously and went there and he brought back my friend's name from the wall. SM (02:42:13): What is your friend's name? RW (02:42:15): His name was Cuall K Lawrence. SM (02:42:18): Okay. RW (02:42:19): C-U-A-L-L K Lawrence. SM (02:42:22): How did he die? RW (02:42:24): Well, let us keep talking a bit, because I will tell you. SM (02:42:39): Yeah. RW (02:42:41): But there is a phrase that they use. SM (02:42:44): What year did he die? RW (02:42:46): What is that? SM (02:42:47): What year did he die? RW (02:42:48): I will tell you in a minute. But- SM (02:42:52): He was your best friend in high school? RW (02:42:54): Yes. SM (02:42:55): Did he go right into the army after school or the Marines? RW (02:43:00): Yeah. Well, there was a period of time when we all just went off into different directions and he ended up... Let us see here, wait a minute, here we go. Hang on. Private First Class, 8th Cavalry, 1st Cav Division. November, 1970. SM (02:43:45): Wow. RW (02:43:47): And he was said to have died from... Let us see. Non-hostile, died of other causes, ground casualty. The casual detail was accidental self-destruction. SM (02:44:10): So like, yeah, maybe bomb went off or, yeah. Or else it could have been friendly fire. Well, no, who knows? There is a lot of terms they use. RW (02:44:23): Accidental self-destruction was often used for people who shot up too much dope, or God knows what he did. Just maybe. SM (02:44:34): Did you go to his funeral? RW (02:44:37): No, I did not. As soon as I heard this, I went down to the city and just, that is when pretty much everything started falling in place as far as my activism. SM (02:44:53): When the best history books are written about the Boomer generation, the (19)60s generation, the Vietnam generation, that is those individuals born after the war and through the period I mentioned. After the boomers have passed on, the 78 million are no longer on this planet, what do you think the historians and sociologists are going to say about them? Because they obviously did not live during the time, but what do you think they will say about that period and about that generation? RW (02:45:29): Well, what do we say about the generation that fought the Civil War? What do we say about the 1920s? Oh, the roaring (19)20s. These things get simplified over time, boiled down into a phrase or an idea. I think the (19)60s will always be known as a time of turmoil and a time of testing and a time of triumph when it comes to the basic movements, the basic goals that we went for at that time. So civil rights, did we win on that? Yes. Women's rights? Yes. We won on that. Ending the war. Well, the war did finally end, whether we ended it or not, but a lot of effort went into ending it, not as a successful ending, but an ending that had to be brought about. I think that the simplification is those troubles, the term tumultuous (19)60s and the subhead is a time of protest, and hopefully they will conclude that the victories were won more than were lost. SM (02:47:01): That is really amazing that when you think about young people today in college, how little history they know, not only about the time that we live, but in any time. Let us hope that the quality of teaching changes, so that is not the case after the Boomer generation is gone. My very last question here is, what is the one thing you want to do in your life that you have not done yet that could be linked to your time, to the Woodstock generation, or just because you want to do something different? Is there something you want to do that you have not done? RW (02:47:53): Well, there are a couple of girlfriends I would like to see again, but only if they look the same. I think that I have been very lucky in being able to travel the world, and I have been to all kinds of places and done so many things and been witness to more history than anyone could ever want. SM (02:48:28): Is there one question that you thought I was going to ask that I did not? RW (02:48:32): That is the one question I was wondering if you would ask. SM (02:48:35): What is that? RW (02:48:37): "Is there one question?" SM (02:48:39): Oh, okay. RW (02:48:39): That blew your mind, man. SM (02:48:43): Yeah. Well, Rex, thank you very much. I will be interviewing Deanne. I think it is Monday. RW (02:48:52): Good. SM (02:48:52): I am calling her in the afternoon. And if there is anybody that you think of that you would think would be good for this project, you mentioned Paul Krassner, but I think he is almost impossible to get ahold of. RW (02:49:05): I call him all the time. I will send you his email. You can talk to him. SM (02:49:09): Yeah. If there is anybody else, you mentioned one other name, I forget what it was. You mentioned another name here. You have known, you said for years, and he was in that picture. RW (02:49:19): Oh yeah. Well, he will just give you a bunch of hippie bullshit. SM (02:49:23): Is there anybody else? Well, you think about it. RW (02:49:27): Did you interview Rennie Davis, by the way? SM (02:49:29): Oh, yeah. I interviewed him. RW (02:49:30): What's he got say, is he still with the 13-year-old guru? SM (02:49:34): Oh, no, was he with a 13-year-old girl? RW (02:49:38): That never came up? SM (02:49:39): No. RW (02:49:41): Are you fucking kidding me? You better, you better. Yeah. You are not doing your homework here. He- SM (02:49:44): No, he is with an older woman now that writes. He was very successful in the corporate world or technology, and he made a lot of money that way. He is into spirituality and he is very good at that. RW (02:50:01): Well, at the height of the sort of- SM (02:50:06): This should be off the record, I should not be taping this, should I? RW (02:50:09): No, you can. SM (02:50:09): Okay. RW (02:50:11): He very famously became a spokesman for the guru, Maharaji. SM (02:50:15): I remember that. Yep. RW (02:50:16): Known in our circles as the 13-year-old fat bastard. He totally left the activist world, sort of renounced it and became part of this cult. SM (02:50:35): Well, I knew that. RW (02:50:36): Oh, okay. Well, so that is- SM (02:50:38): I thought he was having an affair with a 13-year-old or something like that. RW (02:50:41): No-no. SM (02:50:41): Okay. RW (02:50:44): Guru Maharaji, who lives in Malibu now, has a helicopter and a private jet and is a pain in the ass to his neighbor. SM (02:50:51): Yeah, Rennie, even the person he lives with, I do not know the whole story. I know she is also a very good speaker. I forget her name. He was traveling around the country giving speaking engagements on spirituality. He is really good at it. He is in demand everywhere. So he is driving all over campus with her and they do presentations together and individually. He was very successful in technology for a while, I guess. Then he sold his company, and I guess he is fairly well-to-do. RW (02:51:29): Oh, good for him. But one of the few survivors of the Chicago trial. SM (02:51:38): Yeah. He and Tom Hayden. RW (02:51:41): Right. SM (02:51:41): And I tried. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rex Weiner Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Weiner, Rex ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Editors; Publishers; Journalists; Weiner, Rex--Interviews Description An account of the resource Rex Weiner, a native of Brooklyn, New York, is a writer, editor, publisher, and journalist based in Los Angeles and Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, MX. Weiner began his journalism career in the underground press of the late 1960s and is a co-founding editor of High Times magazine. His articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review, LA Magazine and Capital & Main. He is Executive Director and co-founder of the Todos Santos Writers Workshop, where he teaches creative writing. With Deanne Stillman, he is co-author of The Woodstock Census: Nationwide Survey of the Sixties Generation (Viking Press). Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-19 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.120a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.120b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 171:44 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/144fcf46d809b66ded0e4fd42a44bf1d.jpg 2e7209c100d4d00a643ec1beab5a7ccb https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/94ded55a0137ed7d3dfc5ed483831951.mp3 8acff7b20ae3e365a3751c859443eee5 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. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-04-22 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Richard Reeves, 1936- 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.) 148:12 Biographical Text Richard Reeves is a writer, columnist, and lecturer at the University of Southern California. He received his degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1960. After a year working as an engineer, he decided to go into journalism. He wrote books about politics and many other topics. Reeves has won several national awards for his work, including President Kennedy: Profile of Power, which was named the Best Non-Fiction Book of 1993 by Time magazine and Book of the Year by Washington Monthly. Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"College tuition; Baby boom generation; Mass entitlement; Ronald Reagan; American Journey: Traveling with Tocqueville in Search of Democracy in America (book); Segregation; Native Americans; Harvard Crimson; Journalism; Civil Rights Movement; Technology; Richard Nixon."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588},"12":0}">College tuition; Baby boom generation; Mass entitlement; Ronald Reagan; American Journey: Traveling with Tocqueville in Search of Democracy in America (book); Segregation; Native Americans; Harvard Crimson; Journalism; Civil Rights Movement; Technology; Richard Nixon. Subject LCSH Authors; Journalists; Awards—United States; Reeves, Richard, 1936--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 Richard Reeves Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Reeves, Richard, 1936- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Journalists; Awards—United States; Reeves, Richard, 1936--Interviews Description An account of the resource Richard Reeves is a writer, columnist, and lecturer at the University of Southern California. He received his degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1960. After a year working as an engineer, he decided to go into journalism. He wrote books about politics and many other topics. Reeves has won several national awards for his work, including President Kennedy: Profile of Power, which was named the Best Non-Fiction Book of 1993 by Time magazine and Book of the Year by Washington Monthly. 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 2010-04-22 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.10.2016.97a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.97b 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. 148:12 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/df753b4355ebba091101334dc2e87f3b.jpg 9664591256b5b84bc9dbdc710b93549a https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a7ca9b9911672660423c33be25a7c556.mp3 c85b3890001ae58728c074c90e81f46c 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. <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. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rick Synchef Date of Interview 2010-12-15 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 153:58 Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr; Black Panther; Angela Davis; Vietnam Veterans; Baby boom generation; Beat generation; Earth Day; Activism; Vietnam War; Free speech movement; Activism."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5009,"3":{"1":0},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr; Black Panther; Angela Davis; Vietnam Veterans; Baby boom generation; Beat generation; Earth Day; Activism; Vietnam War; Free speech movement; Activism. Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Rick Synchef is a counterculture collector and historian. He began collecting political paper and ephemera when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 1960s and 70s. Synchef consistently meets writers and obtains autographs for his large collection of books related to the 1960s."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":6535,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"14":[null,2,1184274],"15":"Arial"}">Rick Synchef is a counterculture collector and historian. He began collecting political paper and ephemera when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 1960s and 70s. Synchef consistently meets writers and obtains autographs for his large collection of books related to the 1960s. Subject LCSH Counterculture--United States--20th century; Historians; Synchef, Rick--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Rick Synchef Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 15 December 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:02): Testing one, two. Okay. The first question I have been asking at least the last 50 people that I have been interviewing is, Rick, can you describe your growing up years, your high school years, where you grew up, maybe some experiences you had at that school prior to going off to the University of Wisconsin to college, and also if you had any early role models before you went off to college. Either parents or people in the news or people that you read about in books. RS (00:00:42): I had a fairly normal childhood growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. I want to go off the record. I do not know how much of this you want. I may say more than is necessary, so you may- SM (00:00:55): Go right ahead. RS (00:00:56): Okay. President of my class in eighth grade, politically interested, writing letters to the editor in high school for our local newspaper. I have to go off for a second. If I make grammatical mistakes, will I be able to correct them at- SM (00:01:12): Oh yeah. You will be able to correct them because you will see the transcript. RS (00:01:17): Because I would rather just speak and if I say something, I do not want to have to worry about my grammar so much when I speak with you. SM (00:01:22): That is okay. RS (00:01:23): Okay. SM (00:01:24): Yep. RS (00:01:24): All right. Always interested in politics. Followed politics. Senior year in high school, actually just graduating after senior year in high school. It was 1968. Since I just graduated, I was not allowed by my parents to go down to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August at night. I went with a couple of friends the following day to the Grant Park area. We walked into the Conrad Hilton Hotel, and this tear gas smell was just terrible. Started tearing up right away in the lobby of the hotel. But go back a bit. I was very normal, very athletic, a jock in high school, but was interested in going to a good university and furthering my education, and at that point, I was already fairly sure I was going to become an attorney but did not know. We went to visit a number of colleges and one of them was the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I had already been to some fairly conservative schools like Miami of Ohio, University of Illinois. Then when I got to Madison, we had walked out of the administration building after meeting with a counselor, or somebody regarding college admissions, and they were doing construction across the street and there was plywood everywhere and on one big sheet of plywood, written in spray paint, "LBJ sucks." I had a feeling that is where I wanted to go. Looked and sounded like fun. People on roller skates, dogs with bandanas. That was for me. SM (00:03:30): Yeah. Yeah, that was (19)68 and that summer... That was an unbelievable year. Now, I know I have some questions later on here and I am going to ask you about that year and your years in college, but going to... You went down there. What did you think of that whole experience, that Democratic convention with the police and against the young people, and they were all students, but there were a lot of young people there, and of course, there was chaos even inside the Democratic Convention itself? RS (00:04:04): A complete overreaction to what I viewed as non-violent political participation in the democratic process. Of course, being born in Chicago and having a family or relatives in Chicago since the 18(19)70s, I was fairly familiar with the Chicago police, but not firsthand. Never had a problem. Parenthetically, I grew up in a suburb 25 miles north of Chicago and only saw "the good parts of Chicago" when I came into the city. But I was shocked seeing people being beaten with clubs, tear gas, National Guard, Army... I do not know the exact terminology, but there was an Army personnel carrier with tripod-mounted machine guns and barbed wire around them. Chicago was transformed into an armed camp. It was quite an eye-opener at 18 years old. SM (00:05:17): And you were not allowed to be there at night, but you were there during the day. RS (00:05:22): Two friends and I went down there after the event in Grant Park that night, and on Michigan Avenue then, the prior evening. The smell of tear gas was just really awful. It was new to me. First time. Really awful. SM (00:05:47): I bet you when you first heard the rock group, Chicago, they had that first album and it was a prologue. The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching. Did you hear any of that? RS (00:06:02): I did. Actually, the name on their first album was Chicago Transferred Authority. For obvious reasons, they changed it. They shortened it to Chicago. I did. I knew I was interested in politics before then, but I became even more interested and I ended up majoring in political science. SM (00:06:25): Well, as a young person at 18... I know this. I got this question later, but that was the year before you graduated from high school when Martin Luther King was killed in April, and Bobby Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles in June, and this is before your high school graduation, and then you got the Chicago Convention in August. RS (00:06:47): Stunning. Absolutely stunning to see people who I looked up to and admired, assassinated. I did not really know what to make of it at that time, being 18 years old, but I knew something was terribly wrong. SM (00:07:04): When you went to your high school graduation, that must have been around the third week of June, or somewhere around there? RS (00:07:10): A bit earlier, but yes. SM (00:07:12): Yeah. Was what was the theme of your high school graduation? Was there talk of what was happening in America in (19)68? The main speaker of the student speakers losing those two great leaders, but the nation seemed torn apart. What was your high school graduation like in terms of what people were saying? RS (00:07:33): It appeared that what was going on in the larger world was irrelevant. It was a very standard high school graduation, held at a very nice facility called Virginia Park in Highland Park, Illinois, and it was as if those events had not happened. SM (00:07:54): Wow. What was it like? And I am getting to your college years at the University of Wisconsin. I got quite a few questions here. I had a friend that was in graduate school with me from the University of Wisconsin. He was a political science major and he was a PhD candidate, and his name was Alex Sapkowski. Does that name ever ring a bell to you? RS (00:08:14): It does not. SM (00:08:15): Now, he came from Wisconsin, and he was there at Ohio State in (19)71, but what was it like to be a college student at the University of Wisconsin from (19)68 to (19)72? Just your overall feeling when you look at that four years, what was it like because people reading this are going to be high school and college students that were not alive then. RS (00:08:39): Initially, I was a "straight person", meaning I went to see a Janice Joplin concert in 1969 wearing a coat and tie. I thought that is what you did when you went to a concert. Dressed nicely for class and took my studies very seriously. SM (00:09:03): Right. Yeah. During those four years, what kinds of protests did you see and what were the issues that they were protesting? RS (00:09:14): There were a number of issues. Everything from civil rights to the war, of course, and maybe I should say the Vietnam War for young people. The Vietnam War. The environmental movement was just starting. The first birthday was held in April 1970, and the University of Wisconsin was prominently involved in the Senator Gaylord Nelson was the, I believe, first person who proposed having an birthday. SM (00:09:46): Yeah. And I interviewed him for my book. RS (00:09:49): I saw that. SM (00:09:51): Yeah. RS (00:09:51): I saw that. So there was a lot of what you could call a consciousness-raising in so many different areas from migrant workers to civil rights to, of course, the war and the... To borrow one expression, the military industrial complex, but medicine was a very progressive, politically aware, and politically savvy place. SM (00:10:29): Obviously, were they... Were a lot of the students against ROTC on campus too? Blocking military recruiters. Was that... RS (00:10:38): In fact, freshman year in college, ROTC orientation was compulsory as a class- SM (00:10:46): Oh my gosh. RS (00:10:48): ... For incoming freshman. And that was changed; I believe a year or two after I became a student. Near the ROTC building... I do not know if you want to print this, it was regularly burned down during the spring. It was an annual riot. SM (00:11:08): Oh, you mean... Oh, they burned it down there too? RS (00:11:13): Yes. SM (00:11:14): Well, how many times was it burned down? RS (00:11:16): I believe at least once annually. SM (00:11:19): Oh my goodness. Kent State was only that one time. Wow. That was crazy. And of course, did they have to call in the National Guard at your campus? RS (00:11:32): National Guard was on campus regularly. Bayonets, tear gas... There was a Black student strike in the winter of 1969, and that was really the first large demonstration that I saw on campus. And subsequent to that, there were of course, many, many demonstrations primarily having to do with Vietnam War. SM (00:12:08): At that time, at the University of Wisconsin, what was the relationship between the students? Now, I am not sure, again, what percentage of your students were involved in anti-war activity or activism, but what was the relationship between a lot of the students and the administration and the faculty? RS (00:12:33): The relationship between the students and the administration was adversarial. They viewed students as a... This might be too strong. I do not want to... I was going to say necessary evil. I do not want to say. Something necessary, but I believe the [inaudible] were doing students a favor to let them attend the university, and that they were not sufficiently grateful for their opportunity. Politically, the faculty was by and large, very progressive, and there were a number of excellent professors who taught... Give me a... Who used materials such as by Howard Zen and other liberal political scientists. There were George Moscone and Harvey Goldberg come to mind as two professors who were teaching political science in a... I mean, I am searching for a word. I do not want to say alternative way, but using-using materials that were not customary. SM (00:13:57): Yeah. Yeah. Were the faculty more kind of partners with the students as opposed to... Were faculty mostly against the administration too? RS (00:14:10): I suppose it would depend on the department. SM (00:14:14): Right. RS (00:14:16): I do not want to make generalizations. This was a long time ago. SM (00:14:21): Right. RS (00:14:21): But I believe in the hard sciences, they were more conservative rather than in the liberal arts areas, they were, I believe, much more progressive. SM (00:14:34): Yeah, I know that it is hard to generalize, even when you talk about 74 million boomers. You can only... Depending on who you talk to, only about 5 percent to 10 percent were ever involved in any kind of activism during that area in the entire nation. RS (00:14:52): Well, I assure you, at the University of Wisconsin, it were much more demonstrations. Brought out on occasion 10,000, 20,000 people. SM (00:15:00): Wow. RS (00:15:01): And just very, very [inaudible]. SM (00:15:09): So, the relationship between... How was the relationship between students and the community of Madison and the Police Department of Madison during those four years? RS (00:15:19): Well, I believe it was a... I am hearing feedback. SM (00:15:27): I do not. I am fine on my end. Are you having feedback? RS (00:15:34): I am. It just started too. SM (00:15:37): Okay. Are you okay now or... RS (00:15:40): Let me see if I hear it. That is better. SM (00:15:42): Okay. RS (00:15:42): That is better. Could you restate the question? SM (00:15:47): Yeah. Well, the question was the relationship between the students and the community of Madison, the citizens of Madison, and- RS (00:15:54): I believe it was more like a traditional town versus gown atmosphere. Police, of course, being blue collar and from, by and large, parts of the city of Madison, which were not located near the campus, really disliked many of the students intensely. They viewed them as spoiled and... Let me think. Overprivileged people who were fortunate even to be there, and that they were in some ways desecrating a place where many of them had grown up. I can refer you to a movie called The War At Home, which is excellent. SM (00:16:45): I have it. RS (00:16:46): You have it? SM (00:16:46): Yes. RS (00:16:46): Okay. SM (00:16:49): Yeah. This is something too important, because I noticed this on my campus, but I wanted to hear from you. There seemed.... What was the relationship in the late (19)60s and early seventies between White students and African American students? There seemed to be a split. RS (00:17:07): In Madison, I think by... Or I should not say Madison. I said at the university, by and large, I think it was very good. SM (00:17:14): Because at around (19)69, (19)70, you noticed at Kent State, there were no students of color at that protest. They were told to basically not be seen by the African-American leaders of the campus, and actually the student government president was African-American, but what happened is during the Black Power there was a split where most of the white students continued protesting the Vietnam War and African American students started fighting for rights for African Americans, and so there was a split. Did you see that on your campus? RS (00:17:52): I really did not. I would say that they were not mutually exclusive, that many of the activities involved both. There was a large overlap. SM (00:18:04): Yeah. It got so bad at Ohio State University that in (19)71 and (19)72, in the Ohio Union, African American students had their own separate dances and White students had their dances in another part of the building, so there was some tension there. RS (00:18:22): I cannot recall something like that happening. I am not saying that it did not. But I vividly recall events such as what happened on the night of the massacre at Kent State with police charging groups of students, police helicopters hovering overhead, massive amount of tear gas. They used so much tear gas on the campus that they eventually ran out and switched to pepper gas, which hurt you more. SM (00:18:53): Oh my, God. Did you guys have graduation that year, or did they close the school? RS (00:18:58): No, everything happened, but the classes after Kent State were... I should not say the word canceled. Were switched to using a pass/fail system for the semester. But the police would throw tear gas everywhere students congregated, whether it was in the student union, the library... I should not say the library. Let me strike that. I cannot promise that. In the student union, fraternity houses, places of worship, anywhere that students congregated to get away from them. No place was safe. SM (00:19:37): Who were some of the speakers that you saw that came to your campus during the year (19)68 to (19)72? I do not know if you went to see these speakers. Could be national leaders or activists; did you go to see speakers? RS (00:19:58): I have to tell you. In all honesty, I do not remember. I am sure I did, but I cannot recall specific people. I just know that many of them came to campus, including people during Chicago Southern Conspiracy trial. But yes, many, many people came to campus. I believe Todd Gitlin, who had former president of SDS, Tom Hayden, I believe Paul Krassner came. Many, many people came to the campus, but frankly, I was not as interested in the leaders as I was learning about the issues. SM (00:20:39): Very good. What was the relationship between the protestors on campus at Wisconsin and members of fraternities and sororities and some of the student athletes and the ROTC students? RS (00:20:56): Initially, it seemed like an adversarial relationship, but what the police actions and the administration's conduct resulted in was radicalizing formerly conservative people like fraternity members. When the police come in and throw tear gas in your fraternity, you suddenly do not like them quite much. SM (00:21:19): Oh my, God. Yeah. RS (00:21:22): So, they had a reverse effect from what they intended in that they caused people to question authority and say that things did not work as they had assumed that they were. SM (00:21:42): Oh, yeah. Yeah. It is interesting because that is what the free speech movement was all about. A lot of the people in Berkeley in (19)64, (19)65, did not agree with the new left and their politics, but when they were not allowed to hand out literature, that was an attack on all students and they all kind of united. RS (00:22:04): I think this was a longstanding policy by the University of California to keep the campus "pure". SM (00:22:11): Yes. RS (00:22:12): And refrain from any political activity on campus, which included the setting up of card tables with literature on them, which resulted in the free speech movement in the fall of (19)64. SM (00:22:32): And it is interesting too, that what was going on in American in the fifties, were there fear of communists and that kind of led to some of the mentality of college administrations and so forth. Did you see the evolution of other movements on your campus at that time? Because you were on a university campus in (19)68 to (19)72 when just about all the movements came to fruition, particularly in the early seventies, because that is when the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the Native American movement, and even the Black Power and a lot of the Black Panthers, kind of all evolved around that timeframe as kind of an offshoot of the anti-war movement and civil rights movements. Did you see those evolving on your campus? RS (00:23:19): I knew they were present, including the environmental movement that I previously mentioned, but the primary issue for me was the Vietnam War, and for many, I believe. People my age were being sent over there to die for what many of us thought was no logical reason until they already left. I believe that the goals were not really clear enough to make the... Let me rephrase that. I believe that young people did not see that the end justified the means. SM (00:24:08): And what were some of your classes like? Did you have professors that said, "Today, I am not going to teach my class. We are going to talk about what is going on in the world?" There seemed to be some of that. Did you have that in any of your classes? RS (00:24:21): Yes, I did. It was easy to do when you smelled tear gas [inaudible] through the windows of the classroom. SM (00:24:27): Yeah. What were some of those conversations? You are sitting in a room with all your fellow students. What were some of the thoughts that were going through some of those young people's minds? RS (00:24:40): Well, I think most of the people were as naive as I was when we started. It was quite an eye-opener. Of course, there were a few students from Europe that did not see this as anything unusual who thought socialism was... God, let me rephrase. That is awful. I am making generalizations. But we discussed socialism and other more leftist ideas as if they were completely normal and nothing to be afraid of. But again, for myself and for many people being suburbanized. This was quite an eye-opener. SM (00:25:23): Oh, yeah. So in the... And were there any teach-ins at your school? RS (00:25:30): I remember one for the environment. I remember for the Vietnam War. I also remember reading lists of people who had died that week. The area around the university library became probably the main meeting area for student demonstrations. And at times there were many thousands of people there. SM (00:26:01): Now, these demonstrations, were they approved or did they just kind of happened? RS (00:26:07): They were spontaneous in many times, and often people would hand out pieces of paper saying, "Meeting 8:00 PM, library mall," or something like that, to make it an event that was passed. Information was passed on from person to person without a great deal of publicity, presumably to keep it [inaudible] from the authorities. SM (00:26:36): So a lot of times when it happened, the police were at the sides then watching the students. RS (00:26:42): Well, I do not know for sure, but I have a feeling that the police were in with the students as well. SM (00:26:48): You are probably right because infiltration was very big in those days, particularly in groups like SDS. We all know about the book that came out in the 19(19)80s called Rads. RS (00:27:05): Yes. SM (00:27:05): Which is where the lab was blown up at the University of Wisconsin and one student died. RS (00:27:10): [inaudible]. SM (00:27:13): Yeah. I do not... Could you give a little more information on the... I think that happened when you were there. RS (00:27:19): Well, actually it happened while I was a student, but it happened during the summer and I was not on campus when it happened. SM (00:27:28): Well, what was it all... Could you tell a little bit more about it? Because people have not read the book of Rads or... What was it? Who did it? Did anybody pay the price for the bombing of it? And who was the young man who died and what was the reaction of the campus, particularly when school started in the fall? RS (00:27:47): It happened at, I believe, 3:45 in the morning and was purposely designed so not to hurt anyone, and it was assumed that nobody would be in the Army Research Center at 3:45 in the morning. Four people were involved; three of which were punished, and one has never been caught. SM (00:28:15): Were they students? RS (00:28:17): I believe that... I should not answer that. I cannot answer that question. I believe to a [inaudible] for certain. I do not remember. But there were two brothers, Dwight and Carl Armstrong, and two other people named David Fine and Leo Bert. I believe Leo Burt has never been caught. SM (00:28:40): And the other three, did they serve time in jail or... RS (00:28:45): I know Carl Armstrong did. I believe his brother Dwight did, and I believe David Fine did as well, but I cannot be for sure about him. SM (00:28:59): Now. What was- RS (00:29:00): I know for certain Carl Armstrong. SM (00:29:02): What summer were- RS (00:29:02): Actually, let me interrupt you for one sec. They were actually from Madison, the brothers, which was quite a shock to the Madison community that some of their own could be involved in this. Many, many times activities were blamed on out-of-state agitators. Yet they were from the same town. SM (00:29:31): And they were students too then, correct? At Wisconsin? You are not sure. RS (00:29:36): I am not sure. They were older than me. I believe they may have been students before I got there. SM (00:29:43): When you came back in the fall, was that the number one topic of discussion? RS (00:29:47): It was. It was really stunning to see this huge building reduced... Well, damaged. I should not say reduced. Damaged substantially. And it was quite an eye-opener, again, for young people who had not seen anything like that before. SM (00:30:10): You went on to law school. Now, you mentioned early on in the interview that you kind of knew in high school you wanted to be a lawyer. Why? RS (00:30:22): I wanted to help people. Law is very complex. I thought I could get involved and make changes in society and in an individual's life in a meaningful way. SM (00:30:42): And so probably your undergraduate degree... RS (00:30:47): Political science. SM (00:30:48): Yeah. Political science was a good preparation for that. RS (00:30:51): It was. It was. Again, I got an excellent education at the University of Huntington. SM (00:30:57): That is a great school. RS (00:31:02): It was a fine school, and I also got a street education. SM (00:31:08): Did you join organizations? RS (00:31:10): Excuse me. Let me interrupt you for- SM (00:31:11): Yep. RS (00:31:11): For some of the students, parents gave them gas masks before they departed for campus for fall. SM (00:31:19): Oh my, God. RS (00:31:19): Do not believe that happens today. Parent giving their sons and daughters gas masks for the upcoming year at school. SM (00:31:31): I wonder how many parents said, "Do not get involved in any protests." RS (00:31:36): Well, not only do not get involved, but do not sign anything. Many of the parents will remember the Red Scare. Do not join any groups. Do not sign any petitions. Quite fearful of repercussions for political activity. SM (00:31:54): Wow. So your plan was to become a lawyer. What did you specialize in law? RS (00:32:05): I did what was called tort work involving personal injury worker's compensation, and occasional medical malpractice. But one thing I am very proud of is representing over 600 Vietnam veterans for free on the Agent Orange class action litigation. SM (00:32:25): Yeah. I am going to go... I have a question on that. I am going to go... That was later in my interview, but that is very important. I have got a question here regarding this. You represented vets linked to Agent Orange. How did that happen? RS (00:32:40): Can you be a little more specific? SM (00:32:44): Yeah. Did one vet come to you and say, "We need help for the 600," or... RS (00:32:53): That is exactly what happened. One vet came to my office and said he had been in Vietnam and had a terrible, terrible rash on his skin, and he did not know what it was from. I said... That is bad grammar. What had caused it? I started dealing with a nurse at the Veteran Administration Hospital on the west side of Chicago where they had been seeing a number of people for these unexplained problems. Her name was Maude DeVictor, and when she saw that I was involved and not interested in obtaining anything for my services, but trying to help, she started referring a few clients to me. And I was one of the first 50 people in the law... I should say, attorneys in the country involved. SM (00:33:50): Wow. It is a big issue. Still is. RS (00:33:53): Well, this resulted in me receiving a death threat and having my telephone tapped. SM (00:34:00): Really? RS (00:34:01): Yes. SM (00:34:03): That is after you were working very hard on behalf of the 600? RS (00:34:07): Yes. I mean, I worked in conjunction with attorneys both locally in Chicago and across the nation, meeting with epidemiologists and other experts in diseases regarding the cause. And one of the attorneys I worked with in Chicago was a very establishment lawyer, but he was so convinced that his phone was being tapped, that he was tape-recording all of his own conversations. SM (00:34:40): And you think you were being tapped? RS (00:34:44): I heard the clicks on my line repeatedly. SM (00:34:49): Who do you think was tapping you? RS (00:34:52): I do not want to speculate. SM (00:34:54): Okay. Who would be against helping veterans though? Unless it is the government. Anyways. RS (00:35:02): Well, the chemical company- SM (00:35:03): ... Anyways. RS (00:35:03): Well, the chemical companies were making a great deal of money from this product. SM (00:35:06): Right. RS (00:35:09): The lawsuit included Dow Monsanto, Diamond Shamrock and a number of other chemical companies in addition to the US government. SM (00:35:22): What was the final result of the lawsuit? RS (00:35:28): In 1984, the class action case was settled. I would have to check, but I believe the settlement result was $180 million. I believe there were changes subsequently, but the time I was involved, the maximum they were paying was approximately $14,000 to the survivor of someone who had died as a result of the Agent Orange exposure due to cancer, leukemia or other problems. People with lesser problems got less. SM (00:36:07): So in the end it was more than just the 600. It was people all over- RS (00:36:15): We represented approximately a little over 600, but there were many, many thousands of claims. SM (00:36:22): And that is still an issue today. RS (00:36:26): I know it is. I know it is. SM (00:36:26): I am met a vet down on Veterans Day at The Wall who was having a hard time. He has got Agent Orange issues and having a hard time getting his medical coverage and so forth. For those young people who will be reading this and certainly students that were not alive during the Vietnam War, can you explain what Agent Orange is and what it did in Vietnam? RS (00:36:54): It is a chemical defoliant. The purpose of spraying Agent Orange was to kill all the vegetation, so that the enemy could not hide. It was sprayed in areas along the rivers, basically the forest to just kill everything, to prevent the North Vietnamese from having cover, and it caused horrible defects, birth defects, miscarriages, and apparently is one of the most toxic. Agent Orange was contaminated during its manufacture by a... I have to start again. I am not phrasing this right. The production of Agent Orange caused a byproduct called dioxin. Dioxin is one of the most toxic substances known to man. A miniscule amount can cause terrible problems and the subsequent discovery during the case, showed that the government had known about it since 1957, that it caused terrible problems. SM (00:38:15): And so these Vietnam vets were coming back after serving their nation, and they were having a hard time getting medical coverage for this issue. RS (00:38:25): Yes. SM (00:38:26): And it kept going year after year after year. I know politicians got involved in it. In fact, I just talked to Bob Edgar last week, the former congressman. He went back to Vietnam, I think it was about a month ago, and Agent Orange is still an issue in Vietnam because so many of the population was affected by it. RS (00:38:48): Well, also, in addition to spraying it, what would happen is it would accumulate in ponds, and people would drink water from these ponds in incredibly high concentrations of the chemical. SM (00:39:02): Yeah, it is terrible. What did that say about... Vietnam Vets obviously are not the anti-war protestors. Some came back, became veterans against the war, John Kerry and that group, Bobby Muller. But what did that say to those veterans who came back to America after serving their nation? What do you think the lesson that comes out of this? RS (00:39:31): Some of them that I represent, were very-very bitter. Basically, many of them considered themselves chemical cannon fodder. And that they were knowingly exposed to something that eventually caused many of them to die. SM (00:39:56): Wow. Yeah, that is a major issue, and that is certainly an issue that was known by anyone alive at that time. I do not know whether you were for or against the war or anything in between, Agent Orange was in the news constantly. When you were at Northwestern, you had mentioned something just on your email to me. You said when you went there to law school, you say it could not have been more different on that campus than it was at Madison. Explain the difference between Northwestern Law School and clinical science undergrad at Wisconsin? RS (00:40:41): I was barely familiar with Northwestern Law School because my father went to law school there. In fact, when I was a little kid, I was dressed up wearing a tee-shirt that said Northwestern Law when I was a toddler. I knew about the place. I got a very good legal education, very conservative corporate oriented school. The old saying when I was there was that, you go to the University of Chicago to become a judge... Excuse me, I should say law school, University of Chicago Law School to become a judge. And they go to the Northwestern Law School to become a corporation council. So again, I got a very good legal education, but politics were not relevant to learning the law and their view. In fact, my corporation's professor... I do not know if I should give his name because I do not want to- SM (00:41:45): No, you do not need to do that. RS (00:41:47): But said in a discussion of corporate law, morality and ethics were irrelevant. SM (00:41:57): Well, I think Berkeley students in (19)64, (19)65 realize that. RS (00:42:07): We were there to learn the law, and in that way, it was an old school Socratic method type of education. If you are familiar with the movie, The Paper Chase. SM (00:42:18): Yes, I am. RS (00:42:21): It was very much like that. SM (00:42:23): Wow. I forget the lawyer that was in that, the older actor. Oh, he was good. RS (00:42:28): Named... SM (00:42:30): I see him now. RS (00:42:32): John Houseman. SM (00:42:33): Yeah. What a great professor. And I think, was it Ryan O'Neill? RS (00:42:36): Timothy Bottoms. SM (00:42:38): Oh, that is right. Timothy Bottoms. You got it. RS (00:42:41): And it was based on a corporation... Let me see, corporation's law professor at Harvard. SM (00:42:52): Yeah. I had here because you were at such an activist university as an undergrad and you went to Northwestern. I am sure there probably was some activism there for the undergrads, but the question I was... Basically was three things here. Bear in mind as I mention these, was the difference when you made that statement because of the campus and the type of students that were there. Number two, the things were beginning to wind down, and the anti-war movement, particularly around that time of (19)72, (19)73, (19)74 and people were tired of the acrimony. And third, that law school, the people were career oriented. They wanted to get a good job, money and a career, and they were not into social issues anymore, because they were going for a career. Did all those play a part in the differences of the two campuses? RS (00:43:47): To say that they were career oriented would be an understatement. Many people went to the law school, and again, I cannot speak for everyone because I did not speak to everyone in my class. By and large, many students knew that once they graduated, after having done well in law school, they were looking for jobs at the large corporate oriented law firms in Chicago and elsewhere. SM (00:44:24): Were there- RS (00:44:24): Which paid very well. SM (00:44:26): Were there many lawyers that said, I am going to go back and work around a university to help students, and not make that much money? RS (00:44:34): Not that I recall. SM (00:44:36): I know that was a big thing at that time for law students. They can go back and represent college students. Did you sense that when you were at Northwestern, that things were winding down in the anti-war movement? RS (00:44:52): Well, they were. The war was winding down. We had missed the draft. Miss is the wrong word, had not been drafted and self-interest seemed like it was the rule of the day. SM (00:45:15): In those years, (19)75 to (19)81, you practiced law, that was in Chicago, correct? RS (00:45:24): Yes. SM (00:45:24): Now, this is a fulfillment question. Did you feel more fulfilled during those six years as a lawyer, or were you more fulfilled as a college student during your four years at the University of Wisconsin? RS (00:45:38): No, I would call college more a formative experience than a fulfilling experience. It was sort of like making a piece of sculpture where at first you have to put the body and the arms on, before you can make the fingernails look the way they are supposed to. SM (00:45:56): Right. RS (00:46:00): It was more formative. I was oriented toward being an attorney, but I was not quite sure what area of law I wanted to do. I just knew that it was a vehicle for helping people who did not know the law, understand it and wind their way through the system with as little trouble as possible. SM (00:46:29): Yeah. I put down here because I concentrate a little bit. We are going to get into memorabilia in a few minutes, but I think your college years are fascinating and that your career's fascinating, just from what you have given on your brief email. RS (00:46:47): Off the record, you were asking me to pull up memories that are 40 years old. My short-term memories is not what it used-used to be, but neither is the rest of me. SM (00:46:55): Yeah, but I can tell from the way you are responding though, that these memories are important to you. RS (00:47:03): They were exciting... I should not say. They were incredibly exciting, interesting, vibrant times. SM (00:47:10): Yes. RS (00:47:11): You woke up in the morning never knowing what that day would bring. There was an excitement and electricity in the air, that I just do not see happening anymore. SM (00:47:23): Yeah. RS (00:47:23): It was an incredible time to be alive. SM (00:47:28): Yeah. I can remember taking buses from school. Just getting on a Greyhound bus and if you were a young person, you had this... Not that you were arrogant, but you felt like what a world we were living in. It was just a feeling, there were some bad things happening in the world, but there seemed to be some sort of unity between the youth at that time. RS (00:47:50): Well, you are absolutely right. There were so many idealistic, risk taking young people, who believed that anything was possible. SM (00:48:02): Right. RS (00:48:04): They sought to transform society with emotional and physical commitment, and boundless, often playful energy. Our distrust of the establishment, also known as the Man, was prevalent. Also with varying degrees of success, young people tried to manifest their own divinity. Consciousness raising was taken seriously as a truth seeking path towards personal enlightenment and positive social change. SM (00:48:38): Did you read any of those books of that era when you were a college student? Some of the best books ever came out in that- RS (00:48:47): [inaudible] Carlos Castañeda? SM (00:48:48): Yeah. RS (00:48:49): Of course. SM (00:48:51): Yeah. Of course, I know that Saul Alinsky was a big person because I think he is out of Chicago. RS (00:48:57): He was- SM (00:48:59): Was it Rules for Radicals? RS (00:49:01): He was a community organizer. I actually have a signed copy, first edition of his book, Rules for Radicals. SM (00:49:08): Keep it, it is valuable and pass it on. RS (00:49:12): I intend to. SM (00:49:13): It is an unbelievable thing because I know Hillary Clinton was influenced by him when she was a student. And then of course the other books were... I do not know if you read The Greening of America by Charles Reich? RS (00:49:28): I have a copy, which I had signed by him about 10 years ago. SM (00:49:33): Wow. I am trying to interview him. In February he is coming back to teach a course at Yale Law School. He is kind of hibernated, he lives in San Francisco. RS (00:49:40): Yes. SM (00:49:43): But I do not even know how to get ahold of- RS (00:49:43): He lives in Mill Valley. I am not certain. He may have... I should not say that. I do not know. He is in the Bay Area. SM (00:49:51): Yeah. RS (00:49:52): If I may, one of the most significant developments of the 1960, was really greatly increased involvement of young people in the political process. People got involved. They were passionate. If you have ever seen any video or film from the protests, people put their bodies on the line. SM (00:50:21): Right. RS (00:50:22): And many were beaten. They risked being tear gassed for what they believed. I do not really see that happening today. It is as if young... To me, and perhaps it is aging that says this, but there is not the passion. They are almost defeated before they begin, many of them. It seems like an end to, why fight the system we cannot win. Well, that is self-defeating. You will never know if you can win or not if you do not step the ring. SM (00:50:57): That is what Teddy Roosevelt said, " Got to get into the arena of life." RS (00:51:06): I did not know. Truly, I did not know, but many of them seem defeated and they have been... As George Carlin said, many of them been bought off by gizmo's and gadgets. SM (00:51:18): And of course George knew that those... What is it? The eight words he could not say or something like that... RS (00:51:23): Seven. SM (00:51:25): Seven. He said them anyways. RS (00:51:28): He did them at the Milwaukee Summerfest concert, I believe 1970, he was arrested for them. SM (00:51:33): Wow. RS (00:51:34): But it was a really exciting, electric time to be alive. There were so many changes taking place in society. If you want, I can give you a few obvious ones. SM (00:51:49): Yeah, go ahead. RS (00:51:51): I mean like a revolution in fashion, highlighted bright colors and tie-dyed clothes, long hair on men, replaced short cropped haircuts. New developments in graphic art, including the use of nonlinear writing and flowing colors, marked a pretty stark departure from the past. That was most evident in posters produced to promote rock events, but not exclusive. Television seemed like a fairly conservative medium and a skewed controversy. They started showing rock and roll performers and highlighting drama with frank and sometimes explicit adult themes. The sudden and prolific emergence of underground newspapers and comics. SM (00:52:47): Yes. RS (00:52:47): Disseminate liberal ideas and breakthroughs in art to an interested, sympathetic audience, that could be counted in millions. Again, this is long before email, cell phones, the widespread use of fax machines. I do not know if you want to write this, but I have many leaflets, these were vehicles of communication. People would hand out handbills. SM (00:53:18): Right. RS (00:53:21): And actually little notes, demonstration 8:00 PM, Library Mall, which I know I said, but this is how people communicated often. Underground newspapers and underground comics as well, you can include them. There has always been a bohemian or nonconformist or countercultural movement in America, which is parallel of mainstream society, consisting of free thinkers who were dissatisfied with conventional values, and people who sought emotional and spiritual satisfaction in ways other than the acquisition of wealth and power. And conformity, for do not sake, was seen as a compensation for a lack of ability, or I will say courage, for yourself. SM (00:54:15): Yeah. That is beautiful. RS (00:54:19): I mean, this is how I feel, and it was a rebellion against conformity, but it became more open as opposed to people in the (19)50s. The Beats who I admire very much, were really well mocked and I want to say pigeonholed. Could say the water overflowed the cup and it was impossible for the establishment to keep it inside. SM (00:54:48): Hold on a second. [inaudible]. RS (00:54:57): A year or two ago, when he received a lifetime achievement award for his writing, was held in the [inaudible] public library. SM (00:55:03): Is that the same ceremony that Paul was involved in? RS (00:55:06): No, that was in Oakland. It was the Pen. P-E-N. SM (00:55:10): Okay. RS (00:55:11): Oakland. SM (00:55:12): Yep. RS (00:55:17): But I believe this might have been Pen San Francisco, but I would go to every reading I could have, and he has not done one in a long, long time. SM (00:55:24): Yeah. Someone said his health is not very good. RS (00:55:28): It is unfortunate to hear, because he was a really active guy. He would swim at the YMCA regularly, drive his bike when he was in his (19)70s, through traffic in San Francisco. SM (00:55:40): Yeah, I got some of his books. I got another question here. Are you finished with that information or... RS (00:55:54): But I am here for whatever you want to... SM (00:55:56): Yeah. This period, (19)68 to (19)72, you already talked about your senior year when you graduated. And you talked about the 1968 in Chicago and MLK, but some other major events that took place during those four years away from your college, was Woodstock in (19)69 and certainly... I got a list of them here. I will just list these and then you can comment on any of them as a whole. You had the Kent State, Jackson State of 1970. You had the big protest in Washington in 1969, known as the Moratorium. In 1969, you had the first openly major protest, Stonewall for gay and lesbian people in New York City. Then you had Altamont that some people say was really the end of the (19)60s, because you had Woodstock, then you had Altamont. Then you had Attica at the prisons. You had the American Indian Movement from (19)67 to (19)71, that began with Alcatraz and ended at Wounded Knee. You had the Black Panther trials, particularly the one in Yale or in New Haven. Earth Day in 1970. You had the Angela Davis situation with George Jackson over at San Quentin. [inaudible]. Then you had the SDS going to the Weathermen. Then you had Johnson withdrawing from the race in (19)68, and then you had Agnew- RS (00:57:31): That was quite a stunner. That was quite a stunner. SM (00:57:32): And then you had Agnew going all over these campuses, yelling about hobnobs and all the other things, attacking young people and- RS (00:57:45): [inaudible]. SM (00:57:45): Yeah. And then of course Nixon was elected in (19)68 and (19)72, and then we had The Pentagon papers with Ellsberg, and then the evolution of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in (19)71. Then of course you had the hippies and the Yippies and so forth. All these things happened during that (19)68 to (19)72 period. RS (00:58:02): Yes. SM (00:58:04): You were obviously aware of all of them. Any of these stand out, that... RS (00:58:10): Well, again, being in Madison, Madison was isolated in the sense that it was not anywhere near another metropolitan area. The closest one was Milwaukee, which is approximately 90 miles away. And while being a wonderful place, we did not really interact much... How should we say? People came to campus, spoke or whatever, and left. It was not as if they were there permanently, as if you were in a large city like New York or Chicago. I was aware of what was going on through reading the newspaper, television and radio, but I did not go to any of those specific events you mentioned. SM (00:59:01): Were students... Did you see the- RS (00:59:02): These were rock festivals in the Madison area and Milwaukee. SM (00:59:13): Yeah. Did you see on the campus though, the evolution of the Black Panthers, from the nonviolent protest ala Dr. King, and then you saw the SDS, and then they went to become the Weatherman. What were your thoughts on those? This was a big transition. RS (00:59:35): It was. I had mixed emotions. On the one hand, I felt frustrated that no matter what we did, did not seem to make any difference. But on the other hand, I felt that some of the other activities such as the bombings, could possibly be counterproductive and not change the minds of the people whose minds we wanted to change. SM (01:00:02): The contrast, again, when you see Altamont, then you compare it to Woodstock. What seemed to be (19)69, and then Altamont was (19)70, was the exact opposite. Then you had the- RS (01:00:19): There were too many factors involved with that to make a real comparison. Woodstock sort of happened. SM (01:00:26): Right. RS (01:00:28): And it is wonderful that it did. Altamont seemed like a convergence of just the bad things. SM (01:00:37): Yeah. It was tragic up there with the motorcycle gang that beat up that guy, and of course... [inaudible] and then some of the atrocities in Vietnam are coming out at this time, revealed to the American public and... RS (01:00:54): Quite stunning to a suburban kid. SM (01:00:56): Yeah. And then of course, the American Indian movie went from Alcatraz, which was a good thing, to Wounded Knee, which was bad. RS (01:01:06): Yeah. SM (01:01:06): So you have a lot of these interesting contrasts. I did not know if they affected the students there or not. To go over the books again, we mentioned the Greening of America with Charles Reich, but there was another one. There were several others too. There was the Making of a Counterculture by Theodore Roszak. RS (01:01:28): Yeah, I met him again about a year ago, this year actually. Very bright, interesting person. I believe his new book is The Making of the Elder Culture. SM (01:01:39): Yeah, I wanted to interview him, but he says he is retired and he has got a health issue. RS (01:01:48): He do not look the healthiest, but when he took the book reading, he was in Berkeley. He was very good. SM (01:01:56): Good. Yeah, and then the other ones were of course, Soul on Ice with Eldridge Cleaver and Harry Edwards Black Students. And you had The Other America by Michael Harrington and... RS (01:02:08): Yes. SM (01:02:08): And then there was the Erik Erikson's books on the psychology, I believe of the American youth at that time, and I know Kenneth Keniston also wrote a book, Youth and Radical. So, there is a lot of really good books out that I did not know if they were popular on college campuses. RS (01:02:27): They were. People like Abbie Hoffman's book Steal This Book. Gary Ruben's [inaudible] of course, The Realist by Paul Krassner, it was great. But a lot of the information we got was from underground newspapers. They seemed more willing to print what we thought was the truth. SM (01:02:52): What were the underground papers you liked? RS (01:02:52): There was one in Madison called Takeover, which was good. Chicago Seed was very good. I did not really see much of the Berkeley Barb being where I was, but I would heard of it. SM (01:03:06): Right. RS (01:03:07): And these which other I knew, was very significant. Occasionally I saw a copy. SM (01:03:12): Did you ever read Ramparts? RS (01:03:13): Sure. SM (01:03:14): Yeah. RS (01:03:14): Sure. Excellent investigative journalism at the time. SM (01:03:21): Yeah. Peter Richardson's got a whole book out on it right now. RS (01:03:23): He did a reading here. I want to go off the record with this but Warren Hinckle became an alcoholic. It was just not a [inaudible] at a bar and he was just... To use a cliche, a shell of his former self. SM (01:03:40): Yeah. I tried to get him to be interviewed and Peter told me the only way you can find him is in a bar. RS (01:03:45): Yes. I do not know, and I should not be saying this, and I ask you not to repeat it, but I think he and Paul Krassner must have had a falling out because he and Paul... And I cannot remember why exactly, but we walked into some place where Warren Hinckle was there and did not even say a hello to each other. SM (01:04:03): Well- RS (01:04:04): Unusual for people who shared many of the same values. SM (01:04:08): Yeah, it is not Paul. I think a lot of people realize he is a drunk. I am not going to say that, but I do not even know him. RS (01:04:19): Peter. SM (01:04:20): Peter said the only way he got the interview, and he was talking about it because Hinckle was brilliant. What a writer. RS (01:04:28): Yeah. SM (01:04:28): But he always had a problem with alcohol and- RS (01:04:32): Oh, I should add Rolling Stone to my group. SM (01:04:34): Yeah, he probably will die an alcoholic. RS (01:04:40): I would not be surprised. The way I saw him drinking, I am surprised he is alive now, but I do not want to pass judgment. SM (01:04:45): Yeah. RS (01:04:46): It is unfortunate. Who knows the pressures that he was under from the government or God knows who else. SM (01:04:55): Right. Yeah. Of the personalities of the (19)60s and (19)70s, who were the ones that you feel had the greatest impact on the generation, or particularly had the greatest impact on you who were a part of the generation? RS (01:05:06): I would have to start with Ken Kesey. Yeah, I remember a quote of his, and I may be butchering it, but I believe it was, "Most people are destined to leave their lives never having moved off of dead center? SM (01:05:23): Wow. That is a beautiful quote. RS (01:05:25): I did not want to be one of those people. SM (01:05:27): Very good. RS (01:05:29): I did not want to be one of those people. What he did in terms of promulgating light shows that... I do not want to say promulgate, that is the wrong word. Of using light shows, of course, the Grateful Dead is his house band. SM (01:05:48): Right. RS (01:05:48): And Acid in the Punch Bowl when it was still legal, probably after it was illegal. Seemed like they were the counter culturals, I will say funsters. Of course their name was Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. SM (01:06:13): Yeah, it is Wavy Gravy, I believe. RS (01:06:13): Yes. SM (01:06:13): And Paul was in their group? RS (01:06:16): Yes. As opposed to Timothy Leary, who as you know, begin doing scientific research, the [inaudible] and other hallucinogens. I remember reading about how bummed out Kesey and the Pranksters were going to Millbrook in upstate New York, and they were taking everything so seriously at Millbrook, which is not the wrong thing to do, but it was a very different approach from the West Coast. SM (01:06:46): Were there any other personalities besides Ken Kesey, that you think really shaped the generation, and then you as a part of the generation? RS (01:06:57): I liked Paul Krassner's writing very much. SM (01:07:02): I got a couple of his books, but I got to get more. RS (01:07:04): And The Realist was a wonderful publication. Of course, you never know what was true and what was not. SM (01:07:16): Right. His sense of humor is unbelievable though. RS (01:07:19): Oh, he is a brilliant, brilliant man. He told a story about writing an article for the AARP Magazine, and when he got it, his article was not... They told him they would publish it and it was not in there. They called him and they told, they published three different magazines, one for people over 50, one for people over 60, one for people over 70. He was surprised to find out he was too old to read his own writing. SM (01:07:47): He said they had a- RS (01:07:51): He said that many times. Yeah, he said that- SM (01:08:00): I am laughing just... And I saw it yesterday on YouTube. RS (01:08:04): Still I love him. SM (01:08:06): He is a great guy. I got to meet him. I am going to come to LA next time instead of San Francisco. RS (01:08:10): He is in the Palm Springs area. SM (01:08:13): Yeah. How far is that from LA? RS (01:08:17): You got me. I cannot answer that. I know it... I do not know. SM (01:08:21): I know Cleve Jones moved there too. The AIDS quilt guy. RS (01:08:27): Okay. SM (01:08:30): He left San Francisco. He got tired of the overcast skies, so he is not there in San Francisco anymore. A lot of people are moving down there, according to what I am hearing. What do you think were the most impactful movies in that time that you were in college, that you remember, that you think were very influential on... RS (01:08:53): Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, very interesting, being from Chicago. It is a cinéma verité film, a great deal of which was filmed at the Democratic Convention Street protests, it was good. Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde was a new type of movie. Maybe I should not say new type. It was influential. Joe with Peter Boyle was a frightening movie. SM (01:09:22): I remember that. Yeah. RS (01:09:26): Joe was a very, I will say a conservative person, who at the end ended up shooting his own daughter. He was goaded into... Excuse me, I should not say that. Let me back up. I made a mistake about the content of the movie. Should I just say it was a very influential movie about extremely conservative… SM (01:09:54): Yeah. RS (01:09:55): I do not want to use the word redneck, because he was a northerner. SM (01:10:00): Well, only about 150 million are going to read this, so it is... SM (01:10:02): Well, only about 150 million are going to read this, so it is... RS (01:10:02): Well, how about if I just say he was a very influential... It was a very influential... SM (01:10:11): Yeah, that is fine. Any others? I always want to know- RS (01:10:17): Well, Woodstock of course. SM (01:10:18): Oh, yeah. RS (01:10:19): Groundbreaking movie in terms of its techniques and portrayal so many phenomenal rock bands. Similarly, Monterey Pop. SM (01:10:28): Hmm. RS (01:10:32): And Give Me Shelter by the Maysles brothers of Altamont was a- SM (01:10:37): Yeah. RS (01:10:37): ... great movie. And of course, Easy Rider. SM (01:10:40): Yes. RS (01:10:41): Which was frightening, which I saw in LA in 1969 and walked out of there with friends shaking. SM (01:10:43): Yeah, I did not expect that ending. RS (01:10:53): I do not think anybody. SM (01:10:54): I often wondered when his friend got shot away, why he kept going. RS (01:11:01): Well, he turned around and then he got to... there was a prequel, it was showing the future before it happened. SM (01:11:09): Oh, okay. RS (01:11:10): And he turned, Dennis Hopper, turned around and got shot too. SM (01:11:14): Yeah. RS (01:11:16): But that was a frightening movie. SM (01:11:20): How about the Graduate? Was that the- RS (01:11:21): Very interesting film. Saw it and was still in high school. SM (01:11:30): And then, the Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice was supposed to be about the sexual mores of the era. RS (01:11:36): Yes. Sexual mores at the [inaudible] in at the end. SM (01:11:40): Right. And I think there was another movie that seemed to be the Zabriski Point. RS (01:11:47): God, you have a good number. Yes, I think there was a Strawberry Statement as well. SM (01:11:52): Yeah. That came later. And then there was the Sterile Cuckoo, Liza Minnelli. RS (01:12:03): I should remember that. But I do not, all I remember was Liza Minnelli's name. SM (01:12:10): Yeah, and Wendell Burton- RS (01:12:13): Okay. Go ahead. SM (01:12:13): Yeah. Liza Minnelli and Wendell Burton. And then of course Shaft. RS (01:12:15): Yes. SM (01:12:16): Yeah. RS (01:12:16): Interesting. SM (01:12:22): Was there anything on TV that you think will really... Well, you mentioned about the black and white TV and the Boomers were all in junior, or excuse me, in elementary school during that period. Or, just when I think of the (19)50s, I think of Howdy Doody, I think of Captain Kangaroo, I think of Dave Garaway Peace. I think of Hopalong Cassidy Lone Ranger. RS (01:12:52): How about Pinky Lee? SM (01:12:53): Yeah, Pinky Lee. RS (01:12:54): Pee-wee Herman's... what is the word? Influence. SM (01:13:02): Yeah. Rootie Kazootie. But there was also Walt Disney and all those shows, the Mouseketeers, Westerns galore. Very few African-Americans- RS (01:13:14): Start with the political things. Like that was the week that was, I thought a very interesting TV show. SM (01:13:20): Right. RS (01:13:20): Taken from the British show doing politics. Of course Laugh-In. SM (01:13:26): That was the (19)60s though. RS (01:13:28): Yeah. The Smothers Brothers, of course. SM (01:13:30): Yep. RS (01:13:30): Were very influential. What they went through just to put on the people like Peter Seeger was unbelievable. SM (01:13:37): Uh-huh, yep. RS (01:13:42): I did not watch much TV, but there was, God, I am trying to... Ted Paulson Show, very good. SM (01:13:45): I know in the (19)50s, Edward R. Murrow was seen to be a pretty honest guy. RS (01:13:58): Was. SM (01:13:58): Yeah. RS (01:13:58): Then Walter Cronkite took up the mantle. SM (01:14:01): Right. RS (01:14:02): When he said the war in Vietnam was unwinnable, I think that was a little turning point of the country. SM (01:14:07): Mm-hmm. RS (01:14:09): But there were so many written influence, such as underground comics, Robert Crumb, like Zapp! Comics written for kids. SM (01:14:21): Oh yeah, and that made into a movie in 1971. RS (01:14:24): Yeah, which was not that wonderful, I saw it of course. SM (01:14:24): Right. RS (01:14:32): But there were, I mean, so many influential publications, so many underground newspapers, magazine comics, countercultural publication, it seemed like eventually some of it eventually seeped into mainstream society. SM (01:14:53): One question I have been asking everyone is today you have members of the right, or conservatives, attacking the (19)60s generation, or the boomers that were young in the (19)60s and (19)70s as the reasons why we have all the problems in our society today, or most of them, because of the drug culture, the lack of sexual mores, i.e. the sexual revolution, the extreme divorce rate, breakup of the American family as a unit, the lack of going... families not going to church anymore. Went from going to church or synagogue to kind of an inner spirituality, and we saw that through the Beatles and the Maharishi and that group, the Moonies. Then we have, again, they attack the generation for the welfare state, the handout society, the sense of, "Well, I got to have it now." Type of an attitude, extensive consumerism where, "I got to have everything. I got to own everything. And, "If I cannot have it, I got to have it now." Kind of mentality. And that is why we have the financial problems we are in today. So, there is a lot of things. The other thing is too, that we have come into a society where it is all about rights. Everybody wants their rights, but lost them are irresponsible. Your thoughts of those attacks by people on the right? RS (01:16:46): I think back to a Bob Dylan line of, "Do not criticize what you cannot understand." SM (01:16:51): Well, that is good. RS (01:16:54): That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the goals of what we tried to do. Making a more equitable and egalitarian society I think has been and always will be seen as a threat to the establishment. I mean, there have always been the proletariat, bourgeoisie, but in the electronic age, such as we have, it seems like things are happening so much faster. The concentration of wealth, I think was one of the major problems. It was not enough to make a lot, you had to make more, and the other person had to have less. I think it is up to that, I think it is based on fear by and large, that there is not enough to go around so, "I am going to get mine and good luck with yours." SM (01:17:43): Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is interesting because I know Randy Shaw, who you may know in San Francisco, the Tenderloin, and he also graduated from Berkeley. He wrote a book called The Activist Handbook. And in that handbook, he talks about the definition of what an activist is. And it is if you ever say the term, "What is in it for me?" You are not an activist because it is supposed to be, "What is in it for we?" And so that was interesting what you just said there, because there was some kind of a linkage. And how important- RS (01:18:30): I am a little punchy, so forgive me and please do not let me take things off the record, but it was about Plato being forced by the establishment to drink hemlock for telling the truth. SM (01:18:44): Mm-hmm, that is right. RS (01:18:48): You can include that. I am a little punchy, I was going to say Socrates... SM (01:18:51): Yeah, but there is true to that. Yeah, the sort of [inaudible]- RS (01:18:54): Because he taught young people what he believed was the truth. He ended up with a phony trial and being forced to drink hemlock, I think is nothing though. SM (01:19:03): I know there is a book up, but I.F. Stone wrote called The Trial of Socrates. RS (01:19:09): Stone wrote, yeah. Yes, yes. This is nothing new. SM (01:19:13): Yep. Now you mentioned that again. How important were The Beats in shaping the generation, in your opinion, in shaping certainly the new left? RS (01:19:27): Well, the older get, I guess the more I see their influence. I mean, so in America, there has always been a Bohemian side, but it seems like after World War II things seem to coalesce in certain areas, like Greenwich Village in New York City, North Beach area in San Francisco. Returning GIs from the war. Jazz musicians, liberal writers, they seemed to start gathering in certain places. Maybe they were always there, and I just did not know about it. But for example, in the early (19)50s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened up City Life Bookstore in San Francisco. He originally intended it only to be a store that sold only paperback books, but it became a magnet for disaffected writers and artists. Of course, he was put on trial for publishing Howl in 1956 an obscenity trial where the mores at the time said the police could decide what was obscene or not. If police did not like what you did, you did not do it. SM (01:20:46): Right. RS (01:20:46): Lenny Bruce is a good example. SM (01:20:50): And do you think that even that historic book that Kerouac wrote On the Road, it is symbolic of freedom, sense of- RS (01:21:01): Absolutely, it was adventures and observations of his encounters with America while being on the road. SM (01:21:07): And he is not being controlled by a boss, or by... he is just free. RS (01:21:13): Well, for me, it is a landmark of Pete writing was Ellen Ginsburg's Howl, you know about the dehumanization and degradation of the individual by the all-consuming corporate monolith. You know, you asked me about movies, Network was another one, which is- SM (01:21:34): Oh, yes. RS (01:21:34): ... very, very good. SM (01:21:37): Go out to that window and say, "I am not going to take it anymore." RS (01:21:41): Yes. But also Ed Beatty as, maybe the CEO or president of a large corporation. The world is business, and it is really sad that people see the world as a business. SM (01:21:58): Another movie that you brought up I just thought of is Deliverance. RS (01:22:04): Yes and no. I mean, that was a... SM (01:22:04): He was in that too. RS (01:22:11): Yes, he was. Oh, you brought him up. Yes. SM (01:22:13): Yep. RS (01:22:14): I do not know that that is relevant politically. SM (01:22:16): Right. RS (01:22:20): It was culture, culture clash. But Howl... SM (01:22:24): Yeah. RS (01:22:24): The thing with the... and with Network, forgive me, Peter Fitz said, "It was not America that was finished, it was the individual that was finished." Afraid things are going in that direction. It seemed as though in the (19)60s we could be one step ahead of the man. Right now, it seems with all the high tech equipment and other means of control, they are one step ahead of us. SM (01:22:56): In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin? When did it end, and what was the watershed moment? RS (01:23:03): I think it really began, if you want to speak about the (19)60s and not what led up to them, such as The Beats. I would say Ken Kesey, the epitaph, the Merry Pranksters and Grateful Dead, whom I like very, very much, playing long improvisational music. But Kesey was a very, very bright man exposing the world. The Magical Mystery Tour about the Beatles, as you know, was really a copy of what Kesey did. SM (01:23:43): When did it end? RS (01:23:46): Probably as the war wound down, the draft was abolished, it was became more self-interested, and less society... this is a bad phrasing, society interested. SM (01:24:01): Was there a watershed moment? RS (01:24:07): Possibly the reelection of Nixon, that area, that time, early (19)70s, after Jimmy Hendrix had died, Janice Joplin had died, Jim Morrison had died. Many political people, Fred Hampton had been assassinated in Chicago. It seemed to start losing its steam. SM (01:24:38): The generation gap. Did you have a generation gap of your parents, especially after you went off to college? RS (01:24:46): Yes and no. My father always said it was more important what was in my head then what was on it. And I believe that is true, we are hung up on the looks of rebellion rather than the ideas of rebellion. SM (01:25:05): Excellent. Yeah. There is no question that the generation gap was an issue between World War II generation and the boomers. Do you remember that Life magazine cover that had the boy on the cover that... wearing his blue glasses or whatever and the father's pointing a finger at him on one side of the glasses? RS (01:25:27): Yeah, I do. SM (01:25:28): And the son's pointing on the other. I had that magazine, it was pretty serious for many. RS (01:25:35): Well, I remember a quote that Ronald Reagan said while he was governor of California during protests at the University of California in Berkeley, "That if there is going to be a blood bath let us start now." He talked about killing people's own children. SM (01:25:54): Yeah, it is... And he came to power on two issues, this law and order on college campuses to end the student protestors from breaking up colleges, and secondly, to end the welfare state. And it is interesting because Watts took place in (19)64 in Los Angeles, so obviously what went on at Berkeley, what was going on in Watts and a lot of these things are directly related to him. And of course, that was a thrust onto the national stage in (19)76, and of course we know the rest of the history. RS (01:26:37): It was stunning how easily people were willing to... What is the word? Take extreme measures against people who thought different. SM (01:26:55): Right. RS (01:26:58): We used to call them the thought police, and I think we were right. SM (01:27:03): In your own words because you are a boomer and I guess you are 60, you were born in (19)49? RS (01:27:09): 60 going on 19. SM (01:27:12): That is... Time and peace, same with me. I am not 60. RS (01:27:17): I am still trying to figure out what I am going to do when I grow up. SM (01:27:21): Yeah, Rick, that is the same thing with me. RS (01:27:25): My hair is just as long, I have worked out a lot. No, you can grow older without growing old. SM (01:27:36): I agree. And I believe the young people of that era, even though they stay in shape to try to stay young and so forth, there was a period of time many did not think that they were going to be mortal people, but they were going to live forever, I think they realized they were not going to now. But you know- RS (01:27:57): I saw people in law school in their early 20s who look like old men. SM (01:28:04): Yeah. RS (01:28:04): Not physically, but so much is spiritually. SM (01:28:08): Right. RS (01:28:09): You could see the... Yeah, their adolescence was a distant memory. SM (01:28:17): Yep. RS (01:28:17): Was all about the buck. SM (01:28:20): Yeah. RS (01:28:22): A work, go work hard in a law school, hope that a big corporate law firm hires you, 80 hours a week, make partner, buy a big house and then get divorced, move on to your... get rid of your starter wife and move up the social ladder. SM (01:28:43): And have a heart attack by 50. Sam... Describe the following years in your own words. You said, this is the era the boomers have been alive, do you like the term boomer? RS (01:28:56): I do not think it has been well defined. I mean, what is a boomer? Just because you were born a certain age, at a certain time period. I think it is more what you do than the time you were born. Were the boomers, by many people's definition, they psychologically were. SM (01:29:17): Yep. Yeah. I am finding that out that- RS (01:29:20): Ginsburg was a, if you want to think, Allen Ginsburg was a boomer. SM (01:29:26): Mm-hmm. Richie Havens was born in 1941, but he said, "I am a boomer. I am more of a boomer than the people who were boomers in the last 10 years of the boomer timeline." A lot of them believe boomers are really people that were born say around (19)37, (19)38 and go to about (19)56 or (19)57. RS (01:29:47): Rachel Meadow said something, and I know I am mangling her quote about, "Being put in a category so you could be satirized easily." SM (01:29:56): Right. Well, when you look at these periods, again, it is defined, higher ed does this for a reason, the boomers of those born between (19)46 and (19)64, that is the definition. And Obama would be a boomer because he was born in (19)62, I think. (01:30:14): But I am going to give you six timeframes here just put some words to these timeframes. For 1946 to 1960, what was it like to be in America at that time? Just a few words. RS (01:30:31): Conform, and they were wearing t-shirts, white t-shirts with nothing printed on them. I think Country Joe McDonald did something like that, "We wore white t-shirts, but we did not have anything written, nothing was written them. SM (01:30:45): Yep. I remember that. RS (01:30:50): When you graduated from high school, you went to work, went to college, or joined the army. SM (01:30:56): Mm-hmm. How about that period? (19)61 to (19)70? RS (01:31:06): You know, for me, probably the low point was the assassination of John Kennedy. I knew right away nothing would ever be the same. SM (01:31:11): Mm-hmm. Where were you when he was shot? RS (01:31:17): I sitting in the classroom in seventh grade when it came over to the intercom. SM (01:31:22): And were you let out of school early? RS (01:31:25): I believe so. I believe so. That was a terrible time, and I believe the country lost a great deal of its innocence and naivete. SM (01:31:36): When you look at that whole period about (19)61 through (19)70, besides Kennedy, what comes to mind? Or, does he dominate? RS (01:31:48): Could you repeat the question? SM (01:31:50): Yeah. Between 1961 and 1970, what comes to mind besides Kennedy? Or, is that assassination the dominant theme? RS (01:31:59): Kind of, for me a good analogy would be changing from watching a black and white TV to watching a color TV. Things exploded. I mean, there was the free speech movement in Berkeley. There was Ken Kesey and the Mary Pranksters, the use of cut... expanding drugs, a certain more openness to question what had been taken for granted. SM (01:32:33): Mm-hmm. How about the period (19)71 to 1980? RS (01:32:43): Liberalism, but retrenching. Talk about legalizing marijuana by Jimmy Carter, and I do not want to put words in his mouth, that was not what he said. Possibly the decriminalization, and I should not quote him either because I do not want to, but the decriminalization of marijuana, the mainstream acceptance of some of the arts. Including music, drawings, clothes. Yet, retrenching at the same time. I will never forget when I came out to Berkeley in 1976 to visit, I went into the Good Earth health food store and the girl working behind the counter was wearing a shirt with an alligator on it. I knew things had changed. SM (01:33:42): Yeah. How about 1981 to 1990? RS (01:33:55): Yeah. Think about that one. I cannot give you something off the top of my head. That is hard. Disco? No, that was earlier. I should not say disco. SM (01:33:59): That was the (19)76 to (19)80. RS (01:34:12): Oh God, I am dating myself. SM (01:34:13): Ronald Reagan was that period. RS (01:34:16): He was. Just say no, the demonization of the (19)60s and the counterculture. SM (01:34:29): How about 1991 to 2000? RS (01:34:35): At first, the belief that we had elected for president one of us. Clinton playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall was something I never expected to see a presidential candidate do. Well, Nixon played the piano on Jack Paar, I believe. SM (01:34:55): Right. RS (01:34:55): Not the same. SM (01:35:00): Yeah. I think- RS (01:35:00): The idea that we had elected someone who would understand, to use a cliche, where we were coming from, because he and his wife were one of us. SM (01:35:15): Mm-hmm. And the period- RS (01:35:28): Art, hip. SM (01:35:29): Right. RS (01:35:29): Intelligent and presumably liberal. SM (01:35:30): Then the period 2001 to 2011? RS (01:35:35): Frightening. SM (01:35:38): Certainly 9/11 defined it. RS (01:35:40): Frightening. The rationalization of entrenching further and further government control in every aspect of people's lives, and the justification for taking away people's liberty. SM (01:36:01): This is just another thing too. When you are talking about the period, how did the Cold War, McCarthyism, the threat of the nuclear bomb, the space race, the March on Washington in (19)63, the Kennedy inaugural speech, "Ask not what your country can do for you..." And his assassination, the Cuban Missile Crisis, shape your life? Those are all major happenings. You already talked about JFK, but were those other events in some way affect your life? RS (01:36:34): Well, not directly, but it really made you feel how vulnerable you were. If the president can get shot what can happen to me? SM (01:36:46): You are right. RS (01:36:50): The impermanence of everything, if the mighty and powerful can be taken down, how about the little guy's chance? I keep going back to the movie Network, which I thought was excellent, about America not being finished. It was the end that we sit in our houses with our color TVs and we have some steel-belted radials. There was also another movie by Jules Pfeiffer, named Little Murders, with Elliot Gould. SM (01:37:27): Elliot Gould? RS (01:37:28): Who sat there living behind steel shutters in New York, sniping at people and then shooting back. Kind of like Escape from New York... let us see, a prequel to Escape from New York. SM (01:37:43): Wow. RS (01:37:43): I do not know where I am coming up with this. SM (01:37:48): Yeah, what is happened with a lot of my interviews is that I interviewed... Well, who was it? [inaudible]... Richard Flax. You know Dr. Flax? RS (01:37:59): I do not. SM (01:37:59): He helped write the free speech move... excuse me, the Tom Hayden, and he was a professor of UC Santa Barbara and I brought up things in it, and boy, he loved it yesterday or two days ago because it was bringing back these memories and he was pretty good at remembering things. And he felt real good at the end of the interview because it stretched his mind and made him remember things he had not thought about in a long time. Do you think we as a nation have an issue with healing, problem with healing? We took a group of students to Washington in 1995 to see Edmund Muskie and the students that I took down to Washington from my university were not alive in the (19)60s, but they had seen the 1968 convention, the terrible battles between police and young people, and they saw what happened inside the convention hall. They had seen movies of what was going on in the (19)60s. They knew the two people that were murdered in 1968, and they had seen some people in those videos saying that we are having a second civil war coming and all those other things. And since we had Edmund Muskie to talk to, he was the vice-presidential running mate. And so they thought he was going to respond to this question based on 1968. And the question was this, do you feel that due to the tremendous divisions that took place in our society, that during the time that the boomers have been alive, that they are going to go to their grave, like the Civil War generation not truly healing? That the bitterness, the vindictiveness, dislikes have continued in many ways and we see it today in our divisive nature, in our politics, and of course the backlash we see. So do you think we have a problem as a nation with healing? RS (01:40:06): I do, and I am not optimistic. Views seem to be getting more and more and more entrenched. I mean, an example is Fox News and MSNBC, I cannot recall the name of the writer of a wrote about mirror culture, how you only want to see things that reflect back what you already want to see. I think that is very true. I am guilty of it myself. I think conservative people will go to their graves saying that we ruined America and liberal people will go to their graves saying we tried to save it. SM (01:40:53): Do you think that the wall, the Vietnam Memorial, which I know you probably visited. RS (01:41:02): Actually, I have not, but I am familiar with it. SM (01:41:05): Yeah. Has that done anything, as Jan Scruggs said in his book, not only did we build the wall mainly to heal the vets, the families of those who died, and the 3 million who served, but that we tried in some way to heal the nation. Do you think the wall has done that? RS (01:41:23): I do not. I think it is a wonderful monument to people who died, in my view, unnecessarily. But as far as healing goes, I do not know. I think it is a place for people to go and grieve family or friend, but an influence beyond that, I do not think, I do not so. SM (01:41:45): Do you think, I have a question here too regarding trust. That one of the major qualities that the boomer generation possesses, and I kind of include all 70... I do not like to generalize, but I think in this one I am that all 74 million, those who were for or against the war, liberals, conservatives, or even the 85 to 90 percent who were not activists in any way and just went on with their lives, so to speak, but were subconsciously affected that this is a generation that did not trust. It did not trust because of the fact that so many of their leaders lied to them. Whether you were astute enough to see Eisenhower lie to elementary school kids in 1959 about U2, the spy plane that he said it was not, and it was. To the Gulf of Tonkin with Lyndon Johnson, to Watergate with Richard Nixon, to all the lies that came out of Vietnam in terms of numbers. And there did not seem to be any trusting in our generation toward anyone in the sense of authority, whether it be a president, a university president, a corporate leader, a rabbi, a priest, a minister, anybody in a position of leadership, we do not trust them. RS (01:43:04): I think it is a health mistrust. I think not questioning authority is unhealthy. Again, I keep going wait to the classics, the Greek classics. SM (01:43:20): Right? RS (01:43:21): People have always been punished for questioning the predominant, I do not want to use rulers, what is a better word than rulers? Governing authority. Remember a bumper sticker, "Subvert the dominant paradigm." That is very good. That is very good. SM (01:43:56): Do you remember as a young person, when you were a college student, you would see a car that had an American flag on it and you knew that the person who had the American flag was a conservative saying that, "I am a better American than you are." Basically a statement to those who were against the war. RS (01:44:15): Absolutely. I remember a friend telling me a story about he was attending the University of Iowa, going into this small town for whatever reason, meeting hostility and running into some guy who he saw also had long hair, was as if had met his brother, you knew you could trust him. You knew who someone was by their looks, I should say you knew what they believed by their looks. Now, I think there are a great deal of wolves in sheep clothing. SM (01:44:51): Yeah. I think there were a lot of wolves in sheep's clothing, but I can remember just getting off the subject, but I was picked up by my dad, we were going home from college and he pulled into a gas station and there was a man who had a white... He pulled into a gas station and there was a man who had an American flag. I did not have that long hair. I had longer hair, but not real long. RS (01:45:10): Were you a communist homosexual radical? SM (01:45:13): No, but what happened was I looked at that flag and I said to my dad, "I got to say something to that guy." My dad said, "Steve, do not start something here." Because basically I would learned that putting an American flag on your car then, not like it is now, it is different today, but putting a flag on your car then was basically saying, "I am a better American than you are." And that pissed me off. RS (01:45:39): Well, the prevalent attitude by many people was "love it or leave it." SM (01:45:42): That is right. RS (01:45:42): Instead of love it or change it. SM (01:45:42): Yes. RS (01:45:49): That is not the right way to say this. Love it and change it. SM (01:45:53): Exactly. RS (01:45:54): It was not, if you did not like it, get out. Because if you like it, help it. SM (01:46:01): What are the lessons learned from the (19)60s? And what are the lessons lost from the (19)60s? RS (01:46:10): I think one of them is to have fun. To have fun. I remember in the movie Citizen Kane, Edward Everett Horton, who played Bernstein, saying to the reporter interviewing him, "It is very easy to make a lot of money if all you want to do is make a lot of money." I want to do a lot more. Although I could certainly use the financial, cannot count it when you are dead. Although, oh, that is a stupid thing to fix. You cannot count anything after you are dead. But try hugging it when you are lonely or scared. Human... There is a word I am searching. Human values rather than material value? SM (01:47:11): Yeah, materialism. RS (01:47:15): It is necessary, but it is not sufficient. How about that? SM (01:47:25): That is great. RS (01:47:26): Accumulation of objects and wealth may be necessary, but it certainly is deficient. SM (01:47:29): What are the lessons you think we have lost from the (19)60s and the (19)70s? Or when boomers were young? RS (01:47:37): Certainly there is more cynicism, bitterness. I think what we lost is the sense that we can make a difference. As I said earlier, many people, young people, I believe give up without trying. How will they know? SM (01:48:05): I know that when you hear people like Tom Hayden and some of the other activists who have been unbelievable leaders their whole lives, they look at the positive side of today's generation as they see some of the activism that they are involved in on the computer. It is changed somewhat, but there is a lot of activism going on-on the internet and so forth, so there are some good things. It is just one of them seems to be that they are not publicized and so we do not know. RS (01:48:38): I disagree. I am very late to the technological revolution. I do not believe that someone sending you an email from Australia telling you "your friend" makes them your friend. I thought a friend with someone you could call late at night when you needed them and they would come. That is someone who wants to get on a social network and say, " I am your friend," but then if you ever actually spoke and called them and needed help, will they be there for you? SM (01:49:10): Good point. Yep. I am now to the section I want to ask you about your memorabilia after all this time. Sorry, make sure the tapes back on here again. And it seems to be working. All right. You said in your email that you have a thousand items and 700 are signed. RS (01:49:44): I have several thousand items. SM (01:49:45): Wow. Have you broken these down into different categories? What are the categories? RS (01:49:56): Books. I collect first edition books. Books, posters, handbills, leaflets, underground newspapers, underground comics, bumper stickers, records, clothes, pinback buttons, and a lot of miscellaneous stuff. SM (01:50:28): I should have told you, I just got rid of all my (19)70s clothes. RS (01:50:31): Oh. SM (01:50:33): I gave them to the Salvation Army. I had them all these years. They were in great shape too. RS (01:50:39): Do not tell me stuff like that. SM (01:50:41): Well, I figured they did not have any value. RS (01:50:43): I do not know. I have clothes, but I have no idea what the value is. SM (01:50:50): Right. Well, I still have some of them, but it is the clothes I wore. You know those shoes that were platform shoes and those kinds of things? RS (01:50:57): Absolutely. SM (01:50:59): Well, I did not get rid of those, but I do have some of the items. RS (01:51:04): Glam Rock stuff. SM (01:51:06): Oh, yeah. Now, how did you accumulate? Did you buy these or did you... And how did you get them all signed? Or did you collect them while you were in college, or has this all been something since your college days in collecting? RS (01:51:21): No, I started collecting things in college: underground newspapers, comics, posters, leaflets. Political protest leaflets I would take off a telephone pole. They looked interesting, and many of them were period pieces with artwork. I knew these things were unique to the time period, and I felt that they should be preserved. SM (01:51:50): Excellent. RS (01:51:50): Later on, in the (19)80s, I got a catalog from someone who had taken many items. And it was the first time I had seen these things categorized and broken down into logical, coherent categories. I bought a few items and it became obsessive. SM (01:52:13): It is like me, I am a bibliophile, so I have thousands of books. So, I have a lot of (19)60s books. RS (01:52:20): I have a lot myself, but I thought that it would be wonderful to meet some of the people who were involved and participated in all the activities. And I started going to book signings and political discussions and just hearing all the lecturers, authors, as well as scrounging through used bookstores, junk shops, yard sales, catalogs, Paper Collectors Magazines, record stores. That is quite a bit. SM (01:53:00): Yeah. Well, what is interesting, I have collected anything dealing with Vietnam on magazines. And I have ordered them all. And so I have just about anything linked of Vietnam. I have all the Look, Life magazines that have Vietnam. I have gotten a lot of Newsweek and Time magazines dealing with that as well. RS (01:53:23): Posters. I am sorry to interrupt. SM (01:53:25): Yeah, go ahead. RS (01:53:26): I think posters could be broken down into two different groups, really. Posters that were used for one specific event, such as a protest rally or a music concert or a literary event. The posters produced either commercially or underground dealing with politics, ecology, et cetera. One example of the first one are Fillmore or Avalon posters, meaning posters used to promote events at the Fillmore Auditorium or the Avalon ballroom. SM (01:53:57): Oh, yeah. RS (01:54:01): And posters for political events or handbills such as the Yippies passed out before the Democratic Convention. And then just generalized things like "Make Love Not War" was one classic. Just in general cultural items. SM (01:54:23): Bill Graham, somebody bought a warehouse of all his stuff. RS (01:54:28): Sure. I bought some things from Ben Friedman, he used to have a store called The Postermat at 601 Columbus in San Francisco. SM (01:54:34): Right. RS (01:54:36): Yes. SM (01:54:36): They were sitting there for years, just in the closed warehouse, is not that correct? RS (01:54:41): Yes. Well, I do not want to get off, but this is off the record, but people from the company called Park Rock bought it. This is what they paid. Oh, they bought it for a million dollars, made the first payment and then stiffed them. And they made a small fortune on this stuff. SM (01:54:57): Oh, wow. RS (01:54:57): It is more than a small one. SM (01:54:59): Wow. Yeah. Now, when you talk about how many... I broke it down here. I thought you had had books, posters, records. Do you have toys? RS (01:55:11): I have miscellaneous of things. A jigsaw puzzle with Agnew on one side and Nixon on the other. I do not know toys per se, but miscellaneous items: little figurines, clothes, just all sorts of things. SM (01:55:32): Yeah. I still have all my cowboy and Indian sets from the (19)50s. RS (01:55:39): Wow. SM (01:55:40): Yeah. And army, those metal army figures. I accumulated them all. They are all going to my... I am creating a center for the study of the boomer generation at my parents' college. RS (01:55:54): What I would like to do very, very much is get some of my stuff in display cases. SM (01:55:59): Yes. RS (01:56:00): Exhibit. I spoke with the director of special collections for the University of Virginia Library, and he is very interested, but they have a lag time for exhibits for two years. They have a large collection of their own. And he said he would run it by a committee to see if they wanted to get involved with my stuff, but I do not think they have a budget to do it. SM (01:56:25): Yeah. Do you have a website with some? You do not put your stuff out there on the pictures. RS (01:56:28): No, I do not. I am private that way. I do not want someone to see what I have. SM (01:56:28): Yeah. I think you need to keep that private. RS (01:56:35): I would be happy to show it to them, but I do not really publicize what I do, what I have. SM (01:56:40): Yeah, same here. I have a condominium here and I got two of the rooms are stacked with books and books everywhere and people cannot believe all the books I have. RS (01:56:49): Yeah. What I have is my stuff. There is a company that makes archival things called Light Impressions, archival storage boxes with pH neutral cardboard and Mylar sleeves. I have hundreds and hundreds, if not more, of my handbills and leaflets in Mylar sleeves. SM (01:57:15): Wow. Those are— RS (01:57:15): Supposedly, Mylar is chemically inert and will last for a hundred years. SM (01:57:18): Wow. Yeah, you said you have used them in a college course. What college and how did they use them? RS (01:57:27): There was a course at the college at Marin on the 19(19)60s, and I brought some to show. But I enjoy meeting some of the people who were involved or caused so much of everything to happen. Like everyone from Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, people involved with the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park. Rock musicians. Of course, Ginsburg, Berliner, Getty, Michael McClure, Tim Leary, John Sinclair from the White Panther Party. Then Tom Hayden. SM (01:58:13): Do you have presidential memorabilia too from that era? RS (01:58:17): Not really. I have political posters, but I would not call it presidential memorabilia. SM (01:58:28): Yeah. RS (01:58:28): And anti-Nixon, anti- Johnson. Yeah. SM (01:58:37): I actually, this is your interview, but I collected as a kid, so I had the Eisenhower/Nixon stuff, and then I have the Nixon/Lodge stuff who ran against Kennedy and Johnson. Then I have Kennedy/Johnson, and then I have Barry Goldwater and Miller. RS (01:58:55): Well, I have a Gene McCarthy item signed by him and a George McGovern item signed by him. SM (01:59:04): Great. Yeah. You noticed the people that I have interviewed, most of them have signed their books. And then, of course, I worked at the university for 30 some years, and so everybody that came through, I had them sign their books. So I have a lot of things too. But I am curious, I listed some names here from Jerry Ruben to Ken Kesey, Alan Ginsburg, Leary, Paul Krassner, Jerry Garcia. Any of the Black Panther stuff? RS (01:59:33): Sure. SM (01:59:34): Yeah. I wonder what happened to all that stuff that was over in Oakland. Did anybody ever keep any of that stuff besides you? RS (01:59:43): I believe the Black Panthers sold their archive to Stanford University. But sure, Bobby Seale, Kathleen Cleaver, and a number of other people's signatures. SM (02:00:00): Wow. How about the free speech movement? Any materials on that? RS (02:00:03): Absolutely. Mario Savio who passed away long ago signed a few of my things. Michael Rossman, who passed away did. Yes, I do. I really have a well-rounded collection in a lot of different areas: political, social, artistic. SM (02:00:28): And then of course you had... I do not know if you had materials from the Summer of Love, which was (19)67 and— RS (02:00:35): A great deal. There was a group in the 1967 Summer of Love in The Haight-Ashbury called The Diggers, which was— SM (02:00:42): Oh, yeah. That is with Peter Coyote. RS (02:00:45): I have approximately 40 of their handbills. SM (02:00:48): Wow. RS (02:00:51): Sure. I have all five handbills the Human Be-in. SM (02:00:57): Oh my gosh. RS (02:00:57): And two printer variants. Each one has signed by about 15, 20 participants in the event. And one of the two Human Be-In posters, which is a classic. I have an original Acid Test poster from 1964, which is extremely rare, signed by Ken Kesey, and Allen Ginsberg, and Paul Krassner and others. SM (02:01:21): Wow. Yeah. How did you find that? RS (02:01:27): I got it from Kesey's son actually. I used to be friends with him in the (19)80s, (19)90s. SM (02:01:31): Oh, wow. RS (02:01:33): Zane Kesey. I was friends with him, and I actually went up to Oregon for the world premiere of a play his dad, Ken Kesey, wrote called Twister in the early (19)90s. And then when they put the play on here at the Fillmore Auditorium for two nights, I did the video camera work for one night. SM (02:01:56): Yeah. Do you have any things from Kent State too? RS (02:02:09): I have something that is absolutely unique. I got it from one of the attorneys for some of the National Guardsmen involved died, and in his estate was an actual transcript of where interrogation is, might be wrong, questioning of the National Guardsmen under oath as to what happened afterwards. It is one of a kind. SM (02:02:34): Wow. Yeah, I know recently, in the last couple years, one of those Guardsmen died that had actually spoken. Most of them have not spoken, but he was the one that had, and then he passed away. I forget his name. RS (02:02:51): I have Judge Julius Hoffman, who presided over the Chicago Seven trial in Chicago's Christmas album during that time with Christmas cards from Mayor Daley and the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, and a number of other people. SM (02:03:05): They did a record? RS (02:03:07): No. They did... Look, this is actually Judge... Let me back up. This is Judge Julius Hoffman's Christmas album. I do not mean album. I mean his own Christmas cards that were sent to him that he put in an album. SM (02:03:20): Oh my gosh. Wow. RS (02:03:25): I have quite a bit. SM (02:03:26): How would you ever find that? How do you find some of these things? RS (02:03:30): In the Paper Collectors Magazine about 20 years ago. SM (02:03:34): Wow. RS (02:03:35): Hang on for a second. Let me just grab some more water. SM (02:03:36): Yep, that is okay. RS (02:03:37): I got a lot of early SDS publications from the the early (19)60s and one called the Port Huron Statement. It was a pivotal document that came out in 1963. I do not know how much you want to hear about this. SM (02:04:16): Yeah, I just want just some of the items because it is important that this is history and this is all about history. RS (02:04:19): Sorry. Sorry, I interrupted you. Please go ahead. Go ahead. SM (02:04:21): No, I am done. Go ahead. RS (02:04:23): The Port Huron Statement was... What is the word? It had to do with student participation which is participatory democracy. A number of similar leaders from all over the country met in 1963 in Port Huron, Michigan to put together a manifesto for student participation in politics in society. I have a mimeograph draft version that Tom Hayden wrote, which I believe may be the only copy in the world. SM (02:05:03): Wow. RS (02:05:04): Signed by Tom Hayden. SM (02:05:05): Yeah, because you see he and Richard Flax were the two that wrote it. Wow. RS (02:05:08): I believe The Port Huron Statement was primarily written by Tom Hayden. SM (02:05:09): It was, but Richard Flax was a very good writer and Tom got to know him quite well, and he was involved in making some corrections and proper English, so he was there. I interviewed him on Monday. He is a retired sociology professor. RS (02:05:35): Huh. SM (02:05:36): And he has written some great books. He has written three major books on the (19)60s. He is a retired professor. RS (02:05:46): No, I have, as I said, a lot of early SDS items. I have Weather Underground items, Yippie items; hand bills mostly. Of course, Woodstock related items, including tickets and the program for Woodstock, which is very rare because it rained for three days and the programs were mostly destroyed. SM (02:06:11): You are right. You are right. RS (02:06:14): So, I have an original Woodstock program signed by some of the participants of Woodstock. SM (02:06:19): Wow. So that is really neat. Yeah, I have quite a few books that are signed by people, but it is fun, is not it, trying to get them to sign things if they are still alive, some of these people. RS (02:06:36): And some are nice and some are not, but I guess that is the way people are. SM (02:06:40): Right. RS (02:06:42): Some of them insist on dating things because when they date them it makes it less valuable than if they had just simply signed their name. But word records that are very rare dealing with politics or drug use, a whole host of things. It is hard to summarize several thousand items. I made a mistake. The Port Huron Statement, in addition to having the mimeograph, I also have a second printing. I just have the mimeograph draft statement. SM (02:07:22): I think the original was in a brown cover? RS (02:07:25): God, yeah. Yeah, you are right. Yes. Yes, you are absolutely correct. Yes. SM (02:07:31): And guess who has that? RS (02:07:34): You. SM (02:07:34): Yes. I found that in a used bookstore. RS (02:07:39): Well, I have the second printing and I have the mimeograph draft version, but I do not have a first printing. SM (02:07:48): Wow. RS (02:07:50): And then the San Francisco Oracle was the quintessential underground newspaper. Only 12 issues were put out. It was in San Francisco by Allen Cohen. And I have every issue also signed by Allen, who passed away. Fillmore and Avalon posters, as I said, and handbills. SM (02:08:19): Wow. RS (02:08:20): Several hundred pinback buttons, political and cultural, such as Make Love Not War. SM (02:08:31): The black fist for the Black Panthers? RS (02:08:33): Sure. SM (02:08:34): Yeah. Wow. RS (02:08:36): The many anti-Nixon, anti-Johnson, Gene McCarthy, George McGovern. SM (02:08:45): Wow. Excellent. RS (02:08:53): I really feel an obligation to try to preserve as much of the counterculture as possible. SM (02:09:02): Yeah. Now that you have got this collection together, what do you plan to do with it? You going to pass it on to a university for protection someday? RS (02:09:14): I really do not know. I have not decided. SM (02:09:14): Unless you got a family that cares about it. RS (02:09:16): Well, I am single. SM (02:09:22): As a person who is reached 62, (19)60s, I have had to think about where my stuff's going, and my family, none of them want this stuff. So, I am working on an arrangement with my parents' college that they will take my collection for nothing, as long as they protect it, preserve it, and they follow guidelines that I give to them. And it has to be for education, and it has to be for students and research. RS (02:09:55): Good. SM (02:09:55): Because you just cannot let it just go. And it has to go where it is going to be appreciated. And to me, it has to be used by students. And it is going to take a couple years, because this college, I could have done it to my alma mater SUNY Binghamton and I would have gotten a much bigger response and a much faster response. But I am doing it because my parents went to this small school outside Syracuse, Cazenovia College, and I want to be able to do something to improve their campus, but they have got to protect it. And it is going to take a while because they do not have the building, they do not have the money. And times are tough, but I know what I want them to do. And for items like you have, you also want to make sure that if a university ends up... you need to have a person that is going to check on them every so often, someone that you can trust that they are following through with what they said they were going to do with the materials. So, I have my niece, even though she has got... I have picked one person. She has agreed to do it. So that when all my items are there and all documented and everything, that no one professor can take items away from it and keep it for themselves. Secondly, some items have to be worn with white gloves. Thirdly, and most importantly, they cannot be taken away from the university and they cannot be taken away from the research area where they are. They are for student and faculty research. It is pure education. It is a lot easier said than done right now because that place is almost 400 miles from me. I am not going to die tomorrow, I hope, but I do know that I have it now that they are going to get them. RS (02:11:57): It is a good plan. I have not taken it that far yet. SM (02:12:00): Yeah, but you need to know that your items are valuable. And you know something? Rick, I think sometimes even beyond the person who collects, there is a reason why you are doing it that you may not even realize it while. You are doing it because you like it and you personally care about these things. RS (02:12:22): Well, also because I feel I have, for whatever reason, an obligation to preserve as much as possible of a time period I do not think it is ever going to happen again. SM (02:12:32): I agree. RS (02:12:35): This was a, I cannot say unique because every time period is unique, but a groundbreaking explosion of human potential. SM (02:12:49): Yeah. I think some of the things you have got are unique, because they have never existed before and will never exist again. RS (02:12:58): Well, showing how society had changed so much. I feel like a cultural historian. SM (02:13:06): And I know Paul, when he gave the names, it has taken me a while to contact the names. I think I had your name six months ago from Paul. But I have contacted everyone and the only person in the list that he gave me is Stewart Brand was the only one that did not want to do an interview. He is the only one. RS (02:13:24): Funny you mentioned him. About 20 years ago, I asked for some autographs on things. Excuse me, I have to eat something. I feel my blood sugar dropping down to zero. I was living in Mill Valley. Stewart Brand had a place in Sausalito where he did the Whole Earth catalog. SM (02:13:46): Yes. RS (02:13:48): I called and said, "I collected some things. They are not for resale. This is just for me. Would you sign all my stuff?" He said, "No autographs!" Just like that. "No, autographs!" SM (02:14:01): Yeah. Well, he must be a friend of Paul's. But he just simply said, "I have no interest at this time." But he also is a multi-millionaire now, and so he has got— RS (02:14:15): I think after he went to MIT and became a technocrat he kind of lost his roots. SM (02:14:20): Yeah. He is the only one. And then the other one is Ina May Gaskin. I interviewed Steven, but Ina May has not responded. So she is the only other one. And it took me a while to get Carolyn Garcia, but I finally got Carolyn. RS (02:14:39): She is sweet. SM (02:14:40): Oh, she is really nice. I interviewed her on the phone and when I was out there I took her picture just outside Golden Gate Park. She is a very nice person. By the way, she does not like that new book on Ken Kesey either. RS (02:14:51): Which one? SM (02:14:52): It is a brand-new book out. I bought it right over there by the Golden Gate Park, the Haight Street... RS (02:15:06): The Booksmith. SM (02:15:06): Yeah. And it was in there and it was brand new. And I mentioned to Carolyn when I was... She just drove over so I could take her picture at the entrance to the park to be at the top of her interview. And she says, "He was not supposed to print that book. There were certain things that I objected to and that I did not like." So, there is some mistruths in that book. And I do not know anything about it, but I think there is going to be some issues going on down the road on that. My last question is this, do you have any more to say on the memorabilia? RS (02:15:42): It is an incredible window into a wonderful time period in American history. Give me a second. SM (02:15:54): Yep. RS (02:15:54): Can I say something that if you want to put this in somewhere you can? SM (02:15:58): Okay. RS (02:16:00): I went to about 160 Grateful Dead concerts. SM (02:16:03): Wow. RS (02:16:04): Some of the best times in my life. SM (02:16:06): I only went to one. RS (02:16:08): Wonderful, wonderful. My first one was in Madison, actually, College. And at that time things were so loose that, looking appropriate, I just simply walked up some stairs up to the stage and spent the whole concert leaning on the bass player's, Phil Lesh's, amp. SM (02:16:28): Oh my God. RS (02:16:28): That is how things were in 1970. (19)71. Actually, this is (19)71 now. SM (02:16:28): Right? RS (02:16:36): Yeah. I have about 300 Grateful Dead tapes of concerts. One of them, I was friends with a friend of one of the guys, and at the 1986 New Year's show, they got me backstage. Not only backstage, but actually into the band room after the show where all the guys were. There were so many tanks of nitrous oxide, it looked like a hospital. SM (02:16:59): Oh my gosh. RS (02:17:01): And I had some of the best times in my life at those shows. I think Joseph Campbell called them a Dionysian Celebration of Life. I cannot improve on that. SM (02:17:16): Yeah. Jerry Garcia was a hell of a talent. And what a great guitar player. And I never met him. I just mentioned to Carolyn, just from what I saw, and I see him on YouTube a lot, he seemed to be a very gentle person. RS (02:17:29): He was. SM (02:17:29): Even with interviews with him and Ken Kesey, they looked like they were brothers. They were having a good time together. There was a mutual respect. And he seemed to be a very humble person, because he came from tough times. RS (02:17:48): Well, he said, I think after being in the Grateful Dead for 20 years, he was just starting to learn how to play a guitar. SM (02:17:53): My God. Huh. RS (02:17:57): I used to see him driving his BMW around Mill Valley. He was friends, well not only friends, for many years with David Grisman, who was in the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and a phenomenal mandolin player who lived nearby, a few minutes away from where I lived. I would see him driving his black BMW. SM (02:18:14): Well, is not it amazing that the San Francisco Bay area has all this talent? I am amazed. And of course when I lived... I lived out there from (19)76 to (19)83, Huey Lewis and the News came up and the Tower of Power were there and Boz Scaggs over in Marin County. And there were a lot of different groups. I know John Handy and his saxophone playing down at the Embarcadero Center. RS (02:18:40): There it’s s one event that stood out in my mind, and I do not know where you can put this in the interview if you choose to, but after I saw the Jefferson Airplane do a concert at the University of Wisconsin Field House two weeks after Kent State, there were about 15,000 people in the audience, and the conclusion, the last song they played was called Volunteers. It was off the Volunteers album. And one of the lines was, "Up against the wall, Motherfucker." And 15,000 people put their fists in the air. SM (02:19:19): Wow. RS (02:19:20): Something I will never forget. SM (02:19:22): Yeah, you mentioned at Wisconsin that you saw the Grateful Dead and you saw— RS (02:19:25): Janice. And Hendrix. SM (02:19:25): You saw all these people there? RS (02:19:32): I remember seeing Jimi Hendrix. It was after Woodstock, but before the movie came out. And I remember during the concert, somebody said, "What can we get you, Jimi?" And he said, "A joint." They started throwing joints at him. Joints are bouncing off his chest, off his guitar. SM (02:19:51): Oh my gosh. RS (02:19:54): 20 or 30 of them must have hit him. Joints. And then the last thing he did was appeared in the Woodstock movie doing the Star-Spangled Banner. RS (02:20:03): Appeared in the Woodstock movie doing the Star-Spangled Banner. SM (02:20:07): Oh yeah. RS (02:20:07): Which was before the movie came out. And then I had never seen In The Purple Haze. SM (02:20:09): Oh my God. RS (02:20:11): Phenomenal. SM (02:20:14): And you say you saw Janice there too? RS (02:20:18): Sure. (19)69, going to the concert November, wearing a coat and tie. SM (02:20:28): Unbelievable. RS (02:20:28): By the Kent state time I had changed. Can I tell you something that must be off the rec? My roommates and I used to buy hash from and Glenn Silber who did the War at Home movie. SM (02:20:36): Oh my gosh. RS (02:20:38): I have been around my friend. SM (02:20:40): Yeah. Well when Janice Joplin was, that was the Chief Turtles album, right around that time. I have a story, I have interviewed so many people, but the hippies were upset with her because of the fact that the hippies were into drugs, not alcohol. RS (02:21:00): She was into Southern Comfort. SM (02:21:01): Yeah, she was into Southern Comfort, and a lot of the hippies did not get along with her. She broke a rule. Hippies do not drink alcohol. RS (02:21:10): Maybe beer, but that was it. SM (02:21:12): Yeah, but they did not like the fact that she was doing that. RS (02:21:15): Mind-expanding. SM (02:21:17): Yeah. Any other rock groups or single performers that you saw in Wisconsin? RS (02:21:25): Country Joe to Jefferson Airplane to the Grateful Dead. So many of the people from that time. I mean, it would be hard to give, but all the usual suspects. SM (02:21:43): You know what is interesting, I have one last question here, but I will mention this just for general, it will not be in the interview, but when I was in college, I went to SUNY Binghamton and we had winter break and we had spring break and we had- RS (02:21:54): Wild place. SM (02:21:56): Yeah. And we had the Paul Butterfield Blues Band all the time performing at the campus center Friday. But we had Judy Collins, we had Arlo Guthrie, we had Odetta, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington. And then we had Iron Butterfly and the Turtles and the Mountain. RS (02:22:22): Sure. SM (02:22:25): And the Chambers Brothers. We had all these groups. Love and Spoonful, and even The Birds and Anthony Imperials. I will just never forget all these groups and these concerts when I was a college student. There is no other time. RS (02:22:45): There is no other. I can give you a quote that I remember. If you want to use, so be it. Remember how they used to say drugs are for people who cannot handle reality? Our saying was reality was for people who cannot handle drugs. SM (02:23:00): That is a great quote. I will use that. RS (02:23:07): I did not make it up. SM (02:23:08): And do not forget, you are going to see this transcript, so you can scribble some of this stuff out. My last question is this, and I have asked this to everybody. When the best history books are written about any period, it is usually 50 years afterwards. The best World War II books were coming out in the early, well, about 2000, 2001. And so some of the best World War II books are coming out now. What do you think historians and sociologists and commentators will say about the (19)60s or the Boomer generation? I think I am going to say this, Boomer generation, this generation that was born after World War II, and was very young in the (19)60s and the seventies and early eighties. What do you think they will say? What will be the lasting legacy? And I say this knowing that the Boomers are now reaching older age, they still got 15 to 20 years left so they could change old age, but just your thoughts. What do you think they are going to say? Especially after the last Boomer may have passed on? RS (02:24:10): Well, that was the flowering of you and potential. So, we did not take anything at face value. So, we questioned authority, and that we can make a difference, and we did. SM (02:24:27): That is great. Is there any questions I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask? RS (02:24:37): About the specific items in my collection, which I do not have to tell you about, but I really thought that is half of what you would do would be about what we had discussed, and half what would be about collecting counterculture member review. But I understand this is a sociology book and not for collectors. SM (02:24:53): Yeah. Well, you can tell me more about your collection because I did not know what items you had except some general items. I can ask specific questions like the items you have linked to Ken Kesey or any of the beats. RS (02:25:09): I mean, I have highlight, I have to tell you, in all honesty, I am pretty punchy. And not because of you, it is because I thought we would go for an hour and it is two and a half. SM (02:25:20): I think that is enough. RS (02:25:21): So I thought you said an hour and a half. But no, I am not complaining at all, I am just saying I am starting to wander a little. My mind is not quite as disciplined as when we started. But I think that we did make a difference. So I know we did. And then from now on, no one will take unquestioned the statement from the government to the mainstream media. That you need to think for yourself, draw your own conclusions, do not accept anything at face value without running it through your own mind and deciding whether it makes sense or not. And the motivations for what was said by whoever was saying and why? What are they looking for you to do? Is it in their self-interest or is it in yours? SM (02:26:06): Yeah. Using a Paul Krassner line, we just hit the midway point. Yeah, I think Paul would laugh at that. Tell you, fantastic. RS (02:26:20): Pleasure speaking to you. SM (02:26:23): Yeah, no, Rick, I wish I would come out when I was out to San Francisco. I had not been out there in 10 years. RS (02:26:27): You are always welcome to- SM (02:26:29): And I might go out again next year and I want to meet Paul and Nancy. I will even drive down if I have to down south just to see him. I want to take their pictures and stuff like that. There is a few other people in LA. But I regret that I had not called you before I went to San Francisco because I met seven people to take their pictures. I met Carolyn Garcia, took her picture. Peter Richardson, who wrote the book on Ramparts Magazine, Jim Quay, former head of the Arts council who lives in the Bay Area, and- RS (02:27:03): Wait, girl was sweet. SM (02:27:05): Huh? RS (02:27:06): Carolyn Cassidy was known during the pranks, it still is, its mountain girl. SM (02:27:12): Yes-yes. And then I- RS (02:27:14): Very sweet person. Lived in Ballenas for many years, which was another counter cultural, it is on the Pacific Ocean. Incredibly beautiful, very isolated. You have to drive over Mountain [inaudible] here in Marin County to get there. SM (02:27:31): I think Charles- RS (02:27:32): Go ahead. SM (02:27:33): I think Charles wrote a book, something to do with Ballenas Bay too. RS (02:27:38): Probably. It is very beautiful, wildlife and all that, but a lot of the, she lived right near there for a long time. SM (02:27:49): Wow. RS (02:27:55): I really do feel an obligation to preserve as much of this time period as I can. SM (02:27:57): I think it is a great thing that you are doing. RS (02:28:00): Thank you, Stephen. SM (02:28:01): I admire you for doing it and we need more people like you because in the end I think subconsciously you are preserving it, but you are preserving it for others. It is that (19)60s mentality. I know that I have been collecting all my books and all this stuff and I am collecting all these interviews for a reason because I want young people, students, college students and general public, to get a better understanding of the times we lived in and to not have the new Gingrich's of the world and the people condemning an entire era because they do not like the politics or the personalities of the people or the long here. You got to understand the times. RS (02:28:45): Cultural warfare, they have a vested interest in the status quo. Just as the seed money, 90 percent of the seed money in the eighties for the partnership with Drug-Free America. You know where that came from? Tobacco companies and the alcohol companies. SM (02:29:01): Yep. You are right. RS (02:29:04): I wonder why because they did not want any other recreational interest horning in on their market. SM (02:29:11): Charles Wright is coming, he is teaching a course at Yale this spring. I found out so I am going to contact the Yale law and hopefully I can get an interview with him. But boy, you cannot even reach him in the Bay Area. He does not even have a website. RS (02:29:21): I thought he was in Berkeley. SM (02:29:21): Yeah. RS (02:29:28): Yeah, I think he is in Berkeley. SM (02:29:28): Well, if you ever find out a website for him or an email, let me know because I would like to try to interview him because he did write the Greening of the Merit. RS (02:29:36): I can tell you where he did the reading in Berkeley was six months ago at the bookstore. SM (02:29:40): Okay. RS (02:29:42): It is called Books Incorporated. Fourth Street of Berkeley. SM (02:29:48): Fourth Street. Okay, I could give him a call. RS (02:29:52): That is where he did his last reading. SM (02:29:53): Okay. RS (02:29:55): I know you are calling me to write a book and I know this is off the wall, not off the wall, but it is unrelated. I want to get my stuff in display cases somewhere where people can see it, whether it is a library, university, if you could keep me in mind, I am not looking to make any money, that would be nice, but nobody has money to pay for that kind of stuff. SM (02:30:15): Well, the connections that I have are only with three. I have left where I used to work, so I am done with them. I have worked there 22 years. But my alma maters, I am Ohio State, Binghamton University, and then Cazenovia, so I do have links with all of them. RS (02:30:34): You happen to see an opportunity where I could get my stuff in display cases or on a wall somewhere for an exhibit, I would be very- SM (02:30:42): I will, yep. RS (02:30:44): Something needs to be seen instead of being in archival boxes in my closet, Stephen. SM (02:30:49): Yep. Let me talk to a few people. There might even be a chance that, I am not sure, maybe at Binghamton and Seattle, Ohio State, I was a grad student there. All of my professors are gone, but I do believe there is a professor in the history department there who is a (19)60s guy, and I mean he is younger than a Boomer. Well, he is a young Boomer, but he is not, he was not old enough to be around when all this other stuff was happening. So, there is a good person there at Ohio State, but Binghamton's still the school it was when I was there, back in- RS (02:31:30): Let me think. I can tell you one final anecdote before you get off the bus. But that is another quote I should have given you. You are on the bus or you are off the bus. SM (02:31:41): Yes. Very good. RS (02:31:44): It is true. SM (02:31:44): Yeah. Definitely true. RS (02:31:46): You are off the bus. SM (02:31:48): Well, do you talk to Paul at all? RS (02:31:52): You send the emails constantly. I do not talk that much but we said we are in constant contact. SM (02:31:58): Good. Yeah. I just sent him a response to his Facebook message about, I thought it was the [inaudible] thing. Tell him I said hi. Tell him and Nancy I said hi. RS (02:32:09): He said he is getting off Facebook because there is just 5,000 friends he is never met. SM (02:32:26): I think what he is going to do, he is staying on Facebook, but he is going to cut the number down. I think that is what it is. RS (02:32:26): Well Saturday he told me he is getting off it, but I do not know. He could change his mind, but I am so happy to speak with you. It is been a pleasure. SM (02:32:36): It has been a pleasure here too. RS (02:32:37): Wish you a great deal of luck with your book, you are doing such a good thing. SM (02:32:41): Well, thank you very much. People like you and Paul and all the people that I have interviewed, I love that year that I grew up in, I obviously you do too. I feel fortunate that I was alive. RS (02:32:55): Well, I never left. SM (02:32:56): That is good. RS (02:32:58): Well, I will let you on the one final thing. Kesey came to the San Francisco area for a book tour. They drove the bus. This was not the original bus, but a new version of the bus from Oregon here. Outside the books in store at Hay Street, I went in, it was Kesey and a few other people, smoked a joint on the bus with Kesey. How about this? Oh, and then he tested a bottle of wine and he says before he drank, "it has lithium in it." Oh no. Hey, it could have been [inaudible 02:33:35]. Anyway, I am not going to regal you with stories, but I have been around as they say, and I have paid my dues and I have counter cultural Street cred. SM (02:33:49): Great. RS (02:33:50): Thanks Steve. SM (02:33:50): Thanks, you have a great day. Happy holidays to you. RS (02:33:54): Take care, Steve. SM (02:33:54): You bet, bye. RS (02:33:55): Bye. (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 3 Microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rick Synchef Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Synchef, Rick ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Counterculture--United States--20th century; Historians; Synchef, Rick--Interviews Description An account of the resource Rick Synchef is a counterculture collector and historian. He began collecting political paper and ephemera when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 1960s and 70s. Synchef consistently meets writers and obtains autographs for his large collection of books related to the 1960s. 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 2010-12-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.175a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.175b; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.175c 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. 153:58