allen. why don't we know more about it? well, because he took on the puritan clergy, and they lived after he died, one missionary from new haven literally came up and stomped on his grave. timothy dwight, the president of yale university said that on feb -- feb 12th, ethan allen, the general from vermont and great blase fee mother died and looked up hell where he looks up forever towards heaven through the flames. that went from pulpit to pulpit to pulpit until ethan allen's memory went to the pit with it. ..

even among its congressional delegation. never agreeing from the west side of the mountains to the east side of the mountains. but it has a strong reputation for diversity and dissent and most of all the legacy of ethan allen, since his time where people went to start over, to start again. thank you. [applause] >> this is where i usually say fire at will. >> we have time for one or two

questions. >> and the review of your book, reference is made to his being and at the get of separation of church and state. can you comment further on that? >> well his attack on the established church of new england in his book is just that. he doesn't think that you should have a puritan hierarchy. in vermont or in new england. he was speaking mostly to new england. he did not use the word separation of church and state. that phrase was coined by thomas jefferson in a letter to the secretary of the navy during a bitter re-election campaign in 1803 that there should be a wall of separation. jefferson's only book aligns very well on his views along with this book and both of them firmly believe that there had to be separation between church and state and indeed in vermont by law, in any new community the school had to be built before a church could be built.

and that is still the case, so that is proof of a. >> i am from arlington, vermont and they think ethan allen's first wife is probably buried right next to st. james church there. >> mary browne, yes. yes, but arlington is one of the towns that he beat up the most so it is ironic that she was died and was buried there because it was mostly loyalists. >> we all knew that down toward the west arlington was tory hollow. we still call a it tory hollow in the 1940s. >> tory is not a nice word. >> hi, i am from vermont. and i am always -- i have always called myself a green mountain girl and we used to dress up in costumes and i talked about ethan and ezra and iraq having meetings at the eagle tavern. it was very much a part of our

lives. my dad was the history professor at green mountain and he is the man who did the highway markers, the historic markers around vermont. >> that is wonderful. >> it is wonderful to hear your talk. >> no one ever called them by their last name. >> no, and we used to pretend they were running with the indians in the woods. >> thank you very much for coming. [applause] >> for more information about the author, visit willard sterne randall.com. >> up next, author filmmaker and political activist, michael moore recounts his life from starting his own newspaper in

the fourth grade to his academy award speech in 2003. this is about 90 minutes. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. [applause] thank you. thank you very much and welcome to new york fashion week. [laughter] i normally am a fan of michigan state, but i don't know if you saw the game on saturday with notre dame but it was quite something. enough about football. [inaudible] >> i am just amazed at the turn

out here. i thank you for coming out on this night. [applause] thank you very much. they even gave me a tzipi cup. [laughter] i know you are all still recovering from the cnn tea party republican debate last night. how is it that cnn can actually join hands with the tea party and together wolf blitzer said our partners, the tea party express. and i was like, what kind of alternate universe is this? i don't think it is. actually it is the way it is now, isn't it? can you imagine a debate that is called the cnn teachers union debate? [laughter] because i will contend there are more members of the teachers union than there are of the tea party. [applause]

i just don't think we are going to see that debate very soon. but anyways -- i have a number of things going through my head that i would like to say and we are going to have a time during the q&a to talk about politics and what is going on, and there will be microphones. this is being taped for c-span. one of our great national resources in this country and the only truly objective documentary. [applause] there is no editing, but usually when i speak, they have to run -- in fact i don't think i have had a c-span appearance where they haven't had to run a disclaimer saying that things are going to be said and language is going to be used and please remove the children from

the room. so, i'm going to attempt tonight -- house that? is that better? i'm going to attempt tonight to not have to see that disclaimer on c-span for the show, so let's see how i do and we will put a quarter in the cup a cup for every time i violate it. i've written this book, it is a book of short stories. they are all nonfiction short stories. i love the short story form and i love reading short stories and i have always wanted to write them. i thought, don't know if i have seen a book of nonfiction short stories, so i decided to write one hand there are two dozen stories in here. here. they are all based on events that took place in my lifetime between this age on the cover, which is me -- i have to say that is me at 13 months although i look like i am three.

[laughter] my poor mother. and, a picture on the back which is me on west 55th street here in manhattan the day i turned and roger and me to the lab to make the first friend that we were going to take to the film festival. [applause] so, all the stories pretty much take place between them except for the first story in the book called the epilogue and the reason it is called the epilogue it is actually the last story in the next volume that will come out two or three years from now. i decided to start with the last story of that book in the first story in this book. i am not on drugs. the reason for that is i just wanted to start in the presence of where i had been and then start to take a look back through how i got to this point,

and i'm not going to read this entire -- actually i'm only going to read a little opening of the first chapter, the first story in the book which is called the execution of michael moore. and, but you can read it on line printed an excerpt from this chap there and it goes through what happened to me after i gave that oscar speech where it was the fifth day of the war and i went out on the stage and i said thank you. i hope i said thank you, but i don't know where it went from there but i forgot to thank my age and in my wardrobe designer and my hairstylist and the other people. i was supposed to thank them and i invited them -- my fellow nominees to the stage the other for documentary four documentary film a curse, and together i said we make nonfiction films but we live in fictitious times.

we live in a time with a president elected with fictitious election results, and now we are on the fifth day of a war that we -- that has been inaugurated due to a very large piece of fiction, that fiction of course being that there would be weapons of mass destruction there. so i was properly booed off the stage for saying all of this and in this chapter describes what happened to me backstage that night when we went home to michigan and the ensuing death threats. actually i could've handled it if it was just the death threats by the went from there into actual attempted assault on me, physical assault and then finally a young man who had decided to blow up our house. only because he had a large -- he has this whole cache of weapons and ammunition and bomb-making materials and one

night he was kind of getting it all together, and his ak-47 went off in his apartment as ak-47s will do. a neighbor called the police. they came and they arrested him and they read his hit list and i was at the top of his hit list. the others were rosie o'donnell, janet reno, essentially a group of and me. [laughter] i don't know how he made that list, but i felt somewhat honored. [laughter] i just want to read you just a snippet of how this chapter began and i will move to the other things in the book. i would like to read a few excerpts of some of the stories in this book and then we will open it up to the floor.

this is how the book begins. as it should, with the glenn beck radio show from may 17, 2005, exact quote. i am thinking about killing michael moore. and i'm wondering if i could kill him myself or if i need to hire someone to do it. no, i think i could. i think he could be looking me in the eye, you know and i could just kill the life out of him. is this wrong? i stopped worrying about what would jesus do and i lost all sense of right and wrong now. i used to be able to say, yeah i killed michael moore and then i would see the little band, what would jesus do? then i would realize you would not kill michael moore or at least he would not choke into him to death and you know well now, i am not so sure. as this sort of vile stuff goes out over the radio and on a certain cable news channel,

unfortunately it enters the mind of those who are not entirely together. and it encourages them to do various things. so, that's how the book begins. now i want to take you back to 1965, and i was just coming out of fifth grade. this is from a story in a book called -- and the larger chapter is about a trip we took to new york here. my mother loaded us in the car, my sisters and i, because michelangelo was at the world's fair in 1964, 65. being good catholics we had to go see it. even if it meant driving 800 miles from michigan.

but on the way she decided to take us to washington d.c. and this is what transpired. when i finished fifth grade in the summer of 1965, my mother loaded my sisters and me into our buick and drove us to our nation's capital or her summer vacation. while the other kids in the neighborhood got to go up north or to scout camp for two tot lot, we were forced to see the original documents of founding fathers, the first flag sewn by betsy ross, the plane that charles lindbergh flew across the atlantic. we took the fbi to her and the department of justice. when we had our picture taken in front of the huge statue we knelt and prayed in arlington at the grave of our fallen catholic president. we traipse from one in the pennsylvania avenue to the other, climbed all 896.that so the washington monument and data visit our congressmen to shake his hand and let him know that we would be voters some day. it was while i was there inside

the capitol building that i found myself separated from my mother and sisters and her cousin patricia. we were on our way to sit in the senate gallery as the senators were deliberating a bill that would provide free -- free health care for all the old people in america. but i got distracted by the statues of the senators especially one zachariah chandler from the 1800's. is consumed with history and the story of the republican party and how it formed at michigan and what a great party it was, a party of lincoln, the party to end slavery, the party of conservatives, conservatives believe in conserving their money and believed in not spending money that they didn't have. conserving our air, our water and god's gifts, our natural resources on this earth, conservation. that is what conservative meant. eventually it dawned on me that i was all alone and on my own. my mother and sisters were

nowhere in sight. i began to panic. where did they go? why did they leave me here? i may have thought i was a smart kid that i had no idea where i was, where they were or how i would find them. at age 11 and the capitol rotunda seems like its own planet to me or worse, a giant white marble vortex spinning madly in everything into it. i tried to catch my breath and began walking quickly in whatever direction seemed like the way out. i somehow ended up on the senate side of the building and went down the staircase looking frantically for any sign of my family. realizing it was getting nowhere, bolted through a pair of elevator doors just as they were closing. inside the elevator i began to cry. there was a lone man in the back corner leaning against the railing, his face covered by the newspaper that he was reading. he heard my sniffling and put the paper down to see what the commotion was all about.

as i had been properly schooled in all things political and catholic, instantly recognize this man. he was the junior senator from new york, robert frances kennedy. what is wrong, young man he said in a voice that was comforting enough to stop the tears. after all no one had called me a young man before. i lost my mom i said sheepishly. well that can be good. let's see if we can find her. i won't try to do a bobby kennedy accent. [laughter] thank you i said. where are you from? michigan. near plans. oh yes, my brother loved that neighbor day parade, big parade. the doors of the elevator opened it he put his arm on my shoulder and escorted me to the nearest capitol police officer. it seems this young man from michigan he turned to me, what's your name, son? michael moore.

michael has lost his mother and perhaps we can help him. yes, sir senator, we will take care of it. the officer told the senator he would handle the matter so the senator could proceed with much more important duties. well i will stay here for a minute or two and make sure he is okay. i stood there thinking how stupid did i have to be to get lost and now i was holding up bobby kennedy in the business of the united states senate so everybody could go search for my mommy. how old are you, mike? can i call you mike, kennedy asked. i may levin. this is my first time in the capital i offered hoping to make my seemed -- self seem like -- less like an 80. you got your first ride on the senate elevator. that almost makes you a senator. the irish in him had kicked in and flashed a kennedy grin. i smiled too and joined in.

hey, you never know. i said and i wanted to quickly retract the remark. c-span is quickly going through their standard of practices, wise ask, yes we can say that. [laughter] well said kennedy we have two good democrats from michigan already, senators mcnamara and hark i jumped in as if i were on a quiz show. you know your senators, very good and promising. we have got his mother a voice squawked across the police radio. stay there. she is coming. well it seemed everything worked out okay claimed the senator from new york. good luck young man and never lose sight of your mother. with that he was gone and before even had a chance to thank him or wish him well or recite my

favorite passages from his brother's inaugural address. we went into the gallery and they were discussing on one side of the senate, they were discussing medicare, passing the medicare bill and on the other side of voting rights act of 1965. from watching the evening news and being taught to read the daily newspaper at a young age, i knew that what they called people were being unfairly treated and even killed. a few months earlier in march of 1965 a white housewife from detroit faiola louise so, i've upset at what she'd been seeing on television regarding the savage treatment of white people made an impromptu decision to head down to selma alabama to march for the reverend martin luther king. i knew came to be the man in charge of the civil rights movement and in the town where he lived his name was rarely mentioned and when it was, it

usually had other words attached to it, non-pleasance. the mother of five children was brutally murdered by the ku klux klan while volunteering as a driver back and forth to selma and the demonstration. it was a shock to most of michigan and when i heard it ring discussed by jesse the barber he informed those who are getting were getting their haircut that day that she was found with some -- and the boy, married woman up to no good sticking her face and where it didn't belong. jesse's barbershop was the place he went to for enlightenment in my town. and the place was always full. jesse was a short man with a short haircut and there was always a pair of scissors or a long razor in his hand. this was problematic as he wore a lens glasses, the kind of legally blind where and it was frightening when i sat in his chair, the sharp insurance being

used to make various punctuation points in the air. i asked my mother why the senators were the people on the floor were saying they didn't want some people to vote. well, some people don't want some people to vote my mother said, trying to protect us from the fact that even the united states senators could think like the man that killed viola. the next day we took an overly long car ride to monticello the home of thomas jefferson. this was located deep in virginia, the real south as my mother called it. on the way back from monticello, we pulled off the highway for gas and a trip to the restroom. i walked with my mother around the back to the station where there were two doors. one was marked white and the other was. it look like someone had tried to scrape the last word off unsuccessfully. i stood and stared at these two

signs and although i knew what it meant i wanted to hear my mother's explanations of it. what is this, i asked? she looked at the science and was silent for a moment. you know what it is. just go in there and do your business and get out. i went into the colored bathroom and she went into the white. when we came out, she led me back to the car. get in there and stay with your sisters. she headed into the gas station with the kind of walk we three kids knew meant that heads would roll. we cranked our heads out the window hoping we would hear what she was saying to the man at the counter but all that was available to us with a tightlipped look on her face and a few motion she made with her index finger. he too made a few gestures including a shrug of his shoulders. she came back outside into the car and got in and said nothing. what were you doing, i asked? just mind your business she said, coming out, and lock your

doors. this would be the only time in my life i would hear such a demand in the vicinity of all white people. we never learned what she said in to the man or what he told her and then years later i like to think she'd given him a piece of her mind for her children having to witness such immorality in the united states. he might have told her that he just hadn't gotten around to taking it down yet or he had tried. the civil rights act outlawing such things had just passed months earlier. maybe he told her to get her ads out of there. maybe she was just complaining the ladies room was out of toilet paper. i always meant to ask her but, but didn't. she was no viola and for that i guess i was thankful because i like my mother being a life. [applause]

how are we doing timewise? regarding good? the next story then takes place about five or six years later when i am a teenager. i had been selected to go to boys state. do we have that here in new york? do you know what a royce stayed in girls state is? they picked two kids and they send you to the state capitol where you play government for a week in the summer. you elect a governor, lieutenant governor and all this, and so i decided when i got there because i had been picked by my high school and i didn't like it one single bit. i didn't want to run for

anything i didn't like politicians. i didn't want to be one. they put you in the storm rooms at michigan state university so i stated my dorm room the whole week. i only left to go down to the snack machine, which had this new potato chip that had just been invented called ruffles. i was so taken with these chips because of the ridges and them i thought i was getting more chip for chip, so i love these things. the only time i would leave the room was to go down and get my ruffles potato chips. one day i go down to get the chips and on the bulletin board above the snack rashean there is a poster and it says this. boy satyrs, speech contest on the life of abraham lincoln. write a speech on the life of a blanket and win a prize. contest sponsored by the elks club. i stood and stared at this wire for some time. i forgot about my ruffles. i just couldn't get over what i was reading.

because the previous month, my dad had gone to the local elk's club to join. and when he did, he found himself disappointed. they handed him an application and at the top of the application it read, caucasians only. this was 1971. this was the 1970s. racial discrimination, private clubs. being a caucasian, they should not have been a problem for my dad. being a man of some conscious though it gave him cause. he brought the form home and showed it to me. what do you think about this he asked me. i read the caucasian line and had two thoughts. do we live down south now? i mean, how much more north can you get than michigan? and isn't this illegal? my dad was literally confused about the situation.

i don't think i can sign this piece of paper he said. no, you can't i said. my dad had a very strong sense of what was right and wrong. he worked in the general motors factories which thanks to the uaw, the union, the factories by the end of the 1940s were already integrated. it was one of the union demands, so he worked alongside men and women of all races and as is the outcome of such social engineering, he grew to see all people as the same, or at least all the same in god's eyes. here i was standing in front of this poster seeing that the elks club was sponsoring a contest on the life of of the great emancipator and i'm 17 years old. now what do you do with that? i thought to myself, they want a speech? i will give them a speech. [applause]

i forgot about the ruffles and went back to my room and scribbled out this speech. how dare the elks club discouraged if i name of a family can buy sponsoring a contest like this. i thought i would begin with some subtlety and save the good stuff for later. have they no shame? how is it that an organization that will not about black people into their club is part of boys state spreading their bigotry under the guise of doing something good? what kind of example is being set for the youth here? to even allow them in here? if boy status to endorse any form of segregation, then by all means let it be the segregation that separates these racists from the rest of us who believe in the american way. [applause] the next morning i showed up for

this speech contest. there were about a dozen other boys in the room and they all gave their speeches lauding the accomplishments of lincoln and talking about the civil war. sweet, simple, noncontroversial. few in the room were compared to the barrage of insults about to be hurled at the elks club. take william jennings bryan, had some jimmy stewart in throwing a healthy dose of don rickles and that is pretty much what they were about to get from me. i thought there were elks in the room but instead the judge was a speech teacher from a local high school. as they gave a speech i kept my eye on him in the -- nothing moved on his face. some of the boys in the room started snickering. a couple looked upset. the lone black kid in the room, he was trying to cover the smile on his face.

when the speech was over, the teacher/judge went to the head of the room and said thank you all for your well-written speeches. the winner of this years else club boys state speech contest is michael moore. [laughter] [applause] congratulations, michael. he then proceeds to tell me that i have to give the speech tomorrow at the closing ceremonies at lloyd's date in front of 2000 other boys. no, no, no i don't want to do that. you don't really want me to give that speech. oh, yes i do. you have to give it. that is the rule. he also told me for my own good he wasn't going to mention this content of the speech to anyone before tomorrow. oh yes i thought, that's much better. let them be hit with it fresh like a big surprise.

the kind which has the speaker being chased from the hall come his prize in one hand in his life in the other. the next day, i said my final prayers and went into the great hall. thousands of boys daters were there. i was brought up on the stage and passed the governor of michigan, the lieutenant governor, some other bigwigs, and then, there was a man with a hat and there were antlers on the hat. [laughter] it was not bold winkle. and this was not halloween. this man was the chief elk, the head of all elks and he held in his lap the oaks club boys state speech trophy. he had a big wide smile, smile

more appropriate four on his ors or were terry and, with more teeth than i thought humanly possible and he was so proud to see me take the podium. oh man i thought, this guy is about to have a very bad day. [laughter] i hope they get a pat-down. i took a deep breath and began the speech. how dare the elks club -- [laughter] i gave this speech as i had written it. i finished with my plea that the elks change their ways and as i turned my head to see the crimson tide that was now the face of the chief elk, his teeth resembling to chainsaws ready to shred my sorry self, i blurted out, and you can keep your stinking trophy. [laughter]

[applause] the place went insane. 2000 boys left to their feed whooping and hollering and cheering me on. i try to make a -- off the stage and was stopped by a reporter from the associated press. he introduced himself to me and said he was astonished at what he had just heard and seen and he was going to write something about it. who was and where was i from? i broke away and headed quickly out the side door keeping my head down. i avoided the main campus path and made it back to my dorm room and lock the door. about an hour later there was a knock. hey the anonymous voice barked, there is a call for you. the dorm rooms had no phones. there was a phone down at the end of the hallway, a payphone. i made a long walk down to the payphone. i needed robles, that's for sure and the phone book tithes

machine so it made the walk necessary. i picked up the phone. hello? i answered nervously wondering who even knew i was here. hello, is this michael moore said the voice on the other and. yes. i am a producer here in new york at the "cbs evening news" with walter cronkite. we have got the story became over the wire about what you did today and we would like to send a crew over to do an interview for tonight's newscast. what? we are doing a story on your speech exposing the elks club and their racial policies. we want you to come on tv. come on tv? [laughter] there wasn't enough clearasil in the world to get me to do that. [laughter] no thank you am i have to give back to my room now, by. and i hung up the phone. i did not go on tv that night,

but at some point it went on tv and today in lansing michigan a 17-year-old lori gave a speech that took on the elks club and their segregationist practices shedding light on the fact that it is still legal for private clubs in this country to discriminate on the basis of race. the next day the dorm's phone rang off the hook. everybody another associated press reporter to tv networks the naacp a paper new york another in chicago. unless it involves offering me free food or an introduction to it earl i might like i did not want to be bothered. i took none of the calls. my parents were waiting outside in the car to take me back home. this much i will say. my parents were not unhappy with my actions. when i got home, the phone continued to ring. finally a call from the office of michigan senator phil hart who wanted to talk to me about coming to washington. the aide said it was something about a bill that would be introduced to outlaw

discrimination by private entities. a congressman calling me to testify in front of a congressional committee. would i be willing to do this? no. [laughter] why were they bothering me? haven't i done enough? [laughter] i didn't mean to cause such a ruckus. i thanked him and said i would discuss it with my parents though i never told them. i went outside to mow the lawn. the following year was not a good one for the oaks club of america. many states deny their liquor licenses, the unkindest cut of all. [laughter] funds became scarce. various bills in congress to stop them and other private clubs were debated and then the federal courts in d.c. dealt them a death blow by taking away their tax exempt status. [applause] facing total collapse and the scorn of the majority of the

nation, the oaks club voted to drop their caucasians only policy. other private clubs followed suit. the ripple effect of this was that now racial discrimination everywhere in america either public or private was prohibited. my speech was occasionally cited as the spark for this march forward and the racial fixing of the great american experiment, but there were other speeches far more eloquent than mine. most important for me, i learned a valuable lesson at the age of 17. change can occur and it can occur anywhere with even the simplest of people and the craziest of intentions. and that creating change didn't always have to require devoting your entire -- your every waking hour to it with mass meetings and organizations and protests and tv appearances with walter cronkite.

sometimes change can occur because all you wanted was a bag of potato chips. [applause] i have two more short ones. do we have time to do that? is that okay? [applause] sorry, it is warm up here. you want the story in the book? okay. i will shorten this one, this excerpt. this is about the neighborhood i

lived in about that same time. when i was 10 or 11 years old and lived on a dirt street, street that had two dead almond -- and. at each end of it was a dead and. [laughter] every day i would wake up and i would look out one window and see dead end and look up the other window and it was a dead end, so i was pretty much set for life there. and the streets was a dead-end street that dead-ended into my street, hill street. anyways, there were a lot of boys in the neighborhood and we have a lot of fun. we would go hunting and we had bb guns in bows and arrows. the parents next door let the kids, their kids take the bird gun out, the rifle and they were 10. so this was pure heaven for us. we were able to shoot guns at 10

years old with live ammunition which is just a wonderful way to grow up. [laughter] and the adults left us alone. it never appeared there were girls in the neighborhood. we are as wondered where the girls were. seem like there were only boys in the neighborhood. in fact, if you were to press me i could make the case that there were in fact no girls at all in the neighborhood. years later it would turn out we learned that actually the girls were there, they just spend a lot of time reading and playing instruments and baking things and telling stories to each other and barbie. this would serve them well once they left childhood behind but for now they were invisible to our existence. i guess we thought we were all the better without them. boys will not only be boys, but boys like to be with boys. and some boys like to be with certain boys a lot. sammy goode was a different boy.

in 1965 you could be different to a point, to a point considered okay. for instance, you could have blue wise while the other kids had brown eyes. your hair could have a rustic color while others may be sandy or dark. there were tall kitchen short kids and kids who rode on bikes, fat kids, skinny kids and even kids with -- you know where this is going. they all love hot dogs. it was a commercial back then. you had to have been there. what there weren't in our neighborhood were boys who fell in love with other boys. of course, there were those boys, but we didn't know that in fifth grade. it is not that anyone was opposed to homosexuality. it is just that there was no need to oppose it decodes it just didn't exist. it would be like opposing unicorns or atlanta's. how can you hate something that isn't real? this made it all the more critical that if you were a boy

who likes boys or a girl who likes girls, you had better guard that secret like it was your own personal fort knox. sealed airtight and in penetrable. you had to behave knowing that you were an alien who landed from another planet, but in human form. no one knew you were an alien and if they ever found out who you really were, they would annihilate you. the knowledge that you were not like others was so scary to possess that if he you came across another boy loving alien, you could not lead onto that who you really were. but of course the other alien would know. yet you dare not risk making contact with each other for a few were caught by the normal people, they could ruin you. sometimes you you have to turn in one of your own just to prove you weren't one of them. it was an often devastating experience to be gay in the

50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s and it made you sometimes do cruel and unnecessary things to yourself and to others. such was the case with the boy three doors down from us on pearse street. mr. and mrs. goode had three children, sammy, alice and jerry. mr. goode always drove a new model car, usually a buick. he was friendly but reserved, a bit shorter than the other dads on the street. he was educated but in those days that was seen as a good thing and are our are dads who weren't often went to him to listen to what he had to say. he was different in two other ways. he had a black mustache on the street devoid of facial hair, and he was jewish. sometime around the summer of

1964, a sound started coming out of the normally quiet goode house. it was a thumping noise, a low vibrating some that occurred in a repetitive rhythm, sort of like a beach to a song but no song any of us were familiar with. boom, boom, whom, whom. it could have been mr. goode working on something with this new craftsman tools or maybe the local exterminator was trying to root out some pesky termites or an opossum that had gotten into the crawl back, but no. it was none of that. it with black people's music, specifically the supremes are good group none of us had heard of. the song was, where did our love go, and where it went as across the three backyards and in through our living room window and straight into my

catholic -- . sammy goode had been given a record player for christmas and yes the good's celebrated christmas as we all did on that street. is given a bunch of records that have been a motown on them. they were smaller records. one song on the front, one song on the back with groups called the miracles, the marble let's, then dallas and somebody called little stevie wonder. they all lived near us in detroit, place we knew from driving to ballgames or the cinerama. we would look across the yard since he sammy on the back porch everyday after every day after school playing his motown records and dancing. we have seen this kind of dancing before and tv on american bandstand and on shindig. but we had never seen it in person. and there he was, dancing up a storm in a world all his own. sammy goode's afternoon party life from lapeer street.

one day he invited his younger boy in. the older boys were playing baseball and saw this. they knew what this music meant and they knew what sammy was. we would go over day after day to sammy's dance party and dance with him. one day, sammy brought out his mother's rouge and eyeliner to show us how we could do ourselves up. and the older boys across the street saw this and it was then that they had to put their foot down. sammy became the victim of multiple slapping, punching's, beatings and face washings in the dirt or snow. all of this drove sammy into a dark place. the phenomenal hates toward him did not in turn make him want to love others and so he took it out on us, the little ones. we weren't quite sure at our age why the older boys were so mean to him. but we would soon learn that sammy saw us is just a shorter

version of his tormentors. and he began slapping and punching in pushing us. one day, he tied one of the boys to a chair and the mother had to come over and get him and yelled that sammy and whacked him across the face. we all quickly stop going stopped going to the afternoon dance party. we were told to stay away from there. one day i was coming home from school, riding my bike on the sidewalk and sammy saw me. i try to cross on the patch of lawn to get away from him but it was his lawn and he started screaming, get off the lawn, get off the lawn. never, on our lawn. don't give me any lip. the heathen through a stick into the spokes of my bike and i fell off the bike scraping my elbows in my face. i went running home in tears. at our house, her cousins were there on the eastside of flint, the mulrooney's.

for boys older than me, the thuggish type from the eastside, they ran out and said what happen? happened? i said sammy did this. sammy were still outside on his lawn. they ran over and surrounded him. sammy tried to fight back, but he was unable, and he was unable to resist their violence and within minutes they had them on the ground slapping and kicking him and beating him. sissy, you fight like a girl. go put on your dress. as i watch this, i was pleased that my cousins had taken care of him. my dad was not so happy. he yelled out to the cousins, stop right now and come in the house. he told me, you can't use your cousins to defend yourself. what they did was wrong. you need to learn to fight. i'm sending it down to the y for

boxing class. about three months later around 10:00 in the evening there was a knock on our front door. it was mr. popper, a large but soft-spoken man who lived across the street. frank, the good boy has gone missing. his parents think he might've been kidnapped, taken out of the woods. they call the police but we are going to search for him. can you come? sure, my dad said. nieuwendyk got a large flashlight and a baseball bat. within minutes most of the men in the neighborhood gathered on the lawn, each of them with flashlights and sticks or clubs and the kind of hunting jackets one wears in the late michigan of all. my sisters and i already in our pajamas and embed came out of the living room to watch this scene unfold. my sister started crying. they heard the word kidnapping. they didn't want anything to happen to dad. our mother told us to go back to bed but instead we went and looked out the window and watch the men go through the woods with their 12 flashlights going through the air like

crisscrossing each other like lights at a summer carnival or the chevy dealer's fourth of july sale. after what seemed like hours dad returned, empty-handed. he is not back there. no telling where he is but he is not back there. the other men delivered the news to mrs. goode and she broke down crying. her husband put his arm around her to comfort her and they walked slowly back to their house as did everyone else to tears. the next day sammy was found near pontiac, michigan. he had either hitchhiked are taking the bus. he was wandering the streets and he was hungry and he wanted -- but he didn't want to go back home. he was tired of the insults and the bullies and the beatings and the inability to enjoy dance party in peace. he had made it more than halfway to hit spill usa. and it was said later that after he had run away again, he wanted

to meet the supremes and help them with their styling. i am sure he could have made a significant contribution and i'm certain that a more open and diverse place like detroit might have suited him better. we never saw sammy again. he went to live with an aunt and that was the last anyone wanted to discuss the subject. for one month before his high school graduation, sammy made his way to new york city, perhaps a more accepting and forgiving place. after all, it was 1968. it was just months before the stonewall uprising, the change was taking place in new york would be a better place. and it was in new york city that he went for a stroll one night down the west 13th street to pier 54 and threw himself into the hudson river. that story was called -- .

[applause] there are funnier stories in the book. last one. and then we will take some questions. this story is set in the early 1980s. i'm about 27 years old and it is called the blessing. my priest had a confession he wanted to make to me. i have serious blood on my hands, michael father said softly. i want you to know. we were sitting on the porch of my newspaper office, father and i. use the former pastor of sacred heart church in flint. father was now retired but still volunteering doing work that the project, helping out the poor

and volunteering at my alternative newspaper the flint voice. living in downtown flint i'd stopped going to massachusetts six years prior, so father george was the closest thing i had to a priest and i very much believe in the central tenets of the faith to love one another, to love your enemy, to do unto others as you would want them to do to you. i agree that one had a personal responsibility to assist the poor, the infirm, the imprisoned and the look down upon. but i wasn't much in favor of the churches edicts when it came to many issues including ones that hurt people or make other sacrifices citizens like women or use the fires of hell to scare people about sex. i enjoyed my weekly and monthly meetings with him. and i would even attend mass in some of the churches where he conducted it. he became my de facto pastor. but now he wanted to tell me something.

i had only known him at this point for a few short months and the talk of blood on my hands was a bit shocking and i was instantly uncomfortable. he pulled out an old photograph them pointed to it. in the center of the photo was a plane and on the front of the plane was a group of airmen. in the middle of the airman was a chaplain, a priest. that's me, he said pointing at a much younger version of himself. that's me. he looked at me as if i were supposed to know something or say something. i looked at him confused trying to understand what it was he was trying to say. so, you were in world war ii i said sympathetically. so was my dad. he continued to look at me as if i weren't getting it. what does it say on the plane, he asked. i looked closely to see the writing on the nose of the plane. oh, enola.

right, father george said. i was a chaplain for the 509th i was their priest. on august 6, 1945, i blessed the bomb that they dropped at hiroshima. i take a deep red, staring at the photo and looking away and then looking at him. his dark eyes seemed darker now. i was the chaplain. i said mass for them before they flew into the bomb. with my blessing, the blessing of jesus christ and the church. i did that. i didn't know what to say. he continued. three days later, i blessed the crew in the plane that dropped the bomb and nagasaki. nagasaki was a catholic city, the only majority christian city in japan. the pilot of the plane was killed and we obliterated the lives of 40,000 on that day, 73,000 people in all.

there was now i missed in his eyes as he told me of this horror. there were three orders of nuns in japan all based in nagasaki. every last single one of the nuns was vaporized. not a single none for many of these orders was alive, and i'd blessed them. i did not know what to say. i reached out my hand and put it on his shoulder. george, you didn't drop the bomb. you didn't plan the destruction of the city's. you were there to do your job and minister to the needs of these young men. no, he insisted. it is not that easy. i was part of it. i said nothing. i wanted us to win. i was part of the effort. everyone had a role to play. my role was to condone it in the name of christ. he explained far from being repulsed when he heard the news at hiroshima, he felt what most

americans felt, relief that maybe this would be the end of the war. he recounted how a month later he went to japan after the surrender herculean did up in nagasaki and went and found the cathedral in ruins. but did you know on the morning of august 6 the enola was going to drop the bomb? did you know what the bomb was i said to him? no, we didn't. all we knew was that it was special. nobody had any idea. well then if you didn't know you weren't responsible. not true. nods true. it is the responsibility of every human to know their actions and the consequences of their actions, and to ask questions and to question when things are wrong. but george, this is war. no one is allowed to ask any questions. and that is exactly the kind of