Josh Kornbluth

Excerpt from CITIZEN JOSH, a comic monologue

            [Music.  Slides from 2004 presidential election -- ending with a slide of John Kerry, which remains on the screen.]

            Election Day, 2004.  I was just coming back from voting at my local polling place in Berkeley.  Where I vote, it's the only church in my whole neighborhood that is not Unitarian.  Very bold.

            And you know, I love voting.  I feel connected to other people in almost a sacred way.  Plus you get the sticker, which says, "I voted!"  So you don't have to tell people --  it's right there!  And you don't have to tell them where, because it has an American flag.  So they know: I voted here in America.  Not in Albania, or Lichtenstein -- here in America, I voted!

            And I was feeling good, too -- because things were looking really good for my guy.

            [Josh gestures toward slide of Kerry.]

            You know, I follow the political blogs obsessively: Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo ...  They were all saying the same thing: the early exit polls were looking really good for my guy.  Just looking fantastic for-- for my--

            [Confidingly:] Okay, he wasn't totally my guy.  I had had a guy who I had thought of as being kind of my guy -- but at some point, he yelled.  And then after that, he couldn't play anymore.  I never understood that.

            So I was left with this guy as my guy.  And it's not perhaps the guy I would pick out of the entire panoply of humanity -- but I know what you're thinking, and you're right: Gandhi wasn't running -- I understand.  Still, this guy to me he was a smidge -- I don't know -- militaristic.  A little aristocratic.  Somewhat corporate. ...

            Then again, compared to that other guy, this guy was way my guy!  And it was looking like he was going to win!

            So there's a bounce in my step as I'm crossing Ohlone Park ‑‑ this little stretch of green next to where we live in Berkeley.  And here comes one of my friends and neighbors, Brian Weiner.

            He goes, "How's it going, Josh?"

            I go, "It's going great, Brian.  Those early exit polls online are saying it's looking really good for our guy.  And based on my own informal exit poll, I think Berkeley is going to go solidly for our guy!  So as long as the rest of the country follows Berkeley, we should be fine. ...  But Brian, you don't seem to agree.  Why the long face?  You're harshing my mellow, man!"

            "Well, Josh, I was just listening to the radio, and they were saying those early exit polls were misleading.  Things are looking kind of dicey, especially in Ohio.  And ‑‑ well, Josh, to me it looks like our guy ... is going to lose."

            "What?  Lose?  To that guy? ...  Okay, Brian, I'm telling you this right now:  If a majority of Americans vote for that guy over our guy, I'm done -- I'm taking my toys and I'm going home."

            [Brian gesticulates broadly (as he will do hereafter):] "So Josh, what are you saying?"

            This is probably where I should tell you a couple of things about Brian Weiner.  One is that he's a brilliant political theorist: he's the head of the Politics Department at the University of San Francisco.  The other thing is that Brian is, to me, the most physically demonstrative of all political theorists.  He is, if you will, the Isadora Duncan of political theorists.

           [Brian:] "So Josh, what are you saying?  Are you saying you don't like democracy?

            "Now Brian, don't try to get me caught in one of your Socratic traps.  You know I like democracy.  Look -- each time I'm saying 'democracy' right now, I'm releasing endorphins, I'm having a milk let-down.  Me love democracy!"

            "So Josh, are you saying you like democracy, but only when the people agree with you?"

            [Beat.]

            "Yes! ...  No, that didn't sound good coming out, did it?  No -- no, of course not, Brian!  I understand: democracy is 'people power' -- the people can choose whomever they want.  But here's the thing, Brian: our educational system has been gutted.  As our president likes to say, 'Our children isn't learning.'  And people get their information from these same few news outlets owned by the same few corporations, and--"

            "So Josh, are you saying you will believe in democracy, once the people catch up to you?"

            "Of course not, Brian.  You know me: I'm a mess. ...  No -- I'm saying I'll believe in democracy once the people catch up ... to you! ...  Because you, Brian, are a substantial person."

            And I don't know how this happened!  We started so similarly, Brian and I.  Two East Coast Jews.  Born at the same time.  Both went to Princeton.  Both majored in politics.  Both studied under the same advisor: Sheldon S. Wolin, eminent political theorist.  Now, of course, the same number of years have passed since then for the two of us -- we stand here in our mutual neighborhood park in Berkeley, two middle-aged Jewish guys -- my son about the same age as his daughter ...

            "So why is it, Brian, that of the two of us, only one has become a grownup?"

            "Well, Josh, perhaps it might have something to do with the fact that of the two of us, only one did his thesis."  [Sound effect: the word "thesis" echoes repeatedly.]

*   *   *

            And I don't know if you guys remember this -- because it does go back a few years, so it could have slipped your mind -- but my guy ... lost!

            I remember sitting there, watching the returns coming in on the television, getting that old familiar sinking feeling:  Well, I guess I just gotta kill time for another four years, till I get another shot.

            Not that I'm bad at killing time, mind you.  In fact, it's one of my very few skills: time-killing.

            I think it goes back even to before my first memory.

            This woman used to take care of me -- her name was Mrs. Mann.  She'd pick me up, she'd take me to her apartment, and ...  Well, I say she'd take care of me; this is what she would do:  She'd feed me, then she'd plop me down on this little green cushion in her hallway -- and there I had to sit, for the whole rest of the day.  Which was a long time.

            But I developed strategies.

            Like, I learned how to fuzz my eyes -- so everything I looked at looked fuzzy. ...  I'm doing it to you right now.  You look fuzzy.

            I learned how to rumble my ears -- so it sounded like thunder in there; it was very dramatic.

            And I played with my hands.  Well, not just played, really.  They were battles, wars, campaigns!  Left against right.  And because my family was from the left, and I was left-handed, the left always won -- eventually.  But it would take time: you had to spread it out over the whole day.  Back and forth it would go.  And of course, the right had a big advantage: much better funding.  But the left -- the left had a dashing leader: Future Me!

            Oh, Future Me: lanky, flexible -- invited to all the best play-dates.  Future Me would bide his time until exactly the right strategic moment, when he'd yell, "Follow me!!"  And he'd lead the underprivileged forces of the left over the overprivileged forces of the right -- back and forth, until eventually the left would win: Aaaaaggggghhhh!!!

            "Follow me!" ...

            And in this manner, the weeks, the months, the years passed.  Till one afternoon, on my fifth birthday, there was a knock at the door.  It was my dad!  He'd come to take me out for an hour or so.

            [Music begins.]

            I remember the sunlight outside was so bright, the colors so vivid.  It was as if everything were animated -- which was the effect my dad tended to have on my world.  We walked the few blocks to the Riverside Church -- beloved among progressives for having harbored Communists during the Blacklist, and now, during the Vietnam War, harboring antiwar activists.

            Dad and I went up in the elevator to the very top, where the unimaginably beautiful and enormous bells were ringing –– so loudly, they vibrated in your chest.  And other people had gathered for the bells, too -- and we all laughed and smiled at one another -- some of us secular, some of us religious -- but connected.  By what?  Community?  Faith?

            [Music ends.]

            Then Dad brought me back to Mrs. Mann's, and I was back on the cushion.

            So hey -- I know how to kill time.  I just don't wanna.

*   *   *

            And before I know it, I find myself Googling my old advisor from Princeton, Sheldon S. Wolin.

            Now, again, to bring you back a few years, this is in the early days of Google.  Today, Google has all those services: they could probably show me a live satellite feed of Wolin gardening!

            But back in those early, Luddite days, all Google could give me was Wolin's unlisted phone number.

            So the next morning my son and I go out to Ohlone Park.  We go out there for a couple of reasons.  One, it's the only place in our neighborhood where I can get a really good signal from Verizon.  The other is, it's the only place in our neighborhood where there's room for my son to play.

            In fact, technically it is a "playground."  Although, really, to be honest, it is, in effect, an ex-playground.  It's the ruins of what must have been, at some point, a lovely playground.

            Like, for example, take the swing set.  It must have been a really fun swing set -- perhaps back when there were swings!  But the swings seem literally to have rusted away.  All that's left is the frame.  So unless your kids like to re-enact Antonioni films or something, not much to do in there.

            But there are the slides.  Then again, they're not slides so much as they are instruments for turning your child into a projectile.  One of them, your kid goes up and then straight down into the hard gravel.  The other one, your kid goes up, then around and around in this spiral, into the same gravel ‑‑ but with torque.

            Still, you'll take your chances with your kid on those slides.  Because God forbid he should go on this:

            [Slide of a large, ungainly structure made out of welded-together pipes, and covered with various drab colors of peeling paint.]

            I don't know what that is!  If it was meant to be a climbing structure, it's dangerous.  If it was meant to be art, it's unfortunate. ...  You know, I've never personally dropped acid, but I sort of have a feeling if I did, I'd make that.  Just a hunch.

            Still, it does serve one very pragmatic purpose: When I climb up to the very tippy-top, I get all four bars of reception on Verizon.

            And for the first time in a quarter-century, I was hearing the voice of my old advisor.

            [Wolin:] "Hello?"

            "Oh my goodness -- Professor Wolin!  You're not going to believe this.  This is a blast from way back in your Princeton past‑‑"

            "Hello, Josh!  How are you doing?"

            Well, you ask me how I'm doing, chances are I'll tell you about the two things I'm proudest of:  My beautiful little boy -- I follow him around and discover the world.  And my beautiful wife -- an incredibly dedicated public school teacher.

            "Oh, and professor -- we live in Berkeley!  You know, your old stomping grounds from when you used to teach at Cal during the Free Speech Movement."

            "Oh, Josh, that's fine.  Now tell me: What, do you suppose, might be the purpose of this call?"

            "Well, sir, I don't know if you remember, but my thesis is late. ...  But the good news is, I'm ready to work on it now.  And, professor, I know you've retired from teaching, but it would mean so much to me if you would advise me again ‑‑ just through the end of the thesis."

            "Well, Josh, what's your thesis topic?"

            Oops!!  You'd think after a quarter-century, I could at least have come up with a thesis topic.  But I'm pretty good at thinking on my feet -- and actually, as it turns out, I'm even better thinking when dangling from a dangerous structure.  And I remembered: Wolin was really into democracy.  I mean, he had a journal for a while called democracy!

            So I said, "Democracy!"

            He said, "Hmm ... that sounds good, Josh.  Now might you want to narrow that down a bit?"

            "You know, sir, you're absolutely right.  Well, here's the vibe:  I remember when you used to lecture, you made political theory so thrilling.  And yet, my experience, out in the world, of political reality has been so ... empty.  And sir, I was just wondering, is there some way we could take that thrill from theory and bring it into my actual experience of democracy?"

            Because oh, believe me, his lectures back then -- they were thrilling!

*   *   *

            I mean, imagine:  It's nine a.m. -- a packed lecture hall.  Not an empty seat.  In fact, everyone's on the edge of their seat.  Because Wolin is lecturing.

            Wolin's lectures were different from those of other professors.  Other professors, they could be brilliant, erudite ...  But they tended to know in advance what they were going to say.  I mean, often we knew, too.  They'd made us buy their book.  Then we had read their book.  Then they lectured their book.  And then they tested their book.  We answered their book, and we got an A.  It worked out for everyone -- I understood that.

            Wolin, however, was different.  Wolin ... riffed!  He improvised his lectures.  Improvised, it was clear, based on an enormous body of scholarship.  But still, he's riffing.

            Towards what?

            We're madly taking notes as he spins out these thoughts.  And he comes here, we're following there, we're following there and there ...  Finally, he arrives at a point -- a beautiful, pristine political point.  We go, "Aha -- that's it!  That's exactly what we need to think about politics for the whole rest of our lives.  All we need to do is write down exactly what he just said."

            But even as we're writing that down, he's getting this cloudy look in his eyes -- and now ... he's going the other way!  He's challenging what he just said!  He's pulverizing it!  We have to cross it out -- we have to write in the new thing!  He comes to a new point.  He's pulverizing that!  We have to follow him this way!

            Where is he going?  We don't know.  But we do have a sense that getting to his destination may require something ... of us.  What?

            Let's start here.

*   *   *

            [Music.  Slides from the Bicentennial Year.]

            Nineteen seventy-six.  My freshman year at Princeton.  The first time I saw Sheldon Wolin.

            I was feeling kind of lost myself.  It had taken me only three weeks into my freshman year to learn definitively I had no future in any of the sciences. ...  In retrospect, it was quite efficient to be kicked out of every science in three weeks.  Biology, chemistry -- but worst of all, physics.  I had dreamed of working in the fusion lab.

            Fusion -- that's where the sexiness was at Princeton in physics in those days.  Fission?  Over!  But fusion?  If you could control a fusion reaction--  I mean, if you couldn't control it -- bad!  But if you could control it, and sustain it, you could generate unlimited power for all the people on the earth with no waste products, forever.

            Which would be cool.

            Only they hadn't gotten there yet!  They had done a brief controlled fusion reaction:  They had banged two deuterium thingies together and created a helium ion. ...  Well, at least that's what they said they had done.  They were the only ones at the time who had a helium-ion detector.

            But even assuming they were telling the truth ...  I mean, helium -- it's cool, it's a "noble gas."  But man cannot live by a helium ion alone.  This is what a helium ion can do for you: [mimes being goosed:] Whooo!!  That's it!  You need a lot more than that to run everything!

            That's where I was going to come in.  I was going to do the controlled, sustained fusion reaction.  Maybe it would be my doctorate.  Perhaps my postdoc.  I'd win the Nobel.  I'd start playing basketball -- maybe in Europe, but still, professionally!

            That was going to be Future Me!  Only I never got there!  Because three weeks into my freshman year, my quiz scores were not reflecting the high quality of my mind.

            So I was relegated to sitting on the cold stone bench across from the fusion lab, pining away for fusion -- as if for a woman who's dumped me.  [Pining sounds.]  My roommate, Brian Weiner, trying to console me [gesticulating]: "Well, Josh, look at it this way:  Now that you don't have to take any of those science classes anymore, you have plenty of extra time to explore!"

            [Music.  Slide of Wolin.]

            And that's when Sheldon Wolin walked by.  I followed -- I knew not why.

            Followed him out behind the fusion lab.  Out into the woods -- not a place I'd normally go: I'm from New York.

            Till I emerged out into a clearing, where I found him in silent contemplation of the famous windmill.

            [Music ends.]

            [Wolin:] "Now what, do you suppose, might be the purpose of that windmill?"

            "You're asking me, professor? ...  Well, first of all, sir, it's not technically a 'windmill' -- it doesn't mill anything.  It's a wind turbine.  But I guess, yes, colloquially, we can call it a 'windmill.' ...  Well, sir, apparently it was done as kind of a joke.  You see, the guys in the fusion lab, they're used to being such hot-shot scientists -- everything they've done has worked right away.  And here they've been so frustrated trying to do this fusion thing.  So apparently one night they just got drunk -- and they came out here into the woods and built this windmill.  Which works.  It does what it's supposed to do.  It generates electricity. ...  In fact, if you follow that wire, it goes back into the fusion lab and it powers a single hanging lightbulb in the middle of the lab.  And I guess the idea is, whenever the scientists start feeling pessimistic about their prospects, they can look up at that lightbulb and it gives them hope."

            [Wolin:] "So, to compress your point:  When faced with a daunting task, they did something they knew how to do, starting where they were. ...  Now what, do you suppose, might this suggest to us about democracy?"

            [Beat.]

            "Uh, sir, I have no idea. ...  Professor, I think maybe you're assuming I'm in your class.  And oh, I wish I were -- because I've been hearing great things from my friend Brian about your lectures.  In fact, I happen to have cleared up a big chunk of my schedule recently -- and if you could squeeze me into your 'Radical Political Theory' class, I don't think you'll regret it.  Because I come from a very radical background:  My parents are radicals.  I myself am a radical."

            "Ah, so then you'd know the meaning of the word 'radical.'"

            "I guess. ...  Rip out the old stuff, put in some new stuff?"

            "Well actually, I believe if you look it up, you'll find that in its original definition 'radical' means 'from the roots.'"

            [Long beat.]

            "Sir, you just blew my mind.  Will you be my advisor?"

            Oh, but I wanted more than that!  I wanted to be around this brilliant guy 24/7.

            Now this goes back, for those of you old enough to remember, to the days of the Carter Administration, when there was money for stuff!  So I applied for -- and got -- a federal work-study grant so I could be Wolin's research assistant.  Not that he could possibly use me as a research assistant: What was I going to do, read the original documents in Aramaic?  No.  Basically, this is what I did: I'd sit with Wolin in his office and I'd tell him stories.  Stories from my life, and about my family.

            And I noticed this pattern -- it had started that very first time when we had met.  I would say something typically, for me, simplistic or naïve -- and Wolin would take that, and spin from it something deliciously intellectual and profound.  I found this quite gratifying.

            Like, there was this one lecture.  He had been riffing for about an hour on Don Quixote as a radical democrat:

            "To compress my point:  Democracy emerges from a revolutionary impulse -- an explosive release of human energy that protests against inevitability and overthrows the world as it is.  Yet because it exists, in its purest form, only in moments of revolution, democracy is evanescent: it slips away from us the moment we build institutions to sustain the energy.  Why?  Because these institutions are run by experts, who take upon themselves the primary responsibility for sustaining the revolutionary idea.  As the constitutional apparatus run by these experts hardens into a new inevitability, the bright flame of the revolutionary impulse flickers.  And when the people turn over their active role to the experts, the flame goes out.  Democracy remains fugitive.  The experts seek to sustain it -- but without the quixotic faith and participation of the ordinary citizen, the experts are insufficient.  Necessary for a constitution; insufficient for democracy."

            I looked around the room.  Everyone was on the edge of their seat.  And yet I was the only one in there who knew: this entire lecture, he was riffing based on something I had just told him!  In his office.  About something that had just happened to me.

*   *   *

            On Sept. 30, 1976, about a month into my freshman year, my youngest brother, Sam, was born.  Samuel Joseph -- or as my stepmother, Sue, called him, "Sammy Joe from Kokomo."  He arrived quite early -- he was three months premature.

            Oh, he came out so little!  He came out two pounds, one ounce.  Went down to one pound, 10 ounces.

            Fortunately, we lived only blocks away from a world-famous medical institution, the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center -- renowned for its combination of the exploratory energies of a Columbus with the original-sinning vibes of the Presbyterians, and then connected by a hyphen:  it was potent!  And they had the one ultra-ultra-premie ward in the whole world, at that time, that was set up to even try to help a baby born that small, and that soon, to survive.

            He was so little!  He didn't fit into my hand; he fit into the palm of my hand.  My whole brother, head to toe.

            And you know how with full-term newborns usually you can see their pulses through the tops of their skulls, because their skullbones haven't fused?  These kids: so little, their whole bodies pulsed.

            And they were kept in incubators, to keep them warm.  And then because when you're born that early your lungs aren't fully developed -- because you were expecting to swim around for a few more months -- these incubators were also ventilators: pfffff ... pfffff ...  Pumping in extra oxygen.

            And of course we all wanted to hold these kids, but they were terrified we'd give them our germs -- because their immune systems, also very underdeveloped.  So ingeniously, they had built into each incubator a glove -- so you could reach your hand in and lift up the child.

            I remember the first time I picked up my brother:  I couldn't feel him.

            So little!

            And the nurses: so graceful!  Gliding like angels from one incubator to another -- and treating these tiny beings with such dignity -- with what I would have to call love.  Love!  Where did it come from?

            And we wouldn't leave Sammy alone for a second.  My stepmother, Sue, took the day shift.  My dad would finish his job as a schoolteacher, he'd take the nights.  I came in from Princeton on the weekends.

            And then shortly before Christmas, the thing they had been fearing the most happened: A virus spread through the ward, and virtually all the babies perished.  Except for Sammy, and one or two others.

            The nurses, of course, were devastated -- but until the new babies arrived they focused all their prodigious energies on just the few who remained.

            So we came in on Christmas morning to find that a nurse had crocheted for Sammy a little Santa cap. ...  When I say "little," I mean, like, two molecules of yarn.  Pompom made out of a quark.

            But it meant so much to us!  My stepmother turned to me, she said, "Josh, now look -- why would someone make a hat for a kid who didn't have a future?"

            And yet as the weeks went by, it was clear something was wrong.  Sammy couldn't keep his formula down.  They did all these tests.  They finally determined: in surviving the intestinal virus, he'd been left with scar tissue, and it was blocking a portion of his intestine.  They would have to take out that part of his intestine -- it was his only hope for survival.  Put the other two parts together.  And, for some reason, they said, they were going to have to use general anesthesia -- you know, on a baby who under normal circumstances needed a lot of extra oxygen!

            They said his chances were at best 50-50.  I didn't like those odds.

            We waited what felt like interminably in the waiting room.  Finally the doctor comes in -- looking impossibly young to be a surgeon.  For a while he just stands there in the doorway.  We're all staring at him.  Finally, as sort of an afterthought, he goes, "Oh -- the operation went well."

            We go, "Thanks!  That was among our concerns."

            And Sammy recovered from the operation.  And he grew.  And grew.  I mean, "grew" -- he got up to, like, three and a half pounds.  But that was still big enough so they could move him out of the ultra-premie ward into just the regular premie unit.

            And here they were on firmer footing with their procedures.  And Sammy's vital signs, by now, were excellent -- except for one: his breathing.  He still needed extra oxygen.

            They kept trying to wean him off.  But every time they would turn the dial ... I think it was anything below 11 percent above normal oxygen, he'd chart to choke, to cough, to turn blue -- I mean, it was terrible!

            Till one day the experts came out and they said to us, "Look, we're going to be totally open with you guys:  We've tried everything we know.  Nothing works.  It's bad."

            And as you can imagine, we were very careful who we invited over to our place in those days -- just people we felt very, very close to and comfortable with.  Like my dad's old friend Marv Stern, from Brooklyn.

            Marv was over for dinner one night, and he's trying to cheer us up by telling us his typically raucous stories of growing up in Brooklyn as a young ne'er-do-well -- at first throwing rotten eggs at the Commies, and then becoming a Commie and throwing rotten eggs at the Trotskyites, and then on and on, till at some point he became an anarchist and he just started cooking for people (it was by far the nicest stage). ...

            We're all trying to smile a bit.  Except for my dad -- he's totally preoccupied.  Till in one moment my father slams the table with his fist: "That's it!!  He needs to be held!  A child needs to be touched!  The experts have allowed him to survive, but they don't hold him, they don't sing to him!"

            And Dad announced what he was going to do:  He was going to take the whole next week off from work -- even though, as it was pointed out to him, he had not accumulated those hours in sick leave or vacation time.  And he was going to spend that week just hanging out in the premie ward with Sammy -- even though, as it was also pointed out to him, they had very strict rules about visitation hours, even for parents; I think it was at maximum an hour per day.  Somehow, though, Dad was going to live there for a week.

            Marv turned to my father.  He said, "Paul, I understand where you're coming from ‑‑ I mean, I'm a parent, too.  But Paul, you do know, what you're planning here, it's quixotic!"

            My father said, "FUCK YOU!!!"  Stormed out.  Wouldn't talk to Marv for years after that -- these are old, dear friends.

            I sat there trembling, thinking, "What set my dad off like that?"  I mean, there were words that would trigger my dad in those days.  But they tended to be words like "Nixon."  Or "Mom."

            But "quixotic"!  What a strange word!  What does it even mean?

            I guess it means you're acting like Don Quixote, right?  You're a crazy guy.  You think you're a knight errant on a noble quest.  You put a bowl on your head, thinking it's your helmet.  And you wrap yourself in this flimsy thing, thinking it's your armor.  And you take your lance and go tilting at windmills, believing them to be giants.

            If you're quixotic, that means you're deluded, right?  It means you're a fool.

            And I have to admit to you guys:  As I stood there that Monday morning, outside the glass of the premie ward ...  I remember our fingerprint smudges all over that glass.  We're looking in at the one of us inside there: my dad, looking so out of place in there, wearing his ill-fitting blue scrubs.  Mask covering his bushy beard.  The nurses are glaring at him -- he's not supposed to be there. ...  Dad takes Sammy out of the incubator.  Holds him.  Rocks him.  Sings to him. ...  I have to confess, I did wonder: Are we quixotic?  Are we fools?

            Sammy starts to cough, to choke.  Dad puts him back in.  As soon as he's comfortable again, he takes him back out.  Rocks him, talks to him, sings to him. ...

            It wasn't till maybe Thursday morning that I noticed: Dad was taking Sammy out of the incubator for longer and longer periods.

            At first it was so incremental you wouldn't notice -- maybe a minute or two longer.  But then, 10 minutes longer.  A half-hour.  Hours.  Till by Sunday morning, Dad took Sammy out of the incubator -- and he never had to put him back.

            On Monday morning, Samuel Joseph Kornbluth went home.  And Dad went back to work.  And I went back to Princeton, where I would tell my advisor how it had all turned out.

*   *   *

            [A slide of the big, ungainly structure indicates we're back in Ohlone Park.]

            [Wolin, on phone:] "Well, Josh, of course I'll advise you on your thesis -- it's so wonderful you still want to do it!  Why don't we start this way: You jot down some of your early ideas, send me a note, and I'll reply as soon as I can with some initial reading suggestions."

            Click.

            Holy moley!!  I think I'm actually working on my thesis!!!

            So I'm gingerly climbing down from the dangerous structure ... and here comes one of my neighbors, Kristin Leimkuhler.  She goes, "So Josh, are you here for the meeting?"

            Now, look -- I come from a political family.  I know whenever I'm asked that question, there's only one correct answer: Yes!  Then you try like mad to figure out: What's the meeting about?

            All my neighbors, they're streaming out onto Ohlone Playground, and these flyers are being handed out -- prettily colored flyers.  Come to think of it, I've been seeing these flyers around the neighborhood for the last week.  I bet Kristin did them -- she's an artist: everything she does looks really nice. ...

            And now I figure out what's going on.  For the past couple years or so I've been grousing about this playground: "I wish someone would do something about this busted equipment!"  That's been my approach to the problem.  Turns out Kristin's been taking a slightly different tack: She's been trying to do something about it!

            She's gone onto the Internet.  Turns out you can order playground equipment now from all over the world -- new, New Agey stuff from all over.

            She's gone to the City of Berkeley.  She's found out this all falls under the auspices of the Department of Parks and Recreation.

            And get this: Because the land is zoned as a playground, there is already money in place for the new equipment!  All someone has to do is decide what equipment they might want, put up some flyers, invite their neighbors to come over and sign off on their plan!

            I say to my son, "You know how your daddy's been muttering all morning about democracy?  Well, check it out: You're about to see democracy in action!  Watch your daddy closely as he participates in democracy -- it's going to be so cool!

            I mean, come on -- I knew this was going to be a love-fest.  I mean, we're not talking about solving the Palestinian Question here.  This is the issue:  We have a playground in which the equipment is busted.  Should we replace that with equipment that works?

            PEOPLE WERE AGAINST IT!!!  A LOT OF THEM!!!

            I was trying to figure out: What were they opposed to, exactly?

            Their ringleader seemed to be this woman named Helga.  She was going on and on about these various concerns -- but overall, the overarching concern: noise -- the noise from children.

            I say, "Excuse me, Helga -- I'm a little confused here.  I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.  Because I believe there already is noise coming from children: It's the occasional scream of a child falling to his or her death! ...  Helga, if I may compress your point: You hate kids!  You hate people!  YOU HATE LIFE!!!"

            She goes, "Well, Josh, I must say, I don't think your tone of voice is called for."

            She was right!  I looked over at my little boy.  As I had commanded him to do, he'd been closely observing his daddy as I participated in democracy.  And how was I participating?  "BLAAAAGH!!"  I think I may even have been foaming at the mouth.

            In fact, I was reminding myself of someone: Hazel!

*   *   *

            [Sound effect.  Slide of Elizabeth Eckford being taunted and threatened by a mob of whites, including Hazel Bryan (whose expression, as she yells, matches Josh's as he yelled at Helga).]

            Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957.  The schools had been desegregated in law, but not in fact.  A group of incredibly brave African-American teenagers volunteered to be the first black students to try to enter the supposedly integrated Central High School in Little Rock.

            It wasn't going to be safe.  Governor Faubus, for example, had not responded with nurturing vibes: He had called in the National Guard.

            Security for these kids was being coordinated from the local branch of the NAACP, run by a woman named Daisy Bates.  Daisy had arranged for a number of adults -- mostly ministers, pastors, white and black -- to meet these kids when they got off the bus outside the school and walk them in.

            But as the day before school wore on, it became clearer and clearer things were going to be even more hazardous than they had anticipated.  There was talk of lynch mobs.  So they came up with a new plan:  Instead of the kids going directly to school, they were to go to this church in town, meet all the adults there, and they'd come in together as a group to the school.

            So Daisy Bates called around to all the families, to tell them about this new plan.  But she couldn't reach one of them: the Eckfords -- they didn't have a phone.  So she decided she would just stay late in the office, and first thing in the morning tell the Eckfords, at their home, directly: Don't send your daughter, Elizabeth, right to school -- there's a new plan.

            Only, Daisy had been working very hard, and she was under a lot of pressure.  And she overslept.

            So the next morning, Elizabeth Eckford woke up for her first day of high school.  She put on the dress she had hand-made for the occasion.

            Just to give you a sense she was not unmindful of the historic nature of what she was about to do:  All along the bottom of the dress -- [indicating slide:] you can only see part of it here -- but all along the bottom, she put a black-and-white check pattern.

            And my friend Brian Weiner, he's written a book in which he points out that Thomas Jefferson's great fear was that future generations would take the Constitution that Jefferson and his pals had written as some sort of a sacred document, never to be tampered with.  Jefferson felt passionately that each generation would have to come up with its own constitution, based on its own wisdom and circumstances.

            And in another book, a young scholar named Danielle Allen, from the University of Chicago, has taken it even further.  She suggests that each generation must also come up with its own habits -- its own habits of citizenship.  Because without those habits on the ground, what do those laws mean, really? ...  And she argues -- I think persuasively -- that in putting on this handmade dress and going to her first day of high school, this one teenage girl was in fact helping to reconstitute America.

            She took her books, got on the bus, and -- not having been told to do otherwise -- went directly to school.  Made her way to the front gates.  Was turned back by bayonets pointed in her chest.

            She turned, and as she started heading back towards the bus stop, she was followed by a mob -- a white mob -- coming closer and closer, yelling racial epithets at her.  A mob including a girl almost exactly Elizabeth's age -- a girl named Hazel.  Hazel Bryan.

            [Indicating slide:] And when this photo went out in newspapers across the country, Americans learned that even though the laws might have changed, the facts on the ground had not.  Because thanks to Elizabeth, now we could see clearly, in a public space in America, citizens had not yet learned the habit of treating one another as political friends.

            Oh, but hey -- that was all the way back in 1957!  Here we are all the way up in 2004.  I'm sure we all must have evolved a great deal.

            Well, let's use me as an example.  Here I am in a public space in America -- how am I participating?

            "BLAAAAGH!!"  I'm going all Hazel on poor Helga.

            In retrospect, not a shock.  Because look: when it came to civic participation I was out of practice.  I mean, there was a time when I used to participate -- there was.  But at some point, I stopped.

 

 

 

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Josh Kornbluth is a monologuist, filmmaker, and talk-show host who lives in Berkeley.  His website is http://www.joshkornbluth.com/.