has been absolutely fabulous so far. my name is sheila wilensky, and this is "right on, far out:ar looking back at the '60s." i'd like to thank university medical center for sponsoring this venue and kxti community radio here in tucson for sponsoring the authors. police departments. ..

>> if you are enjoying the festival of books, go on to our website and become a friend of the festival immediately after you leave today. thank you for being here. i am absolutely thrilled to have these three authors here with us. as a child of the 60's, about 40 years ago i remember mark te rudd political action at columbi columbia. i remember reading joyce maynard's, and 18 year old looks back on life on the front pagel of the new york times in 1972. and by the dead men, mark the todd deadman with wendy has been my friend from more than 20

years. so i w so, i would like to just briefly introduce the panelists and the, we will get started. start joyce, immediately to my left, m grew up in new hampshire and nos lives in marin county.ame o her books that came out of that magazine piece, looking i haveis this book back then. this has been with me of all time. time and joyce has written a second memoir called at home in the world, which was written in 1998.dd in the middle of our panel mark that tide dead man who lives onr mount desert island main. she has been in business, she has been a fund raiser, but alll her lifel she has been a writer.

she has written four books. i forgot to say that joyce has written four books of nonfictior and seven novels. then she has -- then we have mark rudd who goes way back to colombia political action andves also the seven years underground. he was a leader of the fps or one of the leaders of thes for students for democratic society and the weatherman at columbia and wrote his memoirs last yeare calledmo underground.deround. so, i want to start by askingasg each of our panelists, why did you read your books? book >> my we can start with joyce. >> my answer, sheila, probably doesn't have a lot to do with es n thote 60's, but more to do with e 60's the realities of being 18 andini whenever. you find yourself 18 years old.

i grew up in a small newmall new hampshire town.nd that always wanted to get out of the o town. hit the big city.i wa i was always writing.i was alys but at 18i think i understoodrsd that there was only one subjecta about which i was fully equippee to ride, and that was my own life. and so i began writing prettyn yang as sort of light to get out hampshire. in what proved to be my one and only year of college. t a letter of to the editor inchi chief ofof new york times sayint how would like to read for you. back andndly he wrote said okay. oka he alsoy. understood there wase only one topic i was an expert on. he said, why don'tai you writeti about pulling -- growing up in th the 60's. that became a cover story in the new york times magazine section that really did overnight change myly life.fe.

in good and troubling ways. mltimately it led to myto publishing that book and your by letter beforeea i got too old.o they were rushing me.hing they did not want me to be 2020n when it came out.[laugh 0 now., none of us are 2 i broke a -- i wrote this book, "expecting to fly," after another book that i had writtenr about my daughter. i was a business person. s as s aheila said, i was runninga radio station and working as a ing professional fund-raiser in maine.ne i had a pretty nice life. the 60's were far behind me. i was president of the bank or rotary. that might not mean much to you. but it meant a lot to me. i was a business person, and itn was a responsible citizen.e ci i had gotten over telling people about stuff that i used to do used t because i thought everybody did th that stuff. sometimes i saw somebody withsod

long, messy hair.essy you know come how we all sleptpt with everybody.e looking at me like this divvied. you know all that lsd we took.o. up. i shut i shut up about it because it. said, i guess not. but then when my daughter was aa teenager she started getting into a lot of stuff.f. it was horrible. suddenly it was not be having an fun trip, it was my daughter, and it was scary.sc we went through a reallyrible terrible time. i wrote a book about it, agusta don. then i guess in the course ofnde going through that with my daughter and going through thatr with myself writing about it ita started thinking, well, what was all that about and how do i feel about it now as an adult when i am so different? was that just stupid and dangerous? all the stuff we did and all the stuff we begin?ieved then was there something magical andd

wonderful about that? i wrote this book, "expecting to fly," to find out. >> thank you, the. mark. >> well, i am probably like aab, lot of peop lle in this audienc i ahave a form of post-traumatia stress disorder, pt st which ish that every time the united starts to five united statess at does another bore i getprofoundy profoundly depressed. i also could active. first depression and then theprd activity. they alternate whether they ares simultaneous. in 1985i became aware that thee united states was doing the same thing in central america that ww have been doing, that our ou government had breen doing in vietna vietnam and indochina. s i set outet to write a book on vietnam. i i studied war in vietnam andtn

thought about it. i thought, what did i know about it from having been in the anti-war movement, which, actually, was quite a lot. at some point in the process i've realized nobody wanted essays, they wanted the story.sa they wanted a personal story.st i wrote that in the 80's. however, i was not satisfiedt s with that because a friend of f mine said, well, the 40 year-old is always beating up on the 20 year-old in the story.the s i put the book away for 15 years. then in 2003 the united statesui started another warm. i thought, well, and this time, though, the movie came out called the weather underground.d i happened to be featured in tht movie, oddly enough. some strange coincidence thatug.

these things would happen together. the first time i gave an w,rvie interview. 1999 was the first time i give an interview. and i found that young people wantet to know the story. s they wanted to know what it was. about.t it waso demonstrative that i ww going around to dozens of college campuses. so i sat down to write thethis story. old i take the manuscript out of thy causes, literally out of a back shelf on the closet. i started reworking it. peoplegoal was to tell young people what happened then andoml perhapse some lessons about what they could learn -- that might be useful about what to do ort hat not to do.tha, i >> martha, i have a question for you.

and "expecting to fly" you talkt about history, perhaps, makingm our lives seem more important. to follow up on what marcus saia could you comment on that? do you feel that time in history made our lives, those of us just growing up in the 60's somehow more important? histor history affect your life? >> at think you are misquoting me. fo offense. o and not sure i said that. >> that's fine. >> when i think of the 60's at6f think of being really young.rea we were really young. i think of the 60's as being67-. 67-73.k e i think we were just so young.vt we did feel everything was very important. [laughter] we thought we were important mpr because we were done and becausd everything was some new.so

it was the first war.wa it was the worst government. it was the most exciting time. all of our ideas were brand new. in that way i feel that wein tha thought of ourselves as extremely important. that that time grinds to us, to somes ofo us, an important time becaue it was a time when everything was still no. at t adolescence and early adulthood is lit with a certain light that is never replicated at anothert time. >> i do think, too, that thereee was, in those years, sond it's dangerous to generalize becausee there were so many different ways to experience that era, buf the voices of young people were regarded as s o much more important than they are now. young people, at least tell l speak for myself.speak my i had a sense that someone wasse interested in knowing what i i felt. i witnessed the fact that the new york times wanted me to wa m

irite about my life.l nhe summer after that i was ono the panel at the democraticocrac national convention talking about the onyoualth vote. amazing. i was listened to.tened i don't think that young people -- i'm thinking of my on threeh adult children, have the same sense of being a part of the as cess. i know that i did. >> yes, mark.rk. >> i'm constantly kicking mysell because i missed the punk movement. af at the 7i actually think punk ii culturally probably more important than most of us in this room realized. i noticed that the young th anarchists kids relate to punk,p neil pont. that is thereil music.si and so i think, oh, man, i, missed something. i'd just about can maybe figure

out jammed john masius sensibility, his movies. he is punt. so anyway, you know, i second os what mark the said aboutt m everybody thinkingar that --ing what's happening. other on the other hand, there was something special about those os us who grew up in the 50's andan early 60's and experienced the civil rights movement in the south. that was an example of a momento in the anti-war movement, wom women's movement, there was an anti-nuclear movement in the 70's and 80's, believe it or not, that said that nuclear power plants are inherentlye dangerous and should not be built. i have not iseen that on

television lately. i've seen a lot of nuclear physicists saying, don't worry let's a meltdown. >> let's bring and martha and joyce. but me askch you commendably you lost your response to this. what about what informs your l life today, what you would haved liked to have brought with youro from the 60's in a politicall movement, personal movement, whenever. what have you really brought with you and taken to heart froy the 60's? >> i would say enormous idealism.our >> complete irreverence of oneca

of call our generation. without being able to performbr change, bring about change, almost a sense of futility and disenfranchisement. i felt disenfranchised.ly i believe the first time i heard pete seeger.d i was about 18 years old andht s that was ready to dedicateicat ourselves to wherever he wasg. going.ink th add the foatllowing. i don't think that music accomplishes that.nkit now moot by -- now music takes us away. i would say for myself that along with -- i'm happy to say and idealism that does not seemt to be squashed entirely byy experience of sad history over h the last maniy years.yars it is a large ambition of whatan possibsible.

i am much more inclined now to a work in the small and low will way. >> is that because of age, it's gett anin older? to you attribute it at all to e being older?. >> no. >> i it treated to experience. the more ambitious global goalse are less realistically attainable than the small humblk ones.ted in pa i itrt treated impart to raisino children. when we spent the last 30 someas years raising children you focus in small. those are your the zero ntil the plant.u > we used to say we want to

change the world in the 60's. 6 we have all heard the saying,yi, well, all we can do is change ourself.ourselve would anybody like to respond to that? that how did what yo?u became maybeab contribute to idealism or lost the 60's ithe anybody else wants to comment on that. >> i am a normal american. i own three vehicles, and one of them has the v-8.v8. i burned lots and lots of gas.ia i am a normal american living vewe a normal american. however, i happen to have beenn part of the movement that helped end a war of aggression.on. what an incredible historicali event in the history of thisevee country and the history of the world.try in the world. millions of us were part of this.

unfortunately many young people have not themselves experienced these movements, and so they think nothing can ever change. and i go about the college campuses i here people say, well, nothing anyone does can never make a difference. now, that statement alone would have been absurd in the 60's or 70's, absolutely absurd. no one ever -- i never heard anyone say anything like that because it was obviously not true. that experience is invaluable. somehow or another young people are going to have to figure this out for themselves, that what they do can make a difference and they will have to learn how to join together with other people and organized. that old phrase, don't mourn, organize. >> thank you, mark. >> experiencing that in other countries. >> i think american kids must feel ashamed of themselves and then look at what can people in egypt and the middle east are

accomplishing , intelligent man kids to think about the world, 5%, 3%. i don't know. the entertainment culture, another thing we have going for us, we did not have as all-encompassing, all-hegemonic and entertainment culture as the poor kids have now. i should not have gotten into this. anyway. please. >> thank you, marc. martha, you have a personal connection to the vietnam war. could you just tell us of little bit about that? >> i grew up in washington d.c. where my father was -- work for the st. louis dispatch and the washington bureau. he was a foreign correspondent. richard deadman. he spent a lot of time in southeast asia and other places in the world where there was trouble. he was against the war,

skeptical of the war very, very early on and talked to my sister and i about it quite a lot so that we grew up feeling that the war it was very wrong. we were very active in the civil rights movement in washington and then in the anti-war movement. in fact, i know she let is also referring to later in 1970 my father was in cambodia and was taken prisoner and was missing for 40 days. i mention that in my book. and then eventually he was released. he felt that he had to report the facts, but in such a way that people would get the real story instead of what ever story people wanted them to get.

and i spoke about it in this book, but i remember i think i am a little more cynical than either of these people. and i think part of that came from feeling that, yeah, i would like to think i still believe all this. i'm against the boards. i am skeptical of government, but i guess i just feel that it seems inevitable that when people get power they get corrupted. it just seems to happen again and again. we get rid of this war and get another. it is so important that we have to go and. i lived in maine. i lived on an island in maine. i tried to, you know, work and the local government. i worked in the local library. i try and be a good daughter and mother and friend and write books that have some measure of my experience and truth in them, but as far as being politically active at this point it is not

for me. i remember in -- one last thing, i remember when i've as a kid saying to my dad, well, everybody is bad. noted. he said, there are bad people, but there are good people, too. you have to keep chipping away. that is how he lived his life. i have to tell you, he will be 93 in may still writing editorials. against the war. >> joyce, you were very reflective at an extremely young age about what you saw in society. were you involved -- i mean, i read a book's many times. could you tell our audience how, perhaps, you were either involved politically or how you saw all of this? a very reflective, introspective

writer. >> well, in many ways, she let, for me i was a little bit down to go anywhere during debate years when people were heading to washington. in many ways i think the let -- lessons of witnessing -- and mark is absolutely right. i remember those images from first and second grade of marchers in the south and hearing chum by yet sang about the for murdered girls. those were powerful images and stories for me. when i was much older boy, in the 80's, i woke up one morning and there was a little tiny item, not on the front page, but

the back page of my new hampshire newspaper mentioning happily, reporting on the good news that our area of new hampshire had been selected as one of 14 finalists for the first in the nation with a high-level nuclear waste dump. this was going to bring jobs. i wasted. i was a mother of three very young children at that point. supporting my family as a writer living in the country. i was also -- my identity was not that of an activist. i felt that i was raising children. i waited for the activists to do something. i was sure that within 24 hours the anti-nuclear people that have remembered would be out in force, and nothing happened the next day and the next day. i called my congressman's office, and they weren't doing anything. i called the governor's office, and somebody was foolish enough to say to me, we have decided. i said, where are the stores in

the paper. this man actually said, we have decided -- is statewide policy from the governor's office not to disseminate information on the grounds it would create a statewide panic. [laughter] well, at that point i knew that the activist had to be me. everyone was waiting around for someone, and i'm happy to say that the next six months of my life and my husband's and that of an increasing number, including very died in the will citizens of my town and the larger community now looking at the appropriation of hundreds of thousands of acres of the granite state for the purpose of the completely untried technology, organized and eventually that policy was killed. not in my backyard way, nuclear waste continues to be a problem

but, in fact, imagine the story because, in fact, that was a relic of my experience of an earlier time manifesting and my belief that i could get a little phone tree going with my neighbors and call a meeting in my local town hall. as it turned out on the night that the challenger exploded, a snowy new hampshire night, all of these local citizens showed up and decided to create a movement, and it was one that actually did stop the government. >> thank you. i want to ask mark because joyce brought up this would create a panic if we knew about this. now we hear all of this. it is all for national security, the fear that goes on in our country through the media is rampant, and of want to ask mark, would you tell us why the charges were dropped against you

when you were underground and came back? >> i was underground -- i was a federal fugitive from 1970-1977. actually, though, the federal charges were dropped in 73 in the wake of watergate -- excuse me. it was exactly as ordered it was sort of beginning. a federal judge, judge damon keith in detroit who was one of the few black federal judges on the bench was very concerned with the rights of the accused. he believed in civil rights and civil liberties. and so he upheld our attorneys motions. the cases came up in 73. they were bombing, inciting riots, crossing state lines, conspiracy charges, a host of

felonies stemming from '69 and '70. when the charges came up in 73i was not there, but our attorneys moved that the government had to disclose how it had obtained the evidence. then the feds moved to drop the charges on the grounds of national security but basically because they did not want to disclose the number is illegalities they had committed. later these actually came out in the form of revelations of fbi wrongdoing several fbi leaders, not hoover, but actually he had died by the in. the second-in-command people were charged and convicted. now, of course, that never would happen. now all you have to it -- of the feds have to do is declare

the charges, the suspects having to do with terrorism or terrorists and their would be no habeas corpus, no evidentiary problems. it would go all the way to torture. so we live in a completely different environment, obviously. most of us in the room grew up believing that such things as habeas corpus were sacred in our system. now people can be held without charges or even undergo rendition and tortured. so you know, we have zero lots -- we have lost a lot of ground and we just have to keep working on this. >> thank you, marc. martha, there is -- i'm going to read this. she won't accuse me of misquoting. there is a section in her book,

"expecting to fly." we talk about anybody who loves history or is a history teacher, a historical hindsight. you can measure what happened in the past only looking at society and what it was like in the past. i am going to ask martha and anyone else who wants to comment about the section in "expecting to fly" where martha, at her present age, it goes back to antioch college and sees herself running around on some drug, i won't say which. she wants to talk to her past person. she says, hey, what would she do if i ran after her and grabbed her arm and said, look at me. look at me. i'm you. you're not me. i don't know you. yes, i am, i tell her.

i stare right in her face. i'm you. i'm you in 30 years, grow and how bad disappointed by the disappointments of life, after all the drugs and adventures, after all of the craziness and passed, with what you have left me. and she says, i don't want to be you. she looks at me with a crazy eyes. i don't want to be you with all of your disappointments. what if any of our panelists, and we will start with martha, if you could go back now and say to that young person, this is who i am now, what would you say? >> well, i would erode it. i think in that scene i was speaking to my yourself. i was also speaking to my daughter. at think we have children and they reach an age that we

remember clearly and start to do some of the things that we did, go up in the attic and get old clothes out and wear them. if i think, you know, you want to grab them and say, look, i already can tell you where this is going and it's not good. no. no. no. i'm not like you. i don't want to be. guess what? here we are. so i think that is what the power of that scene is about. it is about going back and trying to remonstrate with a former self and being unable to and understanding that there are just things you learn as you get older and things you experience that form you into the person you become, but you can't really go of round regretting stuff because what is the point?

those are all -- all of those experiences are poetry, and they are your poetry. i think that when you can acknowledge some and except yourself as you were and yourself as you are it makes for a much fuller life and a much more integrated life so that you can bring together some of those early ideals in a way that works now and the real world. >> thank you, martha. joyce or mark, but you have anything that you would like to add to that? you don't have to. >> i think that the presence of our children is god's great joke on us. after seven counts great joke on us. >> right. right. we look at our yeah ourselves and mourned the way that our children are like us and

celebrate their differences. for me actually, you know, i have twice revisited the story of my young years. i have to set the this is not particularly a political story. in some ways it is a sexual politics. i published a memoir of my growing up in the 60's, the good old version in which i talked about the vietnam war and drugs and the beatles and the assassinations, my own aversion to drugs coming from an alcoholic family. there were some major aspects of my story and experience that i did not include. i went back 25 years later to

tell the not could grow, battle version, actually, of that story, the forbidden version which did not have to do with breaking the laws of the united states of america, but breaking laws that in some cases still exist in the minds of many people about the importance of protecting the privacy / secrecy of individuals regarded as more worthy and powerful than ourselves, particularly our female cells. for me the decision to tell the real story of what was going on in those years and the fact that the first book was actually written in the home of the 53-year-old man who had suggested at leave college and moved in with him and do absolutely everything he told me to, that forbidden story from which even now 12 years later i experience of fair amount of criticism and sometimes condemnation was really made possible by the fact that my oldest child, my daughter,

turned 18 when i was 45 years old, i guess. i revisited my own 18-year old experience no longer as the girl who did not feel herself worthy of protection, but as the mother of the 18-year-old girl who would want different for her daughter. and i have to say that another part of the story -- of course we focus, as we should, and, you know, the policies of our country and vietnam during those years, but a huge part of the experience of women during that time had to do with the enormous double standard and undervaluing of women, even in times, allegedly, when doors were being flung open. the first class with women at exeter, the first full class with women at yale. still it was absolutely accepted that male professors, even heads of state in canada or boss vegas

singers could go off with 20-year-old girls and everybody would wind and smile and say, isn't that cute. you better not talk about it. and certainly that was what happened for women in those years. another important thing that divides us from both our mothers' generation and our daughters. at think it is very hard for our daughters to imagine. >> my daughter, audrey, when she was a freshman and uc santa cruz and very politically alive came home from her women's studies class one day and said to me, oh, you have no idea what women have gone through. after seven. [laughter]

>> thank you, joyce. martha, or more. >> well, in terms of advice to young people were thinking about young and old, i'm a slightly different position than my two fellow panelist in that my poor kids who are now both in their 30's have spent most of their lives telling me to to want. i have high hopes for my grandchildren, that they will be rebels and adventures. >> and didn't use a yesterday, mark, that one of the best things in your life -- and that no i'm not saying it exactly right, one of the best things in your life has been becoming a grandparent? >> that didn't say one of the best, i said the best. it is something i still don't

understand. my grandson is only 22 months old, and we have another grandchild on the way. it is something i don't understand, whether it is biological or ego or humility or whatever it is. i cannot compare anything i have ever experienced were done in my life to the experience of being a grandparent. >> are you planning to be a subversive grandfather? are you planning to be a subversive grandfather? >> i already am. at the seven and. [laughter] >> we have about five minutes before we are going to start asking questions from -- taking questions from the audience. you know, i am wondering if all of these years later, what would

you like to see brought from the 60's that was pertinent to our lives? what would you like to see here today? you spoke a little bit about that, but i wanted to end this section of our panel asking you that. >> rock and roll and politics. [applause] >> well, i'm glad that mark, besides all his political activism, perhaps, did enjoy sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. >> don't worry about the sex. it is going to happen anyway. it ain't over. at a seven. [laughter] >> so anybody who would like to ask questions, if you could come up to the microphone, briard being taped on cnn, but tv.

but like you to come up here and ask question. >> yes, my question is and the department of historical lessons we should have learned in the 1960's. my question is concerning the movement now of states' rights. should we have learned from the segregation sow that their call for states' rights as a supremacy over federal rights? it was a segregationist south, dixiecrats in particular, who were calling for that the federal government could not intervene because the segregationist south ruled. i guess my question, at least in arizona, should we have learned the fallacy of that argument? >> i think we should have learned about racism by now.

states' rights was the argument for the civil war. you guys in arizona have a big job, a big job. >> okay. we have another question. as somebody who had no trouble finding movements to join in the 60's, i mean mass ones, i have been wondering, what has kept things from happening now? global warming, nothing. the oil crisis and so on, nothing. some of want to know what you think about wisconsin and what is going on there and the rights of workers and unions being taken away. i am encouraged by this. >> i often wonder why the republicans are willing to overplay their hand, but democrats never are. obama should be out there supporting the rights of

workers. it's crystal clear. that is one of the things that everybody who voted for him believes in. >> thank you. another question. >> i love the idea of baby boomer specific form of p t s t that you mentioned. >> i would like to apply to the viejo. [laughter] >> but to carry on that idea, you know, i find that, perhaps, we have slipped into some level of complacency and wonder if you all could comment on how we take this unique experience and knowledge that we have and, perhaps, transformed this this downed jet into action now and our second half of our live. >> i love your optimism and calling it the second half. out my case i will live to 114. after seven you know, it is sort

of ironic that we have never possessed more powerful tools of organizing and unifying and to less effect. you know, the days of phone trees and petitions were gone. you know, i had things on a typewriter with carbon paper and tap them on trees. we have this vast social network now. what it accomplishes is creating, you know, acting justin bieber from a little town in toronto to of filling madison square garden and 18 months. those are the accomplishments of social media now, but the tools are in place. partly it is, i think, you know, people, older people, i think, have to not feel alienated and disenfranchised by the not -- new media and be ready to

take some control and not feed them -- >> do you have a face book page? >> i do have a face book page, and the twitter account. i think it is important, you know. i have met so many older people who say, oh, i can't possibly understand the internet. we understood harder things that getting a twitter account. [laughter] >> would modify or mark like that at any thing? okay. next question. >> i had of have a tough question. you talked about how the music from the 60's and 70's was very important. i was wondering if there was one album in particular are one song in particular that you were the group's down? >> that is such an important question. >> it is. >> this morning sheila and i

were singing one, two, three, what were we fighting for. >> i think pleasures of the harbor. it would be very hard for me to limit it to one, but you know, the early bob dylan recordings. those bird -- they were both political -- they were politically brave and musically brave. they were pioneering in so many different ways. they transformed the world of music. >> otis redding, sitting on the dock of the day. i was a fugitive at that time. i was sitting there by fisherman's wharf thinking, what the hell. of course, the songs are

innumerable. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> who was next? why don't we go over there. >> my question was prompted by your description of, martha, of returning to yourself on campus because i actually did that exacting. i was almost in tears when you read and talked about that. three years ago for my case in boston. my experience there was, i really started thinking. i walked around at 2:00 a.m. looking at all of the places that i was having trouble even remembering and realizing this was not who i was anymore. and what my mind went to was my grandmother who i actually did not like.

i guess i was the only one of my siblings who did not like her. i was the youngest. she grew up in the '20s, the teens and 20's. it made me start thinking about, i really knew nothing about her. she died when i was nine. >> to you have a question? >> yes. do you think that this feeling of looking back at yourself and having that conflict is heightened in our generation because of media but that really it is always been in existence? >> at think it has always existed, but we live a lot longer than most people. we have more to look back at. and we have always been -- i mean this, our age is pretty introspective and pretty self involved. i think that is part of it. we are very interested in

ourselves, including our past cells, i think. and, you know, i would see something a little bit different from martha's experience, one of the frustrations, for me, and i think is true for a lot of people my age is i feel exactly the same. i can't believe i'm 57 years old. i still feel absolutely like that girl. that's not how i will be perceived out in the world, and that's the problem. i think people -- i tried really hard not to speak of my generation because i did that a lot in the early days of my writing career. i tried to just speak for myself. i will say a surprising number of people my age have a really hard time growing older. ways that i don't think my mother's generation did. they accepted that 50's was old. now we are pushing that far up regularly. fifty is the new -- 60 is the

new 40, and 70 is the new 25. at a seven panda i just saw a magazine that said by 200045 people all live forever. i'm not sure what that means for the planet, but that is the fantasy. stay young. >> thank you, joyce. question? >> this question is directed to mark. i am bewildered and perplexed as to how we ended up with this got awful sense that the porter, i am perplexed as to why my generation, i'm 61, does not seem to think that we belong on a planned with other animals. i don't hear anyone speaking about the health, safety, or welfare of creatures other than humans. it's just to bug me, no pun intended. >> to you have a question? >> how did we end up with the offense? how have we, as a society,

supposedly a democracy -- that is debatable, but anyway, how did we end up with things that are completely useless, waste tremendous amount of money, and now cutting social systems that do useful things? i've wondered comments on that. >> that is for you. >> capitalism. they are selling us all this mean, cheap, a good hamburger, $0.99. if it were worth what it really takes it would be a lot more precious. we eat too many animals, obviously. i don't want to go into this because to me it is obvious. isn't it obvious to everyone in the room that our level of consumption is way too high? >> i'm going to hazard a guess it is not the people in this room who need to be convinced. >> yes. >> thank you. i think this woman was next. >> i have lived to be respectable age of 60.

i did all of that, sex, drugs, rock and roll. i went to antioch college and live with an old woman of 23 when i was 17 which broke my mother's heart. i have survived and become part of a health care model. i have the good fortune -- well, yeah, i have exactly the same values my parents had other than the sexual politics, but we disagree with. my parents were activists. my dad worked for universal health care coverage his whole life until the age of 93. i asked him once, how can you do this with all the bad things in the world? i was a pessimist. he said the question. what can we expect of nine people today? what should we expect? how can we curzon to be their real selves and have the courage to be an activist as some of us were? >> at think there will have to be a lot less

comfortable. >> that is happening fast. >> i think it has got to get a lot worse quest to a degree of taking care of that one very well and. [laughter] >> i disagree. i think they have to be a lot more rational. but we need is rationality for survival. don't build nuclear power plants. the know, it's simple. don't try to figure out sustainable energy. that's rational. don't eat up all the protein in the world to feed animals. this is rationality. the people in egypt -- i saw someone with a t-shirt that said something like walk like an egyptian. and. [laughter] it people are getting rational. we have to lose our irrationality and our quest for entertainment as a goal of life and figure out as simple rationality's for survival. it will happen after we are dead

or as we die. don't worry, it will happen. >> thanks. mark, a question over here. >> your religious backgrounds. people who believe that muhammed, moses, or jesus could accomplish great things and change the world are able to do that and people who still believe that are doing that. i'm wondering if you had strong religious backgrounds? people in egypt and the christian right are politically involved. >> well, i am the daughter of a russian immigrant, a jewish mother, and a father who was raised by a fundamentalist christian missionary. after seven which makes me technically by the laws of this rail jewish, but incomplete no-man's land spiritually. i have to say that i think a lot of my own feelings about injustice and idealism for the world came out of a search for

god and meaning. i think it is -- i am horrified by the actions of the religious right and their rise in this country, but i think that if there is for this belief in the other that makes for the greatest cynicism of all. >> thank you, joyce. >> i am with you. my parents were atheists. my mother was jewish and my father was some kind of christian atheist. [laughter] but i was always hungry for god, and i think one of the main reasons i got into lsd, i was looking for something. i think a lot of kids now are. they want something else, something more. i think this is part of it. they are not comfortable, but we sort of pacified them with stuff and entertainment.

they got things in their years and are looking at the screen. they just need to be out in the world. my son is a lobsterman in maine, and he spends all day way out of the water 20 miles out this time of year hauling traps and looking at the horizon. he knows about god. i think to get to us the kind of spiritual stake you have to be close to nature and love nature and respect it. you have to have that something more, no matter where you find it. it is sad to me that the tea party has coopted christianity because it is a good religion. they are all good religion. they had just become distorted. i think that when our connection with one another and with god are fundamental to any kind of change in the world.

>> thanks, martha. >> i don't like to talk about spirituality and god and religion because to me the purpose of spiritual -- of religion is to figure out who we can kill. the people who don't believe the way that we do. also, i am the only fold june. [laughter] >> together the two of us. >> right. but i am just as atheistic as you are. i am a typical american atheist to do. i believe the first commandment is thou shalt not speak the name of the lord thy god in vain. i don't like to talk about that check. but as a typical atheistic jew i believe in rationality. we need more of it. >> it seems to me that one of

the best ideas of the 60's as the peace corps. one of the ways in which the idealism still in doers -- and i wonder if any of you consider that option for yourself and what you think the influence of the peace corps has been. >> you mean back then? now, back in the peace corps was just another ploy of the imperialists to control and dominate the world. that's all. later i learned that people who went to the peace corps came back having learned an awful lot about the world and benefited themselves, and that is the best thing. i often tell young people now, joined the peace corps for what it can do for you. >> and to me one of the most important experiences for a gang person raised in our middle class american culture is to

recognize that how life is here is not how life is. one of the tragedies of american life, i would say, is the extraordinarily arrogant notion that you can know everything you need to know about the world by going to disney world, including the lack of need to learn another language, which is unique to americans. so taking away, you know, the questionable politics and i witnessed in guatemala where i spent a fair amount of time. the experience of going other places and seeing that things be believed purchased life are only just our privileged american life i think is crucial. >> thank you, joyce. we have just a couple of minutes left, and there are a couple things i need to tell you about the signing area.