Professor Radical Goes To Washington To Preview The Apocalypse

Today the Radical got up at dawn, took a cab to Teenie Airport and came to our nation's capital on behalf of an American Historical Association book prize committee. But I was also in for a nice surprise. Because I do not travel in the Right circles, until I checked my Twitter account I had not had it on my radar that the Teabag people were marching on Washington today.

Hence, I got to see history in the making. The hotel where the committee was meeting is right near the Mall, so that when I checked in with half an hour to spare, I rushed back onto the street to begin documenting the event. That's when I ran into the gentlemen in the photo on the left. I saw their flag swirling about and asked them if they would pose. They were happy to do so, but asked me to wait until they could stretch it out completely. "We don't want you to just take a picture that makes everyone think it's a Confederate flag," one said.

But it is a Confederate flag, I thought. Well no, not exactly. " 'At's the state of South Carolina battle flag," the other guy explained proudly. I took the picture and thanked them, immediately sending the photo via iPhone to the Mother of the Radical (MOTheR) who is, in fact, a Little Old Lady in Tennis Shoes, but of the left-wing variety. Reach out and touch someone, you know what I mean? I was then summoned by the book prize committee, who had perhaps looked out the window and thought they had seen their missing colleague consorting with Civil war re-enactors. At their polite request, I ran inside to eat a turkey club sandwich and to sacrifice for the History Profession, which was Arnita Jones' point in flying me down here in the first place.

As soon as we were done deciding the prize, I skibbled back outside and over to the Mall to gain insight into fellow countrymen and women, the like of whom do not congregate by the thousands in Shoreline. I was also, frankly, intrigued by my first interlocutors' distinction between "the Confederate Flag" and the "South Carolina battle flag" -- in which, as you can see, the Stars and Bars are prominently embedded. The distinction they were trying to make, I think, was that the former was racist but the latter was purely military -- and thus, not racist. In other words, they wanted to be taken seriously as political activists and patriots, not be dismissed as garden-variety white supremacists.

Patriotism was a big theme of a march where participants invoked race and racism only to deny that their actions were racist in origin. However, the occasional appearance of a "redskin," or a minstrel Uncle Sam with blacked face and long, nappy, fake dreds pouring out of his stovepipe hat complicated that claim, as did portraits of Obama in whiteface with large, red lips. Had I expressed my belief that such depictions and performances are racist, however, I think marchers would have told me that was projection on my part. "Liberals carry the race card in their wallets," read many signs.

Perhaps the aggressive denials of racism are inspired by the marchers' fear that their profound hatred, fear and contempt for President Barack Obama will be perceived as racist, when in their view it is merely hatred, fear and contempt of a President who happens to be black. And they do hate him: Joe Wilson's attack several days ago -- "You lie!" -- was echoed on tee shirts, signs and banners; I am told it was an ongoing chant at the rally. The view that Obama lies about everything is reiterated in words and images: the president was caricatured as the Joker and as the Devil, among other things. I am actually quite persuaded that they don't hate him only because he is black. They hate all politicians except Joe Wilson, and they only like Wilson because of his current position as the John Birch of Congress and because he said what they already believe: all politicians, all powerful people, lie. When they say there are no death panels, the reasoning goes, when it's not even in the bill -- you can be pretty sure there will be death panels. Lock and load, boys.

But I am also persuaded that in a paranoid world where our beloved Constitution is being held hostage by mysterious forces (Richard Hofstadter, phone home!) and "they" will be breaking down our doors any day now to pry our guns from our cold, dead hands, there are no black people who are politically legitimate figures. People who valorize the North American eighteenth century as the epitome of freedom and don't seem to remember that this form of freedom accommodated chattel slavery are telling you something about whether black people sharing political authority with white people, much less having authority over them, is natural and normal. I asked one white, professional resident of the District if it bothered her that she couldn't vote for national offices. She replied that it did, but that on balance she was quite glad that the vast majority of the people who lived in the District were also disenfranchised.

Those voters would be black.

My belief that a very complex story about race was played out today on the Mall was intensified by the fact that, in an hour and a half of mingling with the crowd I saw exactly two African-American and one Asian descended participant: everyone else was white. Everyone. The not-Confederate flag was the exception rather than the rule; most people wearing patriotic colors were wearing garish American flag shirts, jackets and hats; tee-shirts commanded the Congress to "get your hands off my Constitution" or insisted that the wearer "loves this country but fears the government." Yellow "Don't tread on me" flags were selling briskly. But there were also real Aryan Nation types there. I saw one group of young men whose tees explicitly identified them either as Klansmen or Klan wanna-bes; and a second group wore Minuteman tees. At another point I was walking and chatting with a group, one of whom asked me if I had noticed how clean the Mall was after the rally (in fact I had; I had also seen marshals walking around reminding people to pick up their trash, and heard, in passing, other marchers proudly pointing out to each other how clean the protesters were leaving the Mall.)

I said yes, the Mall was clean, and it was pointed out to me in a meaningful way that "other groups" left the Mall filthy. "Why do you think that is?" I asked. Six or seven people turned around and said, more or less in unison, "Their culture!" Now, I mention this not to mock anybody, but rather to say that I think that this is an excellent example of how ordinary right wing people, not just politicians, have learned to talk about race in a certain way while still claiming that they don't see race -just "behaviors" or "culture." I asked what they meant by culture, and one person explained that after Symphony concerts the Mall was always clean, but after pop and rock concerts, Boy Scouts had to be brought in from the suburbs to clean it up. When I asked to what they attributed this phenomenon, one of my companions explained that those who don't clean up after themselves in public spaces are "freeloaders" (one of the day's buzzwords) and "people who think they are going to be handed everything they need." I asked whether people who marched on behalf of abortion cleaned up after themselves, and I was told that no one knew, but that "Pro-Life marchers always clean up."

I then asked if homosexual marchers cleaned up, and that brought the conversation to a thoughtful stop for a moment. One person said she didn't know, as she had never been to a homosexual march, and another said, "Oh, I think they would clean up!"

We are a very neat people. And if you are really lucky we divide all the perennials before we go home to sodomize each other.

Please consider that moment of cynicism as the kind of humor that often follows a complex and deeply disturbing experience. That said, it's really good discipline to get out among people you disagree with violently, to just listen to them and to try to understand that these are real people and not some figment of Rachel Maddow's imagination. Although it would have been tempting to push some of the conversations further, I don't think it would have been very smart to get into an argument with anyone, and I'm glad I didn't. It would have been confusing too: while the media and the Republican party may want to bill this as an anti-health care march, as someone who was on the ground, I have to tell you that this was but one of many issues. Furthermore, few people had any sense of what they wanted from a health care system except that it not encroach on their freedom; that they not lose the right to refuse medical care that the government might force on them (like vaccinations, abortion and suicide); and that people who can't pay for health care, for whatever reason, don't deserve it and shouldn't have it. I almost became convinced that health care reform is not, in a funny way, even their issue. On the right you can see a disabled woman in a wheelchair, who may have been there because she truly believes the government will put her to death. She was one of several disabled people I saw who apparently oppose any health care bill the President or the Democratic Party might come up with that is intended to prevent the insurance companies from fiscally raping them or shutting them out altogether. There were other marchers whose health is clearly precarious: elderly folks, smokers, the overweight, people soldiering on with canes, oxygen tanks, scoliated spines and missing limbs. Mysteriously, to me at least, they too oppose better, cheaper and more accessible health care; meanwhile, many of their fellow marchers will tell you that people who smoke, who are fat, who "make bad choices," don't deserve any breaks.

I would say that the spine of this protest is not any well considered opposition to health care, but to taxes, and to the idea of government itself. This is not news, but I did want to emphasize that I am aware of this. How we pave roads and fight Holy Wars against the Taliban without government is not clear to me, but my guess is that those are details that would naturally resolve themselves if we could just get the yoke of bureaucracy off our necks. One of the pamphlets I picked up was from FairTax.org, which proposes to run what is left of the country, and the gargantuan military that right-wingers believe is indispensable to preserving "our freedoms," through sales taxes. The IRS would be abolished! "No Income, Payroll, AMT, Corporate, Estate, Capital Gains, Interest of Dividend Taxes; Keep your whole paycheck -- No withholding." Astonishingly, they also have a plan to tax "illegal and underground economies." But everyone else was there too: the anti-abortion folks; the gun folks; the anti-sodomy folks, the birthers, the anti-immigration folks, the home schoolers, the prayer-in-schoolers, and the folks who are always telling you the end is near. There was one person carrying a sign with his three issues, none of which had to do with health care: "The CIA protects our freedoms; End forced abortions; Child molesters deserve life in prison." Another sign read: "Thank you FOX News, for telling the Truth!"

I am sure the Republicans will try to bill this as "the people" rejecting "the President's proposals," but take it from me -- there was something far more opaque and interesting going on than that. I think the Republicans are holding on to these shock troops by a thread, and perhaps not at all. Astonishingly, one theme that seems to be emerging (and it is particularly prominent in a DVD I was given that contains two short films, The Obama Deception and America: From Freedom to Fascism) is that there is no difference between Obama and George W. Bush, a fantasy that I thought was the exclusive purview of Ralph Nader and Alexander Cockburn. One sign that pictured Obama as the Anti-Christ, when flipped, displayed Bush as the Anti-Christ. In fact, the Obama victory is proof-positive of the conspiracy that this right wing fringe has warned us about since the 1930s. In this apocalyptic scenario, Obama's election is part of the Wall Street plot to bring America to its knees, and now it appears that George W. Bush was a critical agent in that plot. This was a very interesting discovery. Indeed, if you go to Freedom's Phoenix, who produced the films above, our hero, Congressman Joe Wilson, is revealed as a "hypocrite" who voted for health care for illegal immigrants in 2003. (I wouldn't take this to the bank: Freedom's Phoenix also hints that Barack Obama may be involved in the Kennedy assassination cover up, and that MRI brain scans can detect a tendency to "freeload" that could then be corrected through medical intervention.)

There's more, but I think you get the picture. Here's the good news: a group that is so internally fractured, unfocused and opposed to the political system is not a powerful interest group but a Frankenstein monster. These folks hate the Republicans too, and I think a lot of them are disappointed Goldwaterites for whom the conservative revolution that we historians are so fascinated by never happened. Their history is a story of decline, and of brave individuals fighting back against freeloaders, financiers and foreigners. "Everything Barack Obama says means something different," The Obama Deception warns, For the Teabag people, this is a lesson to be learned more broadly about a political class that, from their perspective, only pretends to be a two party system. When they protest big government," they are not Republicans, or even conservatives in the conventional sense of the word. They are defenders of personal liberty against a one party state linked to a secret global system, a state that floods a nation of good white working people with illegal immigrants and freeloading welfare cheats, chuckling relentlessly about how they are fooling all of us.

I want to thank the people who shared their stories with me today, and those who agreed to have their photographs taken to document this march on Tenured Radical.

The Radical of America Goes To Washington City: Part 2

OK, so in my title I am once again ripping off Lauren Berlant, who was ripping off Harriet Jacobs to evoke the historic trope of the pilgrimage to our Nation's Capital. But one of the ways you can tell I am a real political historian is that I just love Washington. I love Washington like my nephews love a Six Flags theme park. I am a sucker for that transformative moment of recognition that occurs when confronted with the instruments of my own citizenship: the White House, the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court. The Lincoln Memorial makes me weep. Sometimes I think this is because I am the child and grandchild of immigrants: my maternal grandparents came to this country in 1936, as middle-class bankrupts, with two children, and my grandfather thought he was going to die of tuberculosis. Instead, they got back on their feet with a little help from Dr. New Deal and became regular middle-class people again. My grandfather thought Franklin Roosevelt was the greatest man who ever lived, and that he had saved our family.

I wrote my first book about the New Deal.

When I am in Washington doing research, and have a little time, I go visit the Constitution. You know which one I mean: that copy that is supposed to sink deep into the ground, into a bomb-proof shelter when the red phone rings and Vladi or Nikki or Dr. Strangelove on the other end lets you know that the Big One is only five minutes out and we are all going to die. I love it that the rest of us might flame out in cinders and smoke, but the Founding Document will be preserved for eternity.

I have loved Washington since I came here decades ago with my school friend Cornelia Dayton (now also a historian) when I was in the tenth grade or so, escorted by her mother, who took us to all the things we desperately wanted to see: the Kennedy Center, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and a special treat, watching Meet The Press being filmed. You would have to ask my friend what she remembers but I, at least, was in heaven. At one point, when we were in the Senate gallery, there was a roll call vote, and all the Senators filed down one by one. Their names were called, and they voted "Aye" or "Nay," not like in the House where everyone punched a button. I saw Teddy Kennedy; I saw Hugh Scott, our senator from Pennsylvania who was the Republican minority whip. I saw Sam Ervin, the conservative, segregationist Democrat from North Carolina, who was presiding over the destruction of Tricky Dick Nixon. When they called Ervin's name to request his vote, he had just lumbered into the chamber and was making his way down the aisle. Everyone else stopped talking, he looked up dramatically, and said firmly: "AH!" Which was Carolinian for aye. It thrilled me to the core.

You think I'm kidding, don't you? Well, I'm not. It really was my idea of fun. After all, I was the one who skipped most of a summer of wiffle ball in 1973 and stayed inside, eyes glued to the TV, as the Watergate testimony unfolded before the unforgiving, disdainful eyes of Ervin. I yelled at the TV as Nixon's henchmen perjured themselves: I scorned them almost as much when they gave up and told the truth. I sat rapt the following summer as Representative Barbara Jordon, who in 1972 had been the first Black woman to be elected to the House from the former Confederacy, spoke of her love for the Constitution as a member of the House Judiciary Committee considering the articles of impeachment. Here's the first part of Jordan's famous televised speech:

And the rest:

My family thought this was more or less a very odd, although harmless, set of interests; and the Mother of the Radical (MOTheR) had detested Nixon ever since he had smeared Helen Gahagen Douglas in 1950, so she thought it was about time that others came around to her point of view. Besides, other children spent their evenings poring over the day's testimony to fine-tune the chronology of events that would prove indisputably that the President knew about -- had ordered -- these illegal acts. Right?

Who knew that I would grow up to find the one career where regular pilgrimages to historic sites and rifling through the papers of the powerful would be a required part of the job? Sadly, I don't have time for research on this trip, as I have to get home and answer a few thousand emails. But tomorrow before I get on the train, having completed my work on the American Historical Association committee that I am on, I will take a little stroll down to the Capitol just to make sure the Bushies know we are watching them and we do not forgive them for what they have done to our country.

We, the people, that is.

The AHA for Dummies; or, A Guide to History's Oldest Annual Meeting Designed for the Novice Conference Goer

Is she in Heaven? Is she in Hell? That damned, elusive Radical!" (A cry often heard at conferences, originated by the Baroness Emmuska Orczy.)

This is just to say: if you are pseudonymous, anonymous or a lurker, I insist that you come up to say hello to me at the AHA. I would love to meet you. I can't tell you precisely where I will be at any given time, and the blogger meet-up is, I think, scheduled for a lunch I am supposed to eat elsewhere. But I can certainly be found at my own panel, Sunday at 11 (pray god it doesn't start to snow at 9 as it did in Atlanta a decade ago); and I can also be found at the interviewing workshop Tony Grafton has organized for Friday during the 9:30 a.m. session where, as I understand it, there will be role playing of various kinds. I am looking forward to learning a few things too, so come one, come all. In between, I can only specifically promise a sighting at the Radical History Review/CLGH reception on Friday night.

You'll recognize me. I'll be wearing black.

So instead of giving you a list of what I aspire to in the New Year (Item #1: "Diversify blog beyond posts that yank on the testicles of right-wing gadflies") or my ten favorite books of 2008, the Radical is going to spread a little light on how to function socially at the AHA. This is expressly aimed at those who either have never attended this meeting before, or who were so traumatized by their first AHA that they can't decide what shampoo to pack.

So here goes:

Please remember that we go to the AHA to socialize. Yes, there are panels, I know. God knows, I'm on one. And there are sometimes panels, or individual papers, that knock your socks off. But mostly we go to AHA to see friends and colleagues, hang out in those open bars in hotel lobbies and drink overpriced booze -- or worse -- a $2.00 glass of bubble water with a lime in it. We go to the AHA to go to dinner with our friends. We go to the AHA to hang out in the book exhibit, to go to lavish book parties held by the big presses, to go to receptions. Please do not forget this. You are now one of us and we expect great things of you.

This might cause the skeptical to think that the AHA has deteriorated as a primarily intellectual venue since its inception 122 years ago, but that is actually not the case. Almost from the get-go, it was an extraordinarily social event, where networks of men promoted each other's interests, and hired each other's students, all the while consuming vast amounts of cigars, rich food and booze. In 1912, for example, the conference committee scheduled a special train, with sleeper and dining cars, to go from Boston to Richmond, and at every major stop -- New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington -- more historians got on board and joined a huge party in progress, a party that ended with a pre-convention formal dinner -- served on the train. The dinner followed a grand tour of the battlefields outside the former Confederate capital, with genuine Confederate veterans available to tell of their heroic deeds first hand. And if you have done some work in the AHA archives, you will know that, for our founding fathers, planning the "smokers" (to which female historians were not invited --for their own good, dammit) and putting together the invitation lists was at least as important as putting together the program. In fact, one might argue that a major cause of the 1915 AHA insurrection was the fact that southern and western historians were not invited to the best parties, and they came to resent it.

So actually, we have always gone to the AHA to socialize. It is a tradition. And we are not going to let the side down this year. Particularly in Washington, where there is so much to do.

It is from this crucial piece of knowledge that all other knowledge flows for the novice conference attendee. To wit:

Good conference contacts are well-orchestrated conference contacts. There is nothing wrong with approaching people you don't know, or people you know only slightly, to solidify or initiate a relationship. In fact, I encourage it, particularly really famous people in your field. But you must imagine these as brief encounters, encounters that you will dominate and control. For example, when you are talking to someone of higher status than you (which if you are a graduate student is almost everyone,) watch that person's eyes as you are talking. At the moment those eyes start to drift over one of your shoulders, interrupt and say, "Oh jeez, I'm late for that meeting with my editor." Or, "I am supposed to be in a panel right now! So nice to see you!" Then bustle off. In other words: do not be a dump-ee, be a dump-er.

Watch out for your main chance. What do I mean by this? OK: scenario. You have arranged to go out to dinner with a friend in your grad school cohort. Suddenly you fall in with a fun group of people you have just met at a reception, and they invite you to go to dinner with them. Do you:

a. Say "I'm sorry, I'm meeting someone else for dinner," and beetle off;

b. Call your friend and say you have been taken ill and cannot go to dinner;

c. Say to your new acquaintances, "Gee I'd love to -- I am supposed to met a friend for dinner, but is it ok to add one more?"

The correct answer is: c. There are some people who I have subsequently become fast friends with who I originally met at a conference dinner where I was included at this last minute, either on my own or through someone else.

Imagine what you will say when, at a reception, someone asks you what your dissertation/book manuscript is about. Now remember, they do -- and they don't -- really want to know. For some people this is a sincere question; for others, it is a default question when they don't know what else to say to you. Because you can't know which it is, you must attend to two main rules.

a. Be able to say it in a sentence, and not as if you are in a job interview, but as if you are in a social situation. Don't, for God's sake, drop your eyes to the floor, take a big gulp of air, and say something really complicated and long. I repeat -- it's a party. For extra points, relate your work to the other person's research interests.

b. Do pay attention to whether your new friend's eyes light up (indicating genuine interest) or whether this person's affect remains unchanged and flat (indicating that it was only a polite question.) Proceed accordingly.

Do not, for God's sake, save money by not registering. This is what we call a false economy. Why? Because the book exhibit is the center of the action. The book exhibit is where you go when you have time to kill. The book exhibit is where presses throw parties for fabulous authors and their fabulous friends. With free food and free wine. The book exhibit is where you are most likely to find a scholar you want to meet, temporarily cut off from her glittering herd, and vulnerable to a swift introduction. To wit:

a: "Professor Hofstadter, I just wanted to say hello. I'm a student of your old friend X at Prestigious University, and she is always recommending your work to me."

b. "Professor Radical, I just want to say that I love your blog! How do you put up with the trolls? Yes, I'm in Shoreline for a year on fellowship. You know, I am working in an archive you probably know -- oh, you don't? Well, sure -- if you are interested, we could grab some coffee back in Shoreline."

c. "Professor Dunning, I just finished your book on Reconstruction -- yes, I really enjoyed it, but don't you think you were a teeny-weeny bit hard on the freedmen? Of course, who am I to say -- you know, Dr. Phillips gave a talk at Big State U. and he couldn't say enough about you."

Invite yourself to parties. I once invited myself, as a newly minted Radical, to a great party where I found a Famous Historian happily nestled in a bottle of bourbon, and he offered to take me back to the Smithsonian and show me John Dillinger's penis. Although I declined, this is definitely one of my favorite conference memories, as it was followed by an hour or so of witty repartee with one of the most fun historians alive. Take points off if you view this encounter as sexual harassment, since I was at the time writing a book that involved John Dillinger. And it was really funny. And it is a long standing rumor that the Dillinger member resides, preserved in formaldehyde, in the Smithsonian.

This is how you find the parties: first of all, smokers will be advertised on the lavish message boards. But many are not advertised. If someone mentions a party you have not been invited to, consider yourself invited. It goes like this:

Historian: "maybe I'll see you later at the Michigan Party." (Remember; this is an exit line, and this person does not specifically want to meet you at the party.)

You: (who know nothing of this party) "Oh yeah, I'm definitely planning on it -- where is that party again? I left my book upstairs."

The Radical will, of course, be blogging the AHA -- I hope on a daily basis, depending on what kind of pressure social life imposes. Anyone who wants to see conference blogging to die for should check in to Flavia immediately. Flavia's dry wit is appealing no matter what it is aimed at, but this series of three posts had me giggling until my forehead hurt.

And check out this spoof of MLA program materials. Hat tip to Margaret Soltan at University Diaries. It is one of the best grad student capers I've seen since the JUDY! fanzine.

The Radical of America Goes to Washington City (with Apologies to Lauren Berlant and Harriet Jacobs)

I am here in Washington D.C., getting ready to get on a shuttle and go to another city, after interviewing job candidates at the anthropology meetings -- otherwise known as the AAA. The anthropology meetings are actually a lot like the American Historical Association (AHA) meetings -- which will be at the exact same pair of hotels, the Omni and the Marriott, in January. In fact, the last time I came to the AHA, it was at this same set of hotels too. It is also a particularly difficult set of hotels: the Marriott is actually two different buildings, pinned together, which means that the floor numbers do not match up. I remember this vividly because -- yes, you guessed it -- this is where I also interviewed for jobs, 'lo these many years ago, and where I met with the Zenith hiring committee. When I found them. Since I was on the right floor on the wrong side of the hotel.

So today, while my anthropologist colleague and I were taking a break from interviewing to go to the book exhibit and get lunch, I was having a series of flashbacks. But hotels being what they are, I was often filled with uncertainty: was my memory from this hotel, or a similar hotel in Chicago -- or was it Atlanta? San Francisco? Maybe it was the ASA in Philadelphia six weeks ago -- or the Minneapolis Hilton, last March? Truth be told, I have clearly been to too many professional events lately, and they are starting to run together in my mind.

But here's another comparison: a large crowd of anthropologists looks very much like a large crowd of historians, except that there are more men wearing pony tails and facial hair. There's the fashionable, queer pony tails and facial hair, of course, but mostly I am referring to the "I still have counter-culture values and don't much like to shave" pony tails and facial hair. Which at least gives them a kind of rugged look. But historians (except for the French historians!) often just have that "I bought my suit off the (wrong) rack" look. I remember walking through through the lobby of a conference hotel with a queer studies colleague during an AHA one year, and she started to sing in a low voice to the tune of the old movement song "We Are a Gentle Loving People," "We-e-e are a scruff-y, ill-dressed pee-e-ople." And it is true. Historians, as a group, are not stylish like, say, English and Comp Lit people. Go to the Shakespeare or Chaucer cash bars at the MLA and you will be struck by how very stylish they are. Medievalists, who traverse the worlds of history and literature, would confirm this impression, I think.

But enough about fashion, or the lack thereof. The other thing I love about being in Washington is that I have spent a lot of wonderful time here, with people I loved and with work I cared deeply about. I have been coming here to do research off and on for at least twenty-five years, so I have a great affection for certain places. Like the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building, where I spent weeks doing research for my first book. Sometimes, for fun, I would take the FBI tour when I had read so many documents my eyes were spinning in my head. Or the Library of Congress, where I spent weeks doing research for my second book, and where I am still grateful to the librarians who opened up as quickly as possible after the anthrax scare in 2002, because they knew people with very little money for their research needed them to open. Or the National Archives, which I return to again and again for every project. To me, these libraries and archives represent the most uncomplicated connection to being an American citizen, because in their boxes and on their shelves are the keys to so much we still need to know. And the idea that you can actually get to know a group of archives well, over decades, and that a set of memories about my professional life can have become so located in a place not my home, is also kind of astonishing to me. I won't ever live in this place, I am pretty sure, but the Radical of America lives in Washington City all the same.