CJW:
I don’t think the experiences there had much effect on me, except
in considerable sympathy for, and knowledge about, the Methodist
Church, at levels above the local church. Most local constituencies
were quite conservative theologically, but at other levels of the
denomination, faculties of Methodist theological schools, the
district superintendents, the bishops, they all had an equivalent
education as to what we in more liberal ministry had. They looked, as
we did, upon the Bible as the literature of peoples; although they
might have used “The Word of God”, they didn’t really believe
that …
JWW:
That’s interesting!
CJW:
... and in fact, I was offered a job by a Methodist bishop, because,
I guess I had told the district superintendent of some of my
experiences in the workforce, and the disillusion I felt with
management, when I was a so-called foreman, and couldn’t be an
advocate for the laborers anymore. And so I was told – I didn’t
have anything in writing – that Bishop Oxnam, who was rather famous
in his day – might have a staff position in which I would be sort
of a representative of the Methodist Church for labor unions. I said,
“I don’t believe what you fellows believe.” They said, “No,
we know you don’t. We do ask you to read the creeds and the Lord’s
Prayer, but you don’t have to believe it. What we’re interested
in (to use their language) is, are you a man of the heart? Do you
care about people?” Of course, I turned it down, because I wasn’t
in the habit of saying things I didn’t believe, and I wasn’t
about to begin then. But I did get an appreciation.
I
remember another bishop speaking at a conference. His theme was the
old song, “The old-time religion, it was good enough for Moses.”
And he said, “The old-time religion – it may have been good
enough for Moses, but it’s not good enough for me.” He took each
part of that song, [and he] referenced to today and its problems. So
I have a great deal of respect for the Methodist Church, and have
since that time.
JWW:
Can you look back to perhaps what people refer to as formative years,
and find the sources or the wellspring of your agnosticism?
CJW:
Well, as I said … I guess I said it at lunch, certainly my father’s
death was a spur. Because how does a boy, barely into his teens,
reconcile that. And I’m not sure I had given much thought such
matters before. But that, combined with the liberal people –
agnostic, as well as liberal – and the atmosphere of freedom that
prevailed in our church (that is, you must form your own
convictions), plus the influence of such people, as we mentioned,
Charles Francis Potter, founder of the American Humanist Association,
plus some of my reading in John Dewey, particularly, the American
philosopher. Somewhere in his work he called God “the process of
ideals becoming real.” And while I wouldn’t use the word “God”,
in a sense that was the process of religion in which I believed.
Ideals have disillusions; most ideals cannot be achieved, but you can
take steps toward it.
JWW:
Well, at least in our family, you are the church historian, so my
question may not be even the right question, but I’m thinking of
how the church got from the late 18th century, which I
think of as having migrated from being Trinitarians to Unitarians,
but they were still Deists, and they were still Christians, to the
early 20th century, where your church, at least, was
asking you to form your own beliefs. [Were] there some major turns in
the road, or was this a very gradual evolution?
CJW:
There certainly were. One, with which you are well-acquainted, was
Charles Darwin. Secondly, Freud. Freud in the sense that, among other
things, he advocated that many of the things that we think of as
religious goals are childhood wishes, and when we [inaudible] to “God
the Father” we are expressing the ambivalance that most people
feel toward their real-life fathers – they love them and yet they
hate them. Darwin, Freud, and Marx. It isn’t that people adopted,
necessarily, the Marxian theory of communism, but rather that he
forced a great many people to examine what their beliefs about the
human venture, and its laborers, were.
JWW:
Maybe an extension of 18th century Enlightenment these
things ….
CJW:
That was very important too. Yeah. I should have mentioned that.
Writings of John Locke. Now you see, that was greatly influential in
our “founding fathers” – Jefferson, Adams, Monroe, Washington –
they were Deists. Now, one of the things that the fundamentalist
Christians won’t accept, is that a Deist is a very different breed
of cat, than what they’re talking about. Because the Deist really
believed in a god of Nature, and that Nature started all this going,
all these processes, and God, if there was a God, he just simply went
elsewhere and let the laws of nature work themselves out in all the
varieties of ways it has.
JWW:
So Darwin would find no conflict with those Deists.
CJW:
Yes and No. There is a biography of Charles Darwin, in which he …
he was ambivalent. He could believe two things at the same time.
JWW:
Good politician!
CJW:
[laughs] But you’d have to have a greater knowledge of Darwin than
I have. He certainly was a believer in natural selection, there’s
no question about that. Now, you see, evolutionary God-believers,
went from the Deists, that is, they all started in motion, to the
ones who thought that evolution WAS God.
[video
break]
A
difficult concept, and certainly nothing to do with God as a
being, but God as being. There’s a distinction
there.
JWW:
Having pursued a different career than you did, in my life, maybe
others would find the same kind of perspective useful, you talked
about God being the process by which these things happen, and working
in industry, commerce, and banking, my own thoughts about free
enterprise and the market are similar, in that only a fool would say
that these things can operate without constraints, restrictions,
enhancements, and regulations, and it’s the process of finding
those that balance the spirit that free enterprise may give rise to
in enterprising people, and the need to have these activities take
place within a humane environment, where not only the rights of this
generation, but future generations, are considered, when we look at
pollution and things like that. So I see that as a process too.
CJW:
I think so too. I think that somewhere in Adam Smith – the original
Adam Smith – he says something very much like that. And certainly,
the influence of the Enlightenment thinkers on economics was
considerable. The market, for example … if you want to sell as much
as you can, and make money, you’ve got to cut costs as much as you
can. And that resulted in excesses, particularly as such in mill and
mine, which had to be regulated, in my view. The part of the – what
was it, Sara Teasdale, the children in the mill look out (it’s on
the golf course) to see the men at play. The working children look
out to see the men at play. That’s an example for me as how the
artist moves things along. Just as I think Picasso, with that great,
great thing that’s in the Museum of Modern Art – Guernica –
that’s the most anti-war propaganda, if you will, that can be
imagined. So there were all those influences. You’re right about
the Enlightenment. And the big questions, the one I wrote in the
letter to you, and that is, what’s the best way? I own my house,
you own your house. I will keep the street clean in front of my
house, and the sidewalk. I will prevent crime in front of my house,
and you prevent it in front of yours. Very good, except it doesn’t
work, does it?
JWW:
Those things are hard to make work, I think, yeah.
CJW:
So … but at what point is there too much regulation? We’ve never
really worked that out.
JWW:
I think that your comments to me really stimulate some thoughts about
idealism, and one of the things that I think prevails in your
sermons, as well as the sermons of lots of other ministers, is a
degree of idealism. Which means, to me, a couple of things, and I
really want you to comment. First, that perhaps only a fraction of
the people that you may get to preach to become infected with the
same idealism, or with the same degree of idealism, and so that there
is this natural gulf, or gradient, between those you are reaching out
to, and those who may come back and respond. And secondly, you have,
if you will, an advantage in perspective with your intellect,
frankly, that only a fraction of those you would reach out to have
the same kind of access to, I’m thinking now of the amount and type
of intelligence that people happen to possess, and so it’s always
been a question in my mind, in a sense, of how you kept your
enthusiasm for the ideal, with the reality that for some, the ideas
of the proof are inaccessible; for some, they haven’t been hit in
the head yet with whatever life experience would cause them to be
susceptible, to responding in a positive way to the idealism that you
would set forth. So in the back of my mind I’ve had a question
about, not your idealism, but your faith in it.
CJW:
I think the best way to illustrate that is one, an observation, and
one, a story. Because of my experience in various things that I
worked at, it wasn’t any big shocking surprise to me to find that
there were SOBs in the church, even our liberal church. That might
have been the case if I was a naïve kid who came out at age 25 from
seminary, who would have been shocked to pieces that there were
bastards in the church.
JWW:
You worked your way up from the mail room.
CJW:
[Laughing] Yeah. And so, one. And the second thing, it’s sort of a
story that has sustained me, it’s a story, I forget what the fellow
was protesting. Let’s say he was anti-war. And his sign [was] about
peace. And he’s all alone walking up in front of the Pentagon, all
alone. And a policeman, watching him for some hours, finally comes
over said, “Buddy, why don’t you go home and get warm. You’re
not going to change the world.” And the picket says, “I don’t
want the world to change me.”
JWW:
So there’s an element of that, I think what you’re suggesting,
which says, these are things I need to do for internal reasons. So if
I don’t reach someone, or you, in my idealism, it doesn’t change
my enthusiasm for it.
CJW:
That’s right. And to be quite selfish, I’ll sleep better.
JWW:
Sleeping’s good.
CJW:
So in a sense … I’m not saying I’ve never compromised. Of
course I’ve compromised. But basically that’s it. I really don’t
want to change. Now, just because of that, doesn’t mean I was
against World War II, I was for it. I never could see a good reason
why we were in Korea. And Vietnam, I’m afraid I wore people out on
that one. I would have been better advised to have said it fewer
times, but nevertheless, so, I can’t have any regrets about it. It
was a wrong … the strategy was fine, the tactics could have been
better.
JWW:
I was about thirty-five years old when I lost my youthful enthusiasm
for whoever happened to be our President at the time. I think
probably Richard Nixon who did me in as a young adult. I get the
feeling that you may have had a more objective view of politics
earlier than that kind of age as you grew up.
CJW:
I think so. Because one, in the early 20s, when Harding was
President, and then after he died, a very strong Republican
administration in an era of “good times”, there was this scandal
in which these wealthy men were stealing from the Navy – millions
of dollars from the Naval oil reserves.
JWW:
The Teapot … ?
CJW:
And then of course I knew about Democratic politics in Massachusetts,
so I did not think that, from a very early age, that any party had
halos around its head, that there were flaws with [them] all, and
always, I think, my vote and my influence, whatever it might have
been, even in a letter to my congressman, was not because I believed
that either party was going to provide any kind of Utopia, because
none ever will, but on particular issues, if my little influence for
a postage stamp or a picket, would do something for that particular
issue, even thought I knew there’s going to be no Utopia, I would
do it. Still would.
JWW:
You had mentioned people like Charles Francis Potter as having
influenced perhaps your thinking, or people who, in a sense, had been
speaking to you, and you had some resonance with. Who might some
other writers or thought leaders have been that you especially found
attractive or helpful?
CJW:
Pete Seeger. We had a great experience with Pete Seeger in Rochester.
He was doing a concert somewhere in town, but through the influence
of a couple in the church that had known him when he was singing with
The Weavers, which was his original group, got him to come back to
our Universalist Church in Rochester, and in the assembly hall, he
was singing and had us dancing to about 2 o’clock in the morning
after his show. Most of the songs that you would remember, about
“little boxes” and everything like that. So very definitely I
felt … not that I would [?] along with him, he was very reluctant
to criticize the Soviet Union, and I didn’t go along with him
there, but in terms other things like equality, civil rights,
tawdriness of some parts of our culture, I could go along with him
decidedly. And then another influence, although I only met him once,
was Norman Thomas, who was the Socialist candidate for President in
several elections, getting as many as a million votes in one
election. He was a very little man, but someone had him come to
Rochester, and they needed a place for him to speak, and I guess they
thought of me, and so he spoke at our church, and I was impressed by
the breadth of his knowledge. If you wanted to argue economics with
him, you had better be informed about all the leading persons who had
advocated varieties of economics from Adam Smith to all the way back
to Marx, and also because, although he was a Socialist, his principal
ideal, his goal, his stance, was for free people. Free people. He had
no doubt that if people were free, they would choose the right thing.
I think it is naïve, but nevertheless, he was an important person. I
never voted for him, because my first vote was in ‘32, and from
then on it was Roosevelt, of course, because I felt anybody else, I’d
be throwing my vote away. So Norman Thomas. The writings of John
Dewey, I mentioned that.
JWW:
What would Dewey have written, for example, what were the kind of
things he would write about?
CJW:
Well, he wrote about education, of course. He also wrote about
religion; as I said, his definition of religion was “the process of
ideals becoming real.”
JWW:
Is he the Dewey Decimal System person?
CJW:
No, that’s another Dewey.
JWW:
OK.
CJW:
He was important politically in New York State, although I’d not
always lived there, he was a leading light in the so-called Liberal
Party in New York State (it was principally New York City), which was
an important influence in New York City for a number of years. And I
liked their goals, even though they were called “Red” and all
that, they were no more red than …. So John Dewey. FDR, but really,
he was reiterating what I had heard from others, as I mentioned
before. The Progressive Party, 1896 Democratic platform, the
anti-trust activities of Republican Theodore Roosevelt, so part of
that … my beliefs were a process too.
JWW:
You mentioned at lunch, people like Sinclair Lewis having in a sense
“spoken to you”, perhaps influenced you, could you talk a little
bit about why there was a resonance in Sinclair Lewis’ writings for
you, and anyone else that comes to mind as far as … I think we’re
thinking of the formative years, more than later, because that
ultimately helped helped determine your direction.
CJW:
Most of Sinclair Lewis was published in my mature years. But what is
important in the novelist, to my mind, there are many illustrations.
For example, you can read a history of the French Revolution. I have
one that’s very good. But if you want to get the feeling for
it, read Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. If you want to read
the story of Napoleon, fine, read a biography, but also, read those
chapters in Les Miserables about the Battle of Waterloo. You
the feeling for it. If you want to get the horror of war,
sure, read the statistics. If you want to get the feeling, read such
a thing as War and Peace.
JWW:
So in a sense, maybe there’s a parallel between fiction and its
function in the larger context of how art works for humanization, and
what Picasso said about art being the lie that lets us tell the
truth.
CJW:
I think that’s true, because these are fictional characters, [ …]
can’t really say it’s a lie. But the virtue of the contribution
of the artist, whether it’s Beethoven … some things I hear in
Beethoven that say, “this makes life worth living!” …
Mozart to me, too. But they are able to relate to us as persons we
can identify. Such a man as Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities.
Do you remember the story?
JWW:
I do not.
CJW:
Well, anyway. He was an example of …
JWW:
Only the opening line.
Together:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ....”
CJW:
He was a big drunk, a lawyer. But somehow he felt it in him to defend
this refugee family, and to take the place of the husband of the
woman that Carton was in love with, and go to the guillotine. And you
get something in that of … there are persons, not enough, but there
are persons who have the capacity to sacrifice with no personal gain
coming to them. Which is important … I think it is one of the
things that sometimes happens with religious figures. Switching to …
this fits in with what somebody asked about what about my sermons
that I liked the most. For years I did a now and then series called
Great Heretics of the Western World. And they’re still in
the boxes in storage down here on the corner in the warehouse. But I
took such historical figures of great heretics, beginning with Jesus.
Paul, Martin Luther, Savonarola, John Hus, and a few others that
don’t come to mind at the moment, because of what they were willing
to die for. Now, whether or not my audience would have considered
that my best, I don’t know. But I do know that in terms of, this is
what I have to say, the biographical sermon is the one I enjoy most.
In fact, the next time I’m asked to preach here, I’ll probably
use a biographical sermon I have on John Peter Altgeld.
JWW:
Oh, I remember him. He was the Illinois labor leader.
CJW:
Governor.
JWW:
Governor.
CJW:
He was called a contemptible revolutionary by some, and others called
him Lincoln’s only successor.
JWW:
There was a great riot in Chicago around
CJW:
Pullman Strike.
JWW:
886
CJW:
Oh the Haymarket Riots, yeah.
JWW:
where a lot of people died, and he was somehow at the center of that.
CJW:
He was elected Governor, and by that time, those arrested in the
Haymarket Riots were about to hang, were imprisoned, and he was being
urged by many to show mercy to these people. And he simply said, if
they were guilty, they’ll get no mercy from me; if they’re
innocent, they’ll be pardoned. And he studied the trial
extensively. He demonstrated that Judge Gary, for whom Gary, Indiana
was named, was part of U.S. Steel, was biased, evidence was faked,
the jury suborned, so he pardoned them. If he had merely released
them, he would have gotten no flak whatsoever from anybody. But the
whole conservative part of the country went up in arms when he
pardoned them. And nobody liked him at all except working people. And
he was quite a fellow. So he was a great heretic.
[break]
JWW:
We were talking about sermons and some of the people whose thinking
may have influenced you, and the preference you developed for
biographical-based sermon. When you watch other people, and I’m
only familiar with maybe a few, you would probably come up with some
better names, but years ago when I watched Bill Moyers interview
Joseph Campbell, on PBS, on television, it struck me that Joseph
Campbell might very well have caused any number of people who hadn’t
thought about their faith and the mythologies embedded in them, to
think about it, maybe challenge some of that, and I’m wondering if
you have a reaction to a Joseph Campbell being on public television,
as opposed to turning to channel 72 and finding TV evangelists at 11
o’clock on Tuesday night.
CJW:
Well, it so happens that when I was in New York, District
[inaudible], we would have all day meetings, usually with a key
speaker, and there was one occasion when we had Joseph Campbell. He
spoke for 2 hours before dinner, and an hour and a half afterwards,
and I don’t think anybody missed a word. I don’t
know about his television work, but in person … not as an orator,
but a most effective speaker. And not a note. Not a note. He didn’t
have any piece of paper with him. He just went on and on, and I felt
he was one of the best-informed persons, in the field of religion,
that I have ever encountered. Some of his things [inaudible] back
with me a little bit, like “find your own bliss”, and that sort
of thing. But if I had the money, I’d buy that whole series. It’s
on tape, you know. Bill Moyers interviews.
JWW:
I didn’t know that, yeah.
CJW:
I think he’s an outstanding figure in 20th century
religion. His most effective book, which I used to have, it’s among
those that went to Chattanooga, The Hero With a Thousand Faces,
and that’s the dying-rising savior god. God
of vegetation, god of the Christians … and, no, he’s a great one.
Plus, he was not only informed, you might say, in the philosophy of
religion, and its varieties across the globe, but he was able to tie
it in on a number of occasions with art and sculpture. It was an
amazing integration to me. Not only Western art and sculpture, but
Eastern, particularly the Hindu and Buddhist. He was an amazingly
informed man. I think it was only in his latter years that he got any
recognition. For years, he
was sort of an obscure teacher at a small college in Manhattan.
JWW:
The students at Columbia liked him.
CJW:
I’m sure. I think he was remarkable. In a sense, I think his
influence with me was more subtle than direct. One of the things he
taught me, which other have, but [he] underlined, was that if one
person finds his sustenance as a fundamentalist Christian, good for
him. If another person finds it in the Buddha, good for him. If
another person finds it in Muhammad, good for him. Let’s get
together and talk, not about how we differ, but what can we as
well-intentioned people do in our community.
JWW:
This is probably a transgression that we don’t need for this little
exercise here, but I have been struck in the past few weeks by
how the Buddhists and Hindus
of India and the Muslims of
Pakistan are very dangerously at odds at this time, and I associate
those countries as having been formed, in the modern sense, partly
because of the influence of Gandhi,
and how his preaching about
nonviolence does not seem to
hold sway among
the leaders of those
countries today, although
that was all part of one country when the British owned it.
CJW:
That gets back to the
liberation of India, yes. The
Germans have a word, they
have one word,
called realpolitik.
And I do not see, given the hatred that exists between Pakistani
Moslems
and Hindus, is going to be resolved in any soon time by either side
taking a nonviolent stand. I
would hope they would be content to rest on their weapons, so to
speak, but the whole problem – not the whole problem – but I find
it a bit bizarre that nations like the United States, and France, and
Great Britain, and Russia, are telling them that they shouldn’t
have [nuclear] weapons, but I haven’t seen one of these nations
offer to dispose of all of its nuclear weapons. So I’m a little
cynical there. And I have to remember, and
this is very unpatriotic, but
there’s only one country that has used nuclear weapons.
JWW:
When those weapons were used, how were they explained to the
population at large?
CJW:
They were explained to the population at large that, to use them
against the two cities in Japan, would save 100,000 American
soldiers’ lives, in an invasion of Japan. That was the principal
defense.
JWW:
Was the way in which they work explained?
CJW:
No. I don’t think that any of us who weren’t scientists had any
notion of the cumulative effects of radioactivity, et cetera. But
part of the – and here I am a bit cynical, and unpatriotic – one
of the reasons that it’s alleged that Truman used it, was to
prevent the Soviet Union from being part of the peace process with
Japan, because they were already sweeping down through Manchuria –
the Soviet forces. And Truman didn’t want any Russians on the USS
Missouri signing the peace treaty with Japan. There were indications
that Hirohito might be willing to sue for peace. If so, it’s been
well buried in those files that exist. Maybe some historian a hundred
years from now will find it. So I don’t think it was necessary, if
we had been willing
to wait awhile before winning. We didn’t have
to invade Japan. Or
if we did, it didn’t have to be done then. But that’s my view.
And of course, that started it. Many
of the people who leaked secrets to the then-Soviet Union did so from
reasons which they were willing to defend. They did not want just one
country to have this weapon. If two countries have it, less likely is
it to be used.
JWW:
Sometime around 1952 or 1953 I was a grammar school student at Babson
Elementary School in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and I can remember we
had atomic bomb air-raid drills. Of course, we took these all very
seriously, being eleven or twelve years old. We had no idea they’d
be useless anyway. It’s kind of … looking back on that to realize
that we all went and did drills, and it wouldn’t have mattered what
we would have done had we been attacked, because the force of these
weapons was so great, that we could not escape annihilation anyway.
CJW:
If you were alive for a day, you were radioactive and would die soon.
I think in retrospect that that was part of the cold war propaganda.
Because, you see, if we had stopped to think, we could have asked
such questions as, what delivery systems are there to deliver the
Soviet Union’s atomic weapons? Submarines? Don’t we have sonar?
You know, and so on. But it certainly was a very real fear for many
years, no question. And I would expect that there are still people
who keep up shelters.
JWW:
I suppose sometimes even bad examples can be useful. In my own mind,
having gone through the air raid drills and then having read Nevile
Shute’s On the Beach really combined in
my consciousness to understand not just the horror but the futility
of this kind of situation. We’re probably a little bit off the
subject, or maybe we’re not, I don’t know.
CJW:
I don’t know. I think that there is no question that nuclear
weapons were singularly important in the many years of the Cold War
with the Soviet Union. We wouldn’t have been scared of anything in
Cuba at all if they hadn’t landed some of their missiles there. And
even now, to me, it’s irrational to great big business with China,
which is certainly more of a threat to the world than Cuba, and we
refuse to do business because we don’t like Castro. And one of the
unfortunate things is, in my view – I no longer have the data –
but we could have had Castro as an ally if we had allowed him to have
his socialist or communist government in Cuba. We’d have done
business with him for fifty years. And it was ridiculous, it seems to
me, to think of an invasion from Cuba. What are you gonna do, take
over Sarasota? So what! You know? But that was agitated by votes –
the Cuban exile community in Miami. Which influenced both Democrats
and Republicans alike. I can’t think of a group as small as they
were, relatively, who have had a greater influence on our foreign
policy with Cuba. That’s off a lot of subjects, isn’t it?
JWW:
Well, it is. We gotta go back to our list here and see how we’re
doing. This is the point in the interview maybe where a George Carlin
would migrate to what he refers to as “free-floating hostility.”
[laughter]
If
you remember that.
CJW:
Yeah, I tried to play that but I can’t get the volume set.
JWW:
Oh, it can’t come up? Maybe I just need to give that back to you
and you can re-record it. My belief is that we’ve probably touched
on in several ways some of the things that your grandson Carl has
brought up, and certainly granddaughter Shawn had brought up, and
many of the things that Marj brought up and things I had on my mind.
Marj has some other questions, and as she she says, they’re in no
particular order, and I think you’ll agree. She talks a little bit
about people like you and I who at one time smoked cigarettes, and
that you had smoked off and on for many years. Her question is, does
the motivation for quitting smoking have any effect on the ease of
quitting? And I guess I’d have my answer, but we’re …
CJW:
Here’s my answer to that. The reason we both stopped smoking when
we went to Canton was economic, no question about it. To spend that
money for cigarettes when we were so cracked for money, was just
simply not in the cards. And it was twenty years before I smoked
again. And that was the result of … I had been at a party with Ruth
Gray at the home of Harvey and Moody Wallace, in Plainfield, and it
was a long night of drinking and partying and the usual bits. And so
we stayed over that night with Harvey and Moody, and so the next
morning, Harvey and I were the only ones up, about nine o’clock in
the morning, so he made coffee, and we sat there, and he brought out
his cigarettes. And I was hung over, he was hung over, and I said,
“Give me one of those.” And he said “Are you sure you want it?”
“Yeah, I want it.” And that’s how I started smoking again.
JWW:
But you quit again.
CJW:
Oh yeah. I quit again. I don’t think there’s one answer, because
different people have different levels of addiction. For many years,
after quitting smoking, the last time, I said a cigarette would
always look good to me. If I knew I was dying, I’d have somebody
get me a pack of cigarettes. I don’t want to feel that way. I
wouldn’t … when I’m dying, I don’t want a cigarette.
JWW:
We have a friend who quit smoking at age forty, and he would be in
his mid fifties now. And he had said at the time he quit that he knew
that the long-term consequences, or effects, of smoking took ten
years to show up. So once he got to be seventy-two, he was going to
start again, because he only wanted to live to be eighty-two, and it
wouldn’t matter. [laughter] He probably won’t either, so ….
CJW:
Part of my attitude towards it springs from hospital visitations,
where I have seen people lingering, perhaps not in agony, because
they were drugged for pain, but I’ve said to myself, I don’t want
to die like that, something caused by cigarettes. I may still do it,
because of the long-range effects, but I hope by that time, a simple
lethal cocktail would be available.
JWW:
I was listening to public radio a few weeks ago, and they were
talking the fact that some of the video games that are being played
today, and I’m really thinking about about teenagers and young
adults, have … that the human brain produces a chemical when you
win [in] a video game, that is identical to the chemical that
the human brain produces when you take cocaine. Now, it is not
cocaine, but what they’re thinking is that at least the attraction,
and perhaps, if you will, the addiction for video games has a
chemical foundation that is identical to cocaine. And it may well be
that the use of tobacco – perhaps nicotine is one of those
chemicals – the most obvious suspect, I think – the brain reacts
and produces a chemical, which is what you really want. And when you
and I have had discussions about our dissatisfaction with the media,
and we start from different points and I think get to the same place
as far as the media is concerned, I am still convinced that it is the
stimulation of the production of adrenaline by outrageous and
sensational stories, that people become, if you will, dependent upon.
And so I’m going to turn this station back on because I know
they’re going to lead – this is all subconcious - I know they’re
going to lead with a story that will get me pumped.
CJW:
I guess that’s why – I surf the channels in the evening, hoping
to find something – and there are a couple channels, where, I could
bet a hundred dollars to ten that they’ll be talking about Clinton
and Monica Lewinsky.
JWW:
Somebody like Christopher Matthews on Hardball, for example.
CJW:
Yeah, that’s a good example. And also, Pat Buchanan’s sister. I
forget her name. And so, I think there’s something to it. Of
course, we’re discovering more and more about the brain –
scientists are – and I think what you have in what we call our
brains, and I’m not a scientist obviously, as you know, I think
it’s a combination of chemistry and electronics. Synapses. Someone
said that there’s a type of electrical impulse that can go from
here to here [holds out left then right hands] without passing
through here [indicates middle]. I have no understanding of what that
means, but if it’s true, I think it explains something of our brain
activities. And, there are also, these, what do they call them,
endomorph [endorphins]? Pleasure/pain impulses? Anyway, I think that
may be the next great scientific area. I mean, it has been for some
time, but there are more and more discoveries being made. And
discoveries may scare the hell out of us. But I think that’s the
field in this matter that I mentioned to you, somewhere, evolutionary
psychology. That is based on that.
JWW:
One of the books that Kevin gave me is called Emotional
Intelligence. And it talks about the fact that our brains are
wired to prepare us to react to situations that would, if we don’t
give them any thought, can seem threatening. And so we may become
physically or emotionally defensive, we may strike out, we may do
things, as a matter of just a reaction to a situation. And that
through the development of emotional intelligence, we allow ourselves
to examine incoming messages or stimuli, before we react and do
something with them. And that that is really the next area for focus
for human beings, is to see that all people can, if you will, make
choices as to when to allow their reptilian brain rule them, and when
they going to let their homo sapien brain to rule them.
CJW:
Turn that off, I have a story I want to tell you, that I don’t want
on tape.
[break]
JWW:
Well this might be a good time in the tape to jump around a bit and
cover some oddball subjects and then come back to any tangent we find
ourselves on. My siblings certainly, if not others, are going maybe
be a little envious of me being the one who got to have this
discussion with you, and so they may show up with a camera some day
with their own questions, I don’t know! [laughs]
CJW:
I’ll really throw a curve and say different things! [laughs]
JWW:
And the other reason why they’ll be envious is that I got to hear
the story about the fruit warehouse and they didn’t!
CJW:
The manager of the fruit …
JWW:
Going back to perhaps the children for a moment. What can you recall
about … I certainly know that my mother’s sister’s first name
is Marjorie. You’ve told me your grandmother’s first name was
Annette, or Anna, so although I didn’t know this, I’m jumping to
the conclusion that and you and my mother had put together those two
names, and that’s how she became named. I know mine’s even
simpler. What about the other children, and what about Peter and
Martha, and the names, what’s some of the background of the names?
CJW:
Your mother had an aunt Martha. I don’t know why Peter was Peter.
Good name, that’s all. Good strong, masculine name.
JWW:
Well, she had a nephew Peter – Paulding.
CJW:
I’m not sure he was alive then.
JWW:
He may not have been born yet. Yeah.
CJW:
Well, maybe he was …. Was he the oldest Paulding?
JWW:
No no no, he wouldn’t have been, because I think Buddy was born in
1929, and by the time Peter was born, Buddy wouldn’t have been
married yet. So that can’t be it.
CJW:
That’s right. Peter is not Bud’s son, he’s his grandson.
JWW:
Right. So … but Peter shows up in both families, so maybe there was
something earlier in the Pauldings.
CJW:
There may have been. The only thing in the Westmans, and this may
have … and I don’t know if I ever told your mother or if it had
influenced me.... Years ago, when I was still at 32 Oliver Street,
there came a knock at the door. A man was there, a young man as I
recall, looking through the front window. He said, “My name is
Peter Westman, I think I am a cousin of your husband.” And my
mother, one of the things I never could understand, she didn’t even
invite him in, just stood there, talked a couple minutes, and he went
away. She did the same thing with one of the Nelson cousins from New
York – Anna Larson – she was Anna Nelson originally, she married
Larson, who was a carpenter. She did the same with Anna and Larson.
Didn’t even invite them in. I never had the moxie to ask why, it’s
something my mother just wouldn’t answer. So she ignored it.
[End
of Part 3]
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