“In courtrooms around the country Clark defended antiwar activists. In the court of public opinion, he charged the United States with militarism and arrogance, starting with the Vietnam War and continuing with Grenada, Libya, Panama and the Gulf War.”

– Washington Post, April 11, 2021

Thank you Ramsey Clark.

The following is an excerpt from my book, SPOKE:

"The first time out of my cell was ten days after I arrived there.  I still had no idea what going on.  I figured there must be some hiccup in my transit, and I was just parked in Harrisburg until it was sorted out.  Then one morning a guard opened my cell door and told me I had visitors.  Great, I thought.  Maybe it’s Sue.  Maybe she’s found out what’s going on.  But it wasn’t Sue.   It was a tall thin man with an angular face, wearing a thin tie, a brown suit and cowboy boots.  It was Ramsey Clark.

Ramsey Clark had been LBJ’s Attorney General.   He had succeeded Bobby Kennedy after Kennedy resigned to run for President.  And Clark wasn’t alone.  There were two other lawyers with him.  Leonard Boudin, a pretty prominent Massachusetts civil rights lawyer I knew about but had never met before, and another lawyer, from Harrisburg -a younger guy named Tom Menaker.

They offered to represent me.  “For what?” I asked.  They said “Hasn’t anyone told you why you’re here?”  And I said “No, I figured I was just in transit”.  So they filled me in.  They told me about Mitchell and Kleindienst and Armstrong and about Armstrong’s grand juries, and that one of the grand juries was convened in Harrisburg and it was looking into the alleged conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger.

I was numb.  It was like a ton of bricks had fallen on me and I couldn’t move or speak.  They said I’d be taken to the grand jury room on the following day and asked questions.  They told me everyone so far had been pretty much asked the same three or four questions with a few variations.  All of the questions were vague.  They said the grand jury at best was on a fishing expedition, trying to find evidence to justify the indictment they had already charged six people with.  They said one question the prosecutor would ask me would be if I had ever been to an anti-war meeting, and if so, when and where and who was there and what was said by whom.  The question was ridiculous, of course, since it described pretty much the previous three years of my life.  They said they couldn’t tell me how to answer, but if I wanted  I could refuse to answer the questions.  That seemed reasonable to me.  They said they were volunteering their services because they were so outraged at what was going on.  They said not to worry.

I did worry, but given what eventually happened, I should have worried more."

MARIE

Marie had known it was going to be bad. She could have been wrong, but she wasn’t. She wished it had been. There was just something about the initial news, first out of China, then Italy, that cried out to her. And she’d known she’d be in the thick of it. At the hospital. And at home.

It was over now, but it would never be over, in much the same way that her grandparents never got over the depression, and then the war. Marie hadn’t understood why her grandmother had saved everything and insisted on using everything. Wasted nothing. It drove her crazy. Her grandmother was long-since dead, and finally, now, Marie understood. She’d become a lot like her grandmother. Measuring everything. Hoarding some things. Protecting what was hers.
 
MICHAEL

Michael pulled on his green sweater and then took it off again. There was a warming trend and he might not need the extra layer.

He was having difficulty getting in gear. Returning to work was what he knew he should be doing. It’s what everybody was doing who still had work to return to, and he knew he should have felt fortunate.  He needed the income. He was behind on everything and his frig was once again bare.

He had nothing against work. He liked to work, or used to, and he had enjoyed the convivial comradeship of the cubicle farm he had inhabited for eleven years. But now it all felt so repugnantly foreign. Vaccination or not, he carried a dreadful fear of people that he had not been able to shed. He pictured himself there now, sitting in front of his computer, wearing his headphones, robotically taking calls. Could he insert himself into the machine ever again? Eight hours on the phones, with a morning and afternoon 10-minute break and a thirty-minute lunch. The small talk in the break room. The resumption of unwanted flirtations and surreptitious rumor-sharing clouded with an embarrassed failure to mention colleagues who had disappeared.

Normalcy was not normal.
Would never be normal.

One hour turned to two and still he hadn’t moved. He was now officially late for his shift. It would have been noticed. There was no point in calling. What would he say, anyway?

What had he done? Why hadn’t he gone in? What was he doing still sitting on his bed, shoeless? What the hell was wrong with him? What should he do now?

And tomorrow. What about tomorrow?
 
SIMONE

Honestly, if Simone had to spend one more day locked up in her apartment with her husband she’d probably kill herself, if she didn’t kill him first. She hadn’t stopped loving him, not entirely, and she knew inherently that her hatred was not due to either him or her but due to the lack of any other person in her life. No one person could have made her happy, 24-hours a day for weeks and months at a time. Justin tried, in his own way, but he was showing the same strain, though he wouldn’t talk about it and showed no interest in listening to Simone describe her own season of falling apart.

It had come to this. They abided each other. Barely.

This man she once regarded as the moon and the stars was now a grim shadow at the edges of her vision. And he desperately needed to shower more often and change his clothes once in a while. He needed to wear pants. A shave and a haircut wouldn’t have hurt either. For a while she had thought that when the pandemic ended they could return to normal, but now she knew she could never look at him the same way again. Whenever she looked at him or thought of him, all she would see or think about was his hollowness, his deficiency, his emptiness, his pettiness.

He was the pandemic personified.

And today, at long last, she would escape his grasp.
 
ELAINE

For almost a year, Elaine had suffocated behind her mask at the checkout counter of the small-town Piggly-Wiggly and today, for the first time, she was maskless.

It felt wrong.

She wasn’t used to seeing the faces of her customers or of their seeing hers. She felt downright naked in front of them. She couldn’t have been more embarrassed. She didn’t want anyone to see her mouth or the lines that radiated around it.

She’d spent months making eye-contact with every person who stepped up to her lane with their liters of soda, their potato chips and toilet paper, perfecting a visual grin that she knew her customers appreciated. But today she couldn’t look at them and she noted that they too seemed to be averting their eyes, all the while chattering in cheerful voices about the warm spring and the robins pulling worms out of the ground and the re-opening of schools and the opening of bars.

She almost wished there had been no vaccine so she could keep her face hidden.

Eventually she’d get used to people knowing her face again. Her smile. Her frown.

Why was it so hard?
 
BENJAMIN

Benjamin had never been a victim of stage fright, something that distinguished him from most of his fellow actors. Even on opening night, he never got the jitters.

But now? Now, he was scared shitless.

It wasn’t the acting that frightened him. It was the audience. And his fellow actors. Perhaps most of all, the green room. It was sitting side by side with Emily and Stacey and Sean. It was the brightly lit dressing room mirrors, the open make-up kits, the pre-show chit-chat. He hoped they hadn’t noticed how hard it was for him to breathe, how the confining cinderblock walls pressed in on him.

The prop table accused him of recklessness.
The costume rack threatened strangulation.
The opening night flowers reeked of betrayal.
The stage manager called places.

There was a reassuring measure of emptiness in the cavernous, lightly-populated auditorium, he thought. This was of middling comfort.

The house lights dimmed.
He walked on stage.
He opened his mouth.
 
AMANDA

Amanda leaned against the fence at the entrance to the long-abandoned dog park. The sign forbidding its use - banning the congregating of animals and humans - had been removed and sometime soon, perhaps later today, people and dogs would appear.

The sun was just coming up.

This is what she had missed the most. Not her family, not trips to the mall, not evenings at the movies or a late-night drink at a bar. It was the dogs, romping and running and yipping and leaping and returning to their owners from time to time to check in before returning to the ad-hoc pack. It was the liberation of it all. The joyous, unbridled, unleashed thrill. It was the banal conversation with strangers, fellow dog owners, the collective observation of the tumult of fur.

Maybe tomorrow.

For now it was enough to just be here, at the park, on her own, imagining the return of the dogs, hearing their voices in her mind. Tomorrow she’d return at a later hour.

There would be new dogs, adopted during the pandemic, exploring the park for the first time. Even for the older dogs, the veterans, it would seem like a new experience.

Yes.
Tomorrow.
 
HAWK

It was like it had never happened. None of it.

He glided down the court, dribbling like a pro, spinning, turning, side-stepping until he saw the opening and leaped, his arms high in the air, the ball spinning in a perfect arc toward the net. The high-fives, the re-grouping. The sweat running into his eyes.

He’d missed joining pick-up games in the park. He’d even missed the hard concrete they were forced to play on. He’d missed the cat-calls from the peanut gallery, the wannabees who couldn’t play themselves but thought they knew better than the players who could. He had missed the feel of his Air Jordan’s as they landed and held firm and guided his feet in a new direction. He’d missed the tingle at the end of his fingers when they touched the ball.

But now, he couldn’t recall the missing.

Now it was only the doing: the playing, the action, the challenge of putting himself up against whomever showed up. It was losing and winning and not caring which.

It was the effort.
It was the game.
 
THERESA

Somehow she had survived. Not just the illness, but the poverty, the hopelessness, the isolation – and now it was time to resume her past life.

Her shift started at 5:00.

She entered the kitchen door, clocked in, said hello to the dishwasher as she passed his station, grabbed a copy of tonight’s menu, asked questions of the sous chef, politely said no when the blond girl (what was her name?) asked to borrow some lipstick, checked herself in the mirror, and eased into the dining room to see that the busboys had correctly styled her tables.

This much was rote.
She could do this.

By 8 pm the room was full, the cheerful voices and piped-in music and clink of glasses and forks on china and scraping of chairs a throwback to a prior life. A life that had returned, ready or not.

Ready or not.

Her heart skipped a beat. Then another.
It would be all right.
This would be all right.
 
DAN

People needed plumbers, pandemic or not.

Tomorrow wouldn’t be much different from today or yesterday for Dan. Maybe he wouldn’t need the mask anymore, but he’d never been one to stand too close to his in-home customers, and there was something about a plumber that the customers never entirely embraced either. They had been happy enough to see him when he showed up, to fix a leaky faucet, a clogged drain, a broken furnace. He was good at his job. He never ran out of work.

Today was just another day. Tomorrow would be another, still.
 
 
PATRISHA

The day the plexiglass panels were removed was the day Patrisha knew the pandemic was over. Until then it had been a hope, a whisper, a breathless dream – but now it was real. Nothing separated her from the rest of the world, the people who bought stamps, shipped packages, picked up mail.

That first day, every customer commented on it. Every single one. When there was a line, as there often was, the person second in line or third would hear the person in front of them say something like, “Sure is nice being able to get rid of that damned plexiglass barrier!”, and then when they stepped up to the counter they would say the same thing or some variation of it.

They couldn’t help themselves. It meant something to them that the plexiglass was gone.
We were all safe again.

Together.
 
BARRY

Barry was not amused.

All these months he’d kept himself fit, transforming his bedroom into a home gym and faithfully exercising one, sometimes two, and sometimes three hours a day. He was in the best shape of his life, and was just beginning to see the outlines of an actual six-pack on his own previously unremarkable abdomen.
He was ready to display himself to those most apt to appreciate his new self. But … the only gay bar in his northern Wisconsin town had closed. Permanently. All those years he had attended the late-night underwear parties and shirtless backyard patio bar gatherings, enviously admiring other men while remaining fully clothed himself – and now that he had something to show, there was no place to show it, no one to look at him. There wasn’t even a beach nearby, gay or otherwise.

Although it gave him pleasure to look at his new body in the mirror, this wasn’t the pleasure he had longed for.

None of it was fair.
 
CALEB

Caleb had no need to tell his mom and dad about his two Fs. They’d seen it coming, same as him. What more was there to say about it?

Since schooling had gone online, nothing about school was private anymore. As his home tutors, his parents knew everything he did and everything he didn’t do, and it hadn’t made life easy. Caleb considered the failures to be his parents’ as much (or more) than his own, but good luck telling them that.

If you’d asked him a year ago if he would prefer going to school or not going to school, he would have replied ‘NOT’, like every other red-blooded American boy. But now? Now, he couldn’t wait to get back. He couldn’t fucking wait.

He’d be first to show up and last to leave. When classes ended, they’d have to shove him out the school door to make him leave.

He’d be happy to be anywhere but home.
Anywhere.
Anywhere but home.
 
INDIRA

Indira had never understood the logic of having to wear a mask while working the bank drive-through.
She had been the only person in the teller’s chamber, separated from the customers by inch thick plexiglass, and she only communicated with them through an intercom. She supposed that it made some sense that she had to spray the deposit tray between customers, but even that. she figured, was more for show than anything else.

Arriving at work, she avoided socializing. She exchanged greetings with no one, not even a look or a nod. She went straight to her chamber, turned the lights on, checked her cash drawer and her register tape, and began her day. At the end of her shift, she closed out and left before the manager entered the chamber to retrieve her daily reports and replenish her drawer for the next day.

She drove to work alone and she came home alone. She cooked dinner alone and she ate alone. Her groceries had been delivered and left outside her front door. Anything else she needed she bought on Amazon. She watched a lot of television. She stayed home.

So how, then, she wondered, had she caught the virus?

She had no memory of the two weeks she was intubated and very little of the first days the tubes were removed and she was allowed to breathe on her own again.

She hadn’t been ready to leave the hospital but they needed the bed. She was home alone again, but not ready to work. Not yet. Maybe not ever. They said it was safe now, but she didn’t feel safe.

At night, she sits in the dark, watching television, the sound turned off.
 
OWEN

Owen finished unpacking, and then he made his bed. His books were on his desk, along with his laptop and the framed photograph of his dog. His window was open, inviting the sounds of other students arriving in their parents’ cars. The tearful goodbyes. The hugs. The anticipated separations.

Tomorrow he’d sit in a classroom again, next to other students. He’d raise his hand and ask a question of an actual, three-dimensional professor. He’d walk down a crowded hall to the crowded plaza to the crowded union where he’d have a crowded lunch. He’d bump into other people accidentally. He wouldn’t worry about using a public restroom. He’d make plans to get together with some friends that night, after he finished a workout at the gym. He’d meet a girl. He might bring her back to his room, or perhaps he’d go to hers. They’d kiss, lips to lips. They’d kiss without fear. They’d spend the night together and wake up the next morning without regret.
 
 
 
 

 

     I want you to know that the red diaper wasn’t my idea. But if it discourages Korbel from sniffing my butt while I’m in heat, then I’ll put up with it.

    In this photo, I’m waiting for my turn for an exam. I rode in the back on the four-hour drive to something called an “Animal Eye Clinic” in Denmark, Wisconsin. John, Coleman and Korbel were somewhere up front. We parked in this gravel parking lot way out in the country, and the next thing we knew three other cars pulled up, all with dogs in them. Let’s see – there were Kaiser, Mogli, Jean, Johnny B, & Magic. And Maui. I know Maui, of course. It was nice to see her again. All the people were wearing masks. (The dogs were not wearing masks.)  It’s a good thing I have a strong sense of smell, so I could tell who was who.

     John held us while some woman put drops in our eyes while we were waiting in the parking lot. He said it was to “dilate” them, whatever that means. Well, we found out what it meant just a few minutes later. Everything looked crazy. I was really good about letting her put the drops in my eyes. Korbel and Maui were good about it, too. We trust John. Magic was a problem. I’m not sure he trusts anyone. But with enough people holding him, he finally got drops in his eyes too.

     Then one dog at a time, John took the dogs into the clinic, into a very dark room. There a woman (John said she was a doctor) aimed a bright light into my eyes. She had her face right next to mine. It was creepy. She smelled good, though, and she said I was a good girl. She said my eyes were perfect, and I learned later that she said the same thing about all the other dogs.

     Lois arranged the whole thing. It seems that before we can get evaluated by a GDMI (Guide Dog Mobility Instructor) and move on to our final training, we all have to get our eyes tested. We’ll also have to have a vet check out our hips and joints. I don’t know about my joints, but I’m pretty sure my hips are just fine. You can ask Korbel if you don’t believe me.

     After our eye exams, we drove for another four hours. I was a really good dog. Never complained once.
I miss my New Lisbon handlers, and my dog friends who are still there. But they shouldn’t worry about me. I’m getting lots of love and affection. Everyone who pets me says that I’m gentle and loving. And very smart. They say you did a great job with me, which says something about both of us, I suppose.
​
Love,

Lava

He had only been Director for the NIAID (National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases) of the NIH for a few months, when he called me. This was in 1984.

I was serving as interim executive director of the Howard Brown Memorial  Clinic, a woefully underfunded and understaffed basement street clinic in Chicago's boystown. I had stepped into the post when the clinic's ED became ill, and ... well ... someone had to do it. I took a leave of absence from my job as manager of education of the American Hospital Association, and went to work. It was the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. There was work to be done, homophobia to overcome, and patients to serve.

Howard Brown may have been operating on a shoestring out of a dark basement suite of offices on Chicago's Halsted Street, but it had already made a name for itself as a locus of research. The clinic had quick access to a population that mostly eluded more traditional research institutions - i.e. gay men. It's research into Hepatitis had been a key component into the development of a Hep vaccine. So when the NIH needed four cities to each recruit a thousand gay men for the first research project into the newly discovered HIV virus, the NIH turned to Howard Brown.

I was sitting at my desk just beginning my day when the phone rang. "Hi," he said. "This is Dr. Anthony Fauci from the NIH. We've got a problem." He went on to explain to me that Howard Brown's director of research, a respected Chicago doctor and researcher also affiliated with Northwestern University, was attempting to form a for-profit group of doctors in an effort to take over Howard Brown's research programs. In other words, one of Howard Brown's key employees was engaged in an effort to sabotage the work of Howard Brown for his own financial advantage. He asked what I wanted to do.

I told him I would fire this doctor and hire someone else to head the research. And that afternoon I did.

The doctor I fired had been one of Howard Brown's founders. He was widely respected and admired. I was an unknown, temporary clinic manager with one name. The situation became explosive quickly. The doctor hired attorneys who threatened to sue me and the clinic. I had to hire my own attorney to defend me against possible action. The gay press and the mainstream press in Chicago covered the brouhaha extensively. The clinic board called a community meeting attended by over 300 people to explain the firing. The board, thankfully, unanimously supported me. Many in the community did not.

I hired Dr. John Phair of Northwestern University to be our PI (Principal Investigator) for the MACS study. Dr. Phair continued as PI for 35 years, until his retirement last year. The MACS study still continues today. It has produced more than 1000 research papers and has been a crucial element in the world's efforts to stop AIDS. I am patient 20034 - the thirty-fourth study participant in the second site, Howard Brown. Every six months, for the last 36 years, I have submitted to clinical study, along with what has grown to over 7000 study participants.

In 1984, Anthony Fauci dealt with me and with Howard Brown honestly and ethically, and provided a steady hand in a crisis that could well have ended in the demise of Chicago's participation in the MACS study, and the loss of valuable research data. In intervening years, I have had no contact with him, and I can't imagine he would even remember his call to me, almost four decades ago. I have nonetheless followed his career with great interest, as he has guided our nation, and often the world, through one medical crisis after another.

Thank you Dr. Fauci, for being there for us again.

December 2, 2019
 
Eleven green-clad inmates sat in a wide circle in the middle of the prison visiting room, awaiting instructions, but mostly – awaiting an opportunity to meet for the first time the OccuPaws dogs that the trainers (Barb, Lois, John and Coleman) had brought with them: Maui, the poodle; Lava, the yellow lab; Netty, the black lab; and Dusty, Barb’s young service dog.

Before the training began, the dogs were handed over to the inmates. Introductions were made. And it was clear that like us when we began, they didn’t know how to hold a leash, how and when to offer a treat, or what voice to use when talking to an OccuPaws guide-dog-in-training. An hour-and-a-half later, some progress had been made.

At the next session the inmates were clearly more comfortable in their roles. And at the end of the session, two two-person inmate raiser teams took the dogs that would soon be theirs into their cellblock, which New Lisbon calls a unit. An OccuPaws volunteer trainer went with each team. It was the first time the dogs were to see their new homes, six-by-ten concrete and steel cells crowded with two bunks, two lockers and a standard dog crate. The inmates led the dogs into their cells, and like the good pups they are, they immediately went into their crates. I watched as one of the inmates sat on the floor beside the crate, wiping a tear from his face. Then it was time to show the dogs the two adjoining outdoor areas that the prison had prepared for them, one for play (OccuPark), the other a potty area (Business District).

UPDATE: January 30, 2020

There are now sixteen raisers with seven (soon to be eight) OccuPaws dogs at the New Lisbon prison. These men have proven themselves to be quick learners and worthy raisers. Perhaps most notable is how they work together as eight two-man teams, and one larger team, in the training and caring for their dogs. One also must credit the prison staff, who have been active participants in the program and have been supportive every step of the way.

One of the raisers has already served 21 years in prison; another has served 30 years. Imagine, if you can, what it might be like after 30 years in prison, to have an OccuPaws dog entrusted to you. Imagine that your dog lives with you in your cell. Imagine that you get to take on the responsibility of training a guide dog; that you get to help others while you are still behind bars.
​
What we do – this raising of guide dogs – is a good thing. When we combine it with providing prisoners this opportunity, it’s a great thing.

- ​It’s been almost fifty years since I left the confinement of prison. I had no interest in ever returning.

And yet …

Yesterday, I participated as an instructor in a class inside a state prison in Wisconsin. There were twelve inmates, four instructors and three dogs. It was the second class. This was the first time that dogs were introduced to the inmates. The class is preliminary to the inmates getting dogs that they will train – inside the prison – to become guide dogs for the blind. Next week, the first dog will go to live inside a prison cell with two of the inmates, and in following weeks, more dogs will be added until the twelve inmates have six dogs living in their cells.

It took half an hour for us to get passed into the prison. The exchange of ID’s, taking off belts and shoes and passing through the metal detector, the wait for the staff escort, the opening and closing of sallyports, the walk across the yard to the mess hall where the class was to be held …
​
The inmates had the mess hall re-arranged for the class according to instructions they had previously received. All tables and chairs were pushed against the walls. There was a large circle of chairs, and in the middle, three dog crates, each with a water bowl and a food bowl outside it, and a Kurunda bed for training.
We arrived with the dogs and the class began. For the first half hour, the lead instructor spoke to the inmates about the dogs. Then the three dogs were turned over to the inmates – one inmate at a time – so they could begin to practice how to take care of and train the dogs. How do you put the dog in its vest and take the vest off? How do you put on the leader collar? How do you get the dog into the crate? Out of the crate? How do you feed the dog? How do you hold the leash? How do you walk with the dog? How do you dispense treats? What kind of treats? How do you talk to the dog? How do you take the dog to poop?

Here's the deal. This is it. Right here.

​The first inmate took the leash of the first dog. It was fucking electric. He was nervous. Unsure. Tentative. The dog was chill. I was on fire. Every moment that passed, the inmate became more confident, the dog became more responsive. The room lit up. I took a breath. Then another inmate took charge of a dog. Then another. Then another. Eventually, all of them practiced walking the dogs. I walked beside them one at a time, coaching them, encouraging them, as they took their first steps as raisers of guide dogs for the blind.

I don’t know these inmates. I don’t know anything about them other than that they are in prison and that they were chosen by prison staff for this program. I don’t know how long they have been there. I don’t know how long their remaining sentences are. I don’t know what convictions they have behind them. I don’t know if they have family outside the prison who care for them or if they are alone in the world. I don’t know about their education, their backgrounds, their work experiences. I don’t know anything about them.
I do know this. Those twelve inmates fell in love with those three dogs. And for the hour that they were working with the dogs, they weren’t in prison anymore.

I know from my own experience, fifty years removed, what that feels like. I remember being transported, when I was in prison, by certain activities. Activities which allowed me to forget, for a while, that I was in prison.

​What a gift to give to give these inmates on Thanksgiving week. What a gift for me to be able to give it. And what a gift these inmates will give, eventually, when the first dog that has been trained at this prison is given to a blind person.

Seeing Dionne Warwick on CBS Sunday Morning reminded me of this story: In 1978 or 1979, I was sitting at my desk at Park West in Chicago. It was a mid-week day. Nothing much was happening. I remember Jolene Tanty was also sitting at her desk. I looked up and a tall elegant woman was standing in the office doorway.
I stood and asked Dionne Warwick if I could help her. She said she was supposed to be meeting her agent and some television people. Jolene and I looked at each other. We didn't know anything about a meeting, or why Dionne Warwick was standing in our office. We weren't even sure how she had gotten there, since the inside lobby doors were locked. She said she found the coatroom door open, so she made her way inside through the coatroom. She found Park West dark and empty, but then found the stairway which led her to our office.

She asked to use our phone, and learned that her agent was on his way. We offered her a cup of coffee, and she took off her coat, sat down, and we chatted a bit.

Before long her agent appeared, along with the producers of a public television concert series. I turned on the lights in the club and led them to the stage, then left them to negotiate the details of the concert.
The concert itself was stunning. A full orchestra, a packed room, and Dionne Warwick. The televised production was beautiful.
​
Here's what I remember about my brief encounter with Dionne Warwick. She was elegant, composed, warm, friendly, and unflappable. Arriving at a venue that was ignorant and unprepared, she was as gracious as if the opposite were true. She was a consummate professional, and a consummate lady. She was charming.

Once upon a time there was a painter. A portraitist. For years, decades really, he had practiced his craft until he was quite good at it and had gained some measure of recognition for his talent.

One day, he encountered a woman with a particularly interesting face, and he asked if he could paint her portrait. She couldn’t afford to pay him, but that was okay with him. There was something about her face that he felt he had to paint.

And so he did. For days, weeks, months … she sat for him and he painted. After each sitting, she would look at his work and make some small comment. She would suggest a slight change to the background. She would ask about a certain wrinkle near one eye. She would question a shadow, comment on a tint, praise a minute detail.

Finally, the portrait was finished and exhibited in a show. It drew wide praise and acclaim, so much that the line stretched out the door and not everyone who wanted to see it could.

The day after the show closed and the portrait was taken down, the woman told the man that she didn’t like it and she wanted him to paint it again, this time according to her instructions. She didn’t say what she didn’t like about it, or what those instructions would be. She told him she had been afraid to tell him her true feelings about the portrait because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Later, she told him she had been dishonest because she was afraid he’d walk away. And still later, she said she had been dishonest because she was afraid he would blow up.
​
None of that made sense to him, because he had accepted every suggestion she made during his months of painting her portrait. And he hadn’t the kind of temperament that blew up over anything.

They would paint the new portrait together, she said, a brush in each of their hands. And she, not he, would have the final word on what strokes were used in the construction of the painting, what hues, what lines, what shadows. Keep in mind that the woman had never held a paint brush and had no experience in painting.

Finally, she said, when the new portrait was completed, she would sign her name on the canvas. The new work would be presented as a self-portrait.

The painter said no.
​
He later burned the portrait he had made of the woman. He hated to burn it. He had liked it and thought it his best work. But it was never to be seen again.
​

July 22, 1968.

50 years ago, today, a man I didn’t know ordered me to take a step forward.

I didn’t.

Four months later I was sentenced to five years in prison after a 30-minute trial in Oklahoma City’s Federal Court I was twenty years old.

I knew when I stood my ground what the result would be. And yet, I didn’t move. Why?

Because I believed then, and believe now, that the war in Vietnam was wrong, that the United States should never have prosecuted it, that hundreds of thousands of young men should not have been drafted into fighting it, that 58,000 American lives shouldn’t have been wasted, that 2 million Vietnamese should not have been killed.

I gave up my student deferment voluntarily. I thought it was wrong for me to be privileged, while so many of my peers had no means to avoid the draft. I had a half-dozen ways to avoid the draft. I chose to confront it instead. I could have held on to my draft card. I could have applied for conscientious objector status. I could have faked a medical exemption. I could have told my draft board that I was gay. (I am gay. But I thought that was irrelevant and I refused to use it as an excuse.) I could have escaped to Canada, but I opted not to join more than 50,000 young American men who fled the US to escape the draft.

I chose to stay here and make my stand and speak out against the war. I chose to do what I could to stop the war.

I could have opted to refuse induction in Syracuse, less than 50 miles from where I was attending school, and where a judge had recently handed down a sentence of probation to a draft resister. But I chose to return to Oklahoma, even knowing I would likely face a five-year sentence, because in my home state practically no one was opposing the war and someone needed to.

In 1977, those 50,000 self-exiled men were pardoned by President Jimmy Carter. The two-thousand-plus of us who chose to remain in the US and were subsequently imprisoned – we were not pardoned. I have spent my entire adult life as a felon.

I have no regrets. I’ll never know if my act of resistance had any impact on shortening the war. But it doesn’t matter. I resisted an unjust war. That was - and is - a good thing.

Today, in 2018 we find our country in trouble again – quite possibly in worse trouble than in 1968. And not enough is being done about it.

Eventually the US got out of Vietnam. Eventually the draft - which targeted marginalized populations in America while exempting the privileged - was ended. Eventually the leadership of our country that dragged us into the Vietnam War became recognized as the villains they were. Johnson, Nixon, McNamara, Kissinger, Bundy, Westmoreland, Hershey.

Eventually.

May America survive its current heinous administration and its crippled legislative paralysis. May it find the means to thrive for another fifty years and beyond.
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