Our final speaker for lead-ex is Major General Mark Dillon, Air Force Retired. He earned his commission through OTS and completed a distinguished 33-year military career commanding at the squadron, group, and wing levels. He's a command mobility pilot with more than 3,500 flight hours and six different airframes. His final assignment was a hardship tour at Pearl Joint Base Harbor, Hickam, Hawaii where he served as the Vice Commander of Pacific Air Forces and the Deputy Theater Joint Force Air Component Commander. General Dillon is President of Mark C. Dillon, LLC where he's a leadership, defense, and strategic planning consultant and currently serves on three boards of directors. Ladies and gentlemen, Major General Mark Dillon. Thanks, Mo. Well good afternoon. Team Montgomery, Air University, Air Command and Staff College in the Class of 2020, Squadron Officer School, Air Force ROTC cadets, distinguished visitors, ladies and gentlemen, did I miss anyone? Okay. For the past two days, we've had the distinct opportunity to participate in lead-ex 2020, trying to find purpose at the intersection of leadership, strategy, and innovation. So one of my first responsibilities, I thought this, by the way, I thought it was an absolutely tremendous event, the first time I've participated, so kudos to the team. One of my first responsibilities is to say thank you. So if you'll hold your applause for a second, I'm going to say a few thanks just so make sure I do this right. All right. First and foremost, how about a shout out to that tremendous team, the lead-ex team, who put this all together, their team of volunteers, and their famous fearless leader, Colonel retired Bill DeMarco. Would all those folks from lead-ex and their team please stand and be recognized? Bill, come on. They're in the back. Yep. Now if Bill and his team, stick with my analogy here, if Bill and his team drafted the outline for the lead-ex 2020 term paper, then clearly the body of that term paper was filled out by our wonderful guest speakers for the last couple of days. So would all our guest speakers who participated please stand and be recognized? This afternoon, a kid who graduated from Bemidji High School in Bemidji, Minnesota will share some pragmatic leadership observations that I've collected over a 33-year career in serving in our world's greatest Air Force. Now I didn't leave high school anticipating that I was going to join the Air Force. I left high school anticipating that I was going to go to college and play baseball and maybe try to play professional baseball. But as life would have it, and unlike the Houston Astros, sometimes when life throws you a curveball, you don't know what's coming. And so four and a half years after graduating from Bemidji High, I was able to turn my humble 2.67 grade point average college degree in engineering into an opportunity to attend officer training school in the United States Air Force. And the rest, they say, is history. Throughout my career, I had the opportunity to serve as a space shuttle systems engineer, who was selected to attend pilot training and flew seven different aircraft, many of them around the globe. I've landed safely on six of the seven continents on the planet. I've served during the tenure of six United States presidents, and I've shaken the hands of four of them. And most importantly, I've had the opportunity to attend not one, not two, but four PME courses here at Maxwell Air Force Base. I believe good leaders possess the following characteristics. Good leaders have balance in their life. Good leaders are professional. Good leaders know their mission. Good leaders know their people. And good leaders demonstrate courage, and I'll talk about those in a second. Innovation is defined as to change or renew. Someone much smarter than me once said, if you want a new idea, read an old book. So kudos to the ACSE staff this year for including an old book on ethics written by Aristotle. Now you might say, why would we want to read something by a guy who lived 2,400 years ago? Well, quite frankly, I think Aristotle has something important to say, not only to us as human beings, but also to us as leaders. He talked about, he discussed, and he thought deeply about what's the right way for human beings to live. And that, my friends, that, my friends, is not bound by time nor by place. Very strategic indeed. Wikipedia tells us that Aristotle was a teacher for Alexander the Great. And he wrote over 200 works that have made significant and lasting contributions to human knowledge from logic to biology, ethics to mathematics, and a whole range of others. For that reason, Aristotle and his teacher, Plato, are known as the fathers of Western philosophy. 1,500 years after Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, the foremost medieval scholar, called Aristotle the philosopher. Can you imagine if you'd had those two duty titles or those two responsibilities, the father of Western philosophy and the philosopher on your resume? Truly amazing indeed. A couple more thoughts on Aristotle before I get started. He's the master of the obvious. Let me quote, the good man and the bad are least distinguishable while asleep. His ethics can be summarized as one of the first self-examination or first self-help books. Because in it, as I mentioned earlier, he sets out to answer the question, what is the right way for a human being to live? Aristotle, again, telling us the obvious, tells us what separates humans from other animals is our fact that we can talk. And because we can talk, we can reason. And it's our unique ability to reason that we can determine the good. So logically it follows that in order to be a good and virtuous leader, you need to be a good and virtuous human being. So well done to the Air Command and Staff College this year for including Aristotle in their curriculum. Observation number one, good leaders need balance in their life. Congratulations, and my comments are targeted specifically to those ACSE grads from Class of 2020 this year. You're going to go on to incredibly more responsible positions, positions of more authority, some of you are going to command. More, more, more, more work, more busyness. Your professional lives are going to increasingly get busy as well as your personal lives. Let me use an analogy. The faster the wheel spins, the more it needs to be in balance. I can guarantee this because at least for ACSE, I sat in your very seats over in Barnes and the other auditoriums a mere 22 years ago in seminars 4 and 11. I've had the privilege to serve for many great leaders and I've learned something from each and every one of them. Let me give you a couple of examples. We've all served for good leaders and bad, the good, the bad and the ugly we heard about this week. I've had the privilege to serve for leaders who are workaholics and so have you and learned something from them. I served for a four star a couple years ago who had several years before I served with him had actually almost worked himself to death. He was such a workaholic. Fortunately for him, he survived and fortunately for our nation and Department of Defense, he went on to become a four star general and bigger and better things beyond that. Serving for this leader was one of the greatest privileges that I had in my career and taught me so much about leadership and especially about keeping your life in balance. He completely changed the staff schedule. He wouldn't take home a foot high stack of paperwork every night like his predecessor was. I was his chief of staff and in fact he told me, he said, hey chief, why am I doing all, why do I have all these general officers and SES on my staff if I'm doing all this work? He changed the duty day. The first official duty, the first official meeting could not start until 9 AM and he religiously left by 5 PM. Now I know that all of you aren't four star generals. I understand that and I know that all of you at this point in your life think that, hey, I've always heard do more with less. Trust me, this officer did way more by doing, actually doing less non-important things. He taught me about balance. He went on to become a combatant commander. Achieving balance though in your life takes thought as you've heard throughout the last couple of days and trust me, the more senior you've become, the more responsibility you take on, it's the more time, the more important it is for you to create time to think in order to get your life and keep your life in balance. Next slide. Yeah, it's a note to myself. In July of 2018 there was an article in Wall Street Journal written by a gentleman named Dr. Bradley Statz. The article is entitled, Don't Just Dive Into Action, Stop to Think First. The good doctor uses a soccer penalty kick example to make his point. According to Dr. Statz, World Cup soccer penalty kicks go left 32% of the time, right 28% of the time, and they stay in the center of the goal about 39% of the time. Yet either because folks don't look at the statistics or they don't believe them, World Cup soccer goalies go left 49% of the time. They go right 44% of the time and they stay in the middle only about six. But World Cup soccer goalies aren't the only ones that have this, what I'll call, action bias. We all do. Business says that we're important. Dr. Statz in the same article also makes a point where he talks about, uses a quote from the original CEO of international business machines, IBM, who said, and I quote, the trouble with every one of us is we don't think enough. So we all take busyness and many of us think that busyness in the workplace is an indication that you are indeed dedicated. You're more knowledgeable or you're more important. The fact of the matter is effective leaders don't just act. They think before they act. They think about how to keep their life and not only keep it, get it, but to keep it in balance. And long before Isaac Watson or long before Dr. Statz or even for the four star that I serve for, Aristotle wrote about bringing your life into alignment, your thinking, your desiring, and your actions. He called this alignment of thinking, desiring, and actions virtue. He said, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is a habit, not an act. Good leaders are professionals. We all know that the word professional comes from the Latin root profess, which means to publicly declare one is skilled in as in a leader.  In order to not degrade your profession, however, leaders need to treat each other like professionals up and down and across your organizations. Many actions exemplify professionals, and I'll just mention a couple of them. They are standards, loyalty, and mentoring. Whoops. There we go. First action is to have and maintain standards, I believe, of a good professional. As you heard Admiral Lee talk about yesterday, the US military is the number one most trusted institution in American society today and has been for several years. I believe one of the reasons for that is because we not only have, but we uphold and maintain our standards.  Each and every one of you as leaders in our military is a standard bearer for the organization. Prime Minister, so don't compromise on your standards. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, and I quote, if you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing. Second characteristic of a professional is loyalty. Have you heard any banter about a fellow airman around the office? What about the latest banter or opinions given your opinions on each other on social media? We've all done it or seen it. My recommendation is don't do it, and as a leader, don't tolerate it. When leaders tolerate loyalty, all kinds of bad things happen. You have personnel issues in your unit, you have morale issues, and you have serious command climate issues. Trust me, I've seen it many, many times. But don't take my advice for it. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt once, great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people. You may not like someone in your unit, but our military, much like Admiral Lee said yesterday, it's not fantasy football. You don't get to pick your team no matter how senior you are. You've got to figure out, especially as a leader, how to get along with everyone. Cadet Mark Dillon learned this hard lesson back in 1984 at Officer Training School. You've all done them. We've done them before. They're called peer spears, peer evaluations. I seem to get along with everyone in my flight, but there was one of the cadets that I just, we really had a personality conflict, just didn't like the gentleman. So when it came time to do peer spears, I felt inclined. I thought I was obligated to give my opinion of this young man. So a couple days after turning in our peer spears to our flight commander, he brought us all together in a room, closed the door, made us all set. He had about a 10 foot rope in his hand that had a noose on the end of it. He asked Cadet Dillon to come to the front of the class. He asked me to put the noose around my neck. I still didn't know what was going on. I thought, hey, it's training. I thought we're going to learn something about escape and evasion, or maybe he's going to tell us a POW story. I didn't know. Imagine my surprise when he said, and I'm paraphrasing, but pretty close, he said, Cadet Dillon, you came about this close to hanging yourself. We're only a week away from graduation, and you almost didn't graduate because you elected to give your opinion on an evaluation of someone, instead of actually assessing them. My flight commander, of course, had much better judgment than I, and he elected not to tell the rest of the flight and embarrass me in public, besides the embarrassment I already had, to say what I'd actually written. As Aristotle's teacher Plato once said about opinions, opinion is the medium between ignorance and knowledge. You may not like someone in your organization, but as professionals, you have to figure out how to get along with them, how to actually show loyalty towards those individuals.  The third characteristic of professionalism is mentoring. Has anyone read the book, Creech Blue, by General Bill Creech, or about General Bill Creech and the Reformation of the Tactical Air Forces? It's about General Creech, who was the commander of the Tactical Air Forces right after the Vietnam era, and how he rebuilt the force. It's written by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Slife at the time, now Lieutenant General Jim Slife, who's the commander of our Air Force Special Operations Command. One of General Creech's leadership lessons was, the first responsibility of leaders is to train the next generation of leaders. Retired US Air Force Chief of Staff, General Ron Fogelman, ran through a list of all those officers who were mentored by General Creech. You might recognize some of these names. General John Jumper, General Merrill McPeak, General Richard Myers, they all acknowledged that Creech was much more than just a mentor. Now, I know the chances are that you're not going to be mentoring one of the future Chief of Staff of the Air Force. But the point isn't about Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the point is about training, about mentoring, and quite frankly, about training your replacements.  If not you to train your replacement in your unit, then who? I still mentor scores of folks inside the Air Force, outside, officer and enlisted, folks that have no affiliation with our United States Air Force. Trust me, it's a very rewarding opportunity. And whether you're, again, a Lieutenant or a Lieutenant General, I encourage you to mentor. I happen to be a member of a flying fraternity, and I live in near the Washington, D.C. area. And a couple years ago, I met a young man who was interested in joining the Air Force. He did not. He's currently a freshman at Howard University. But we have this flying fraternity that I participate in, has monthly meetings. So the meeting last month, I decided to invite this young man that I've been mentoring. And guess who the guest speaker was? The guest speaker happened to be none other than, let me get my notes here, make sure I get it right. The guest speaker was, of course, and you'd seen him recently on the State of the Union. The guest speaker was newly minted US Air Force Brigadier General Retired. Tuskegee Airmen and Centurion, yes. You know what I'm talking about. Sorry about that. Mr. Charles McGee, all right. So Charles McGee was there. And I think now, this young man doesn't belong to Air Force Unit. He may or may not join Air Force ROTC at Howard University. But by golly, he had an experience of a lifetime, as well as me. So mentor, whether it's inside your units or outside, but take the opportunity to mentor. All right, my third leadership observation is know your mission. 18 years ago in the summer of 2002, this flying squadron commander had the opportunity of a lifetime to lead a unit into combat. On the 1st of July 2002, the Air Mobility Command Director of Operations made a personal visit to our base at Travis Air Force Base to give us the tasking to deploy the C-5 into and out of Afghanistan. A little background on the C-5 Galaxy for those that you don't know about it. In 2002, there weren't any new engines or new avionics modernization done to the airplane. The C-5 is an airplane, of course, that was designed and built in the 1970s and has a well-deserved reputation of having low reliability. The last time the C-5 had deployed into combat was in 1975 in Vietnam. After more than 25 years of not flying into combat, do you think the C-5 cruise and the support system was ready for that? The answer was a resounding no. There are actually two challenges. The first one is obviously we're going to be flying in harm's way. People might actually be shooting at us. The second challenge, though, was actually bigger. It was a negative attitude, not only just an attitude, but I'll call it a negative attitude. Because this old airplane hadn't flown into combat for decades, its support system and all those things around it had really atrophy. The conventional wisdom was this combat deployment was risky. A fact the two star who came out to our base that day repeated often. Now, yours truly was focused on the mission, focused on the object in front of me. But quickly, that focus was brought back down to Earth and back down to reality by our people. Before we even deployed, one of the first questions that my airmen were going to deploy with us wanted to know is, hey boss, what's going to be the alcohol drinking policy where we are based in Diego Garcia out in the Indian Ocean? Think about that. Historic opportunity, once in a lifetime chance, and folks are worried about what the alcohol policy is going to be. Now, they knew because they're a smart air crew, they knew that Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean is outside the CENTCOM US Central Command Area of Responsibility, where at the time, in 2002, the general order number one was in effect, which is no alcohol. And they knew that their fellow crew dogs that were there with them routinely had the opportunity when not on duty to consume alcohol. Our deployment was only scheduled the last three weeks. So I knew the importance of this mission. I knew the importance of taking care of people. But this was one time where the mission came first. So I implemented a no alcohol policy for our deploying crews. I also thought at the same time, if we can't go for a few weeks without alcohol, we've got bigger problems. So despite the bellyache and the whining, I eliminated the alcohol distraction. Aristotle would call the virtue of temperance or moderation. Again, it was only for a couple of weeks. Leaders balance mission and people. And in this case, the mission took priority. What were the results of that deployment? I'll share those with you in a minute. Leadership observation before is know your people. For it is they who accomplish the mission. President Ronald Reagan once said the greatest leader is not necessarily one who gets the greatest things. He or she is the one who gets the people to do the greatest things. Continuing with the C5 story, I'd like to bring about a couple of my senior enlisted who I happened to serve with on the deployment. Chief Master Sergeant Tim Rooning, a flight engineer, and Master Sergeant Mike Rowe. No, not the Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, but Master Sergeant Mike Rowe from North Carolina, C5 Loadmaster. Like myself, they had come from other aircraft before the C5. Master Sergeant's Rooning and Rowe were like me. They believed the airplane was much more capable than its reputation. So I trusted them and selected them over others who were more senior and had more experience in the aircraft.  These two senior NCOs were truly amazing. In two weeks, we went from notification to ready to fly the first combat missions in the C5 in 25 years. Suffice to say, everyone did great work on the deployment, but these two stood head and shoulders above the rest. The results of our deployment speak for themselves. What was supposed to take 30 sorties in three weeks, took team Rooning and Rowe 24 sorties in two weeks. Every takeoff was on time. This is truly unheard of for the C5 with a track record of less than 50% departure reliability and even lower mission capable rate. How big of a deal was it? Our team afterwards was asked to come brief the secretary of the Air Force and the chief of staff. More importantly though, that deployment model that we used was the template that Air Mobility Command still uses today for C5s. What would Aristotle say? Those leaders, Rooning and Rowe, show true wisdom characterized by their judgment and experience. Good leaders know their people and they, so I would encourage you to find the Roonings and Rowe's in your organization. Now the last leadership lesson, good leaders demonstrate courage. In his book on ethics, Aristotle says a virtue is the mean, the middle between two vices. The vice of excess and the other vice is deficiency. Courage is the first virtue that Aristotle actually writes about in his book on ethics and it's the easiest to understand for those of us in the military, courage on the battlefield is the archetype. In the heat of battle you want to curl up or you want to run away and that's cowardice. Conversely, if you run towards the enemy that's rashness, the other vice and courage is the mean between the two. Courage in our military is demonstrated in many ways. How about all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and soon space force who head off into combat? And what about our wounded warriors who not only return from the battlefield but have the courage to overcome their wounds? I witnessed courage firsthand when I had the privilege to serve as a wing commander at Travis Air Force Base in 2008. On a Sunday afternoon a huge fire had started off base and it was spread by a 40 mile an hour wind, extremely dry conditions and it was headed right out a huge unoccupied housing area of over 600 houses on the installation. The fire eventually burned over 250 of these houses. But that day I saw the first responders' courage and bravery. It was so amazing. There were no injuries and obviously no fatalities. And how could we forget? Master Sergeant John Chapman, US Air Force combat controller who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in August of 2018 for his actions in Afghanistan in 2002. He was the first airman to receive the Medal of Honor in our Air Force since the Vietnam War. Yes, good leaders demonstrate courage and they do the right thing for the right reasons, right when it's needed. This afternoon I've shared my observations with you. The good leaders have their life in balance, their professionals, good leaders know their mission, good leaders know their people and good leaders demonstrate courage. Throughout my presentations I shared some insight from our friend Aristotle. That great western leader and statesman and leaders have studied for millennia. But sadly in our schools today, Aristotle isn't taught anymore. So kudos once again to the ACSE team for bringing him back this year. American author Robert Kaplan, many of you have written some of the great bestselling books he's written. In Europe's Shadows, Agents Cauldron, Revenge of Geography, Balkans Ghost and Dozens More. In his thought provoking bestseller Warrior Politics, Kaplan cautions all of us. Like previous generations, baby boomers believe in their singularity. That their times are unique and they are wiser and more enlightened than those who preceded them. Facilities, the 5th century BC Athenian general and historian wrote, the events which have happened in the past will at some time or other in much the same way be repeated in the future. Machiavelli, the Renaissance Italian politician, philosopher, diplomat and historian said, anyone wishing to see what is to be must consider what has been. Confucius, I really like this one, ancient Chinese philosopher puts it most simply, being fond of the truth, I am an admirer of antiquity. Kaplan summarizes all of these by saying, the greater the disregard of history, the greater the delusions regarding the future. The classics help us counter that historical amnesia. To paraphrase Mr. Kaplan, the more we disregard eminent thinkers like Aristotle, the more ethical problems we're gonna be faced with in the future. And closing a special thanks to the ACSD staff for bringing us all together to try to find purpose at the intersection of leadership strategy and innovation. That purpose I believe is good ethical leadership. Good ethical leadership is vital to our military, vital to our country, vital to our world, and within your lifetime, vital to our universe. Thank you all very much, God bless you. And thanks again to Colonel DeMarco and team for putting together a wonderful lead X 2020. Thank you.


గాద్లుర్. కోలెల్ల్లులుల్. గాస్ల్లు పనంగలిధరన్లికారోర్. కోటర్లిదార్ను. ఎల్లూలి. అనెరంలోులిటాన్. అలిర్లార్ ఉప్రేదడాిని్.  సాలులులువింది నిమారిందాడి నింటి ది. మాబ్లులు నాని మారినింది కదకి. we did perform this six hour long surgery successfully in 2020 and the child worked the same evening and next day she was home and after six months the spine looked like this after a year it looked like this and today I saw her with two and a half years of follow-up she's doing extremely well she's playing sports she's doing all her activities independently going to college and doing leading a normal life and you can see the rib form it was so bad before surgery has completely disappeared and she looks more balanced presently than before


Is there anyone in the house who hasn't read Tales of the City? Oh, good. So there's new fans all the time. Excellent. Have them taken away. I was trying to figure out if we had to worry about spoilers, but do you have to worry about spoilers for a 40 year old novel? You do. It's really, it's strange. You do, depending on who's in the audience, you know, I think it might be, we can probably let go of the spoiler alert tonight. I'll try to be careful. But it is a really good question because it does happen when people stand up in the middle of the room and say, how could you have done that to Mona and three other people look around and what happened to Mona? And then they get really mad. You ruined it. Well, we're going to talk all about San Francisco, but first, before we do that, I have to just say North Carolina. Who knew North Carolina would be letting same-sex couples get married? I know. Wow. Wow, yeah. Oh, Jesse is a rotisserie right now. Here's a secret. It's not a secret. I would like it to be, but it's not. That I was a young conservative in North Carolina.  Already? I worked for Jesse Helms at... He's dead, relax. He's dead. Jesse Helms sent me off on assignment to cover a Ku Klux Klan rally in Raleigh. He was executive vice president of the local TV station. That's how he came to power. He started doing these little five-minute editorials where he had a very sugar-coated version of all that is terrible. About the land that I loved back in those days. And so he sent me off to a Klan rally. He was doing a roundup the vote. Well, he wasn't a senator yet. He was just this mean little guy who drooled out of the side of his mouth in a very disturbing way. And who, I have to say, he took a very, very avuncular interest in me as a budding young conservative. That was both kind and just a tiny bit creepy. But I remember coming back, let me just spring onto this story, if I may. Absolutely. It's your day. Imperial Wizard told me that there was controversy at the time in Raleigh, because Dean Rusk, the secretary of state, had a daughter who had just married an African-American man. It was all the buzz. And I asked the Imperial Wizard what he thought about that, trying to be a provocative reporter. And he said he thought that Dean Rusk was a liberal and he didn't see any reason in the world why this shouldn't happen to his family. And besides, what else would you expect from a man who was a practicing homosexual? So I came back to the station and when I was thinking, boy, I've got a great story for tonight, you know. Completely disconnected from my own reality.  And I told Jesse that I had this story that the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan just said that the secretary of state was gay. And Jesse kind of blanched and said, oh, it's not a story. You can't. That's the worst thing you can say about anybody. That's the worst thing. We could never do that to that man. That's the worst thing you can say about anybody. So when you were told by the AP that you were going to be a reporter in San Francisco, were you just like, jackpot? Yes, I was. I was very excited, especially since they had previously offered me Buffalo. Tales of Buffalo. Yeah, doesn't quite work. I was living in Charleston at the time, a city that I absolutely love, a beautiful, beautiful romantic city that has all the trappings of San Francisco in terms of that of lore and architecture and all those things that cause gay men to settle in those particular areas. And so when the offer came, I went up to New York to interview for the AP. And so I went into this thing. It looked like an isolation booth on an old-fashioned TV show, you know, and it was a glass all around. And they put me in there with a typewriter and some paper and all of the details of at least Lucille Ball's recent wedding to Gary Morton, her wonderful husbands. And I had to make it into an AP story. And I wrote, you know, Bowsons throng the sidewalks as America's favorite redhead, blah, blah, blah. And they deemed to me acceptable and said, well, you'll get our next opening. So I got a call in Charleston when I was working the paper there and they said, we're happy to offer you the Buffalo office.  And so I turned them down and then they called back and they said we had an opening in the San Francisco Bureau. And I had seen it on my way to and from Vietnam and had, you know, tried to see myself there. So how long before you in San Francisco before you like met a really hot guy and got to go home with him? And got stoned with him? Well, I said go home with him. Oh, go home with him. But probably stoned is just as important in this particular moment. I only asked because the stoning came a little later. First you get laid, then you get stoned. Well, first you get laid, then you get hepatitis. Then you have to go back to North Carolina to live with your parents because, you know, you have to need someone to keep an eye on you while you have hepatitis. Some things never change. Some things never change. Then you come back and the doctor says you can't drink for a while. And somebody else said, oh, I have just the thing for you. And it was. I've preferred it to drinking never since.  And I'm thinking, so are you sort of just running around San Francisco like looking everywhere you can for details to put into the serialized thing? Or is it sort of coming to you? Are people saying, well, I've got a story. I was running around getting laid. You hit it right earlier. I mean, I was just, I was in my glory. I was discovering, you know, I found bathhouses when I first got here. And I remember early describing them to people. It's amazing. It's like a Minoan bath in there. Except they have, you know, nine grain bread with sprouts and sandwiches at the bathhouse that you can eat on the big velvet puff thing in the quarter. I thought that was glorious. I didn't think about that being at all icky. And they don't serve that sandwich at blow buddies. They don't serve that. There was a time, wasn't there, when the culinary aspect was removed from the sexual arenas, wasn't it? Yeah, they just cleared out all the sandwiches and put poppers bottles. Well, that's how you know when a bookstore is going downhill, you know. When you see the poppers by the cash register, you know they're diversifying. I'm such a bad old man.  No, we've still got an hour or so. So, yeah, talk a little about how the tales of the city were born in the newspaper for people who remember newspapers in the audience. Yeah, where did it start?  How did that happen? The short version, I was writing for the Pacific Sun, which is still there and doing feature stories for them, sort of around the town column. A woman friend of mine said, you will not believe what happens down at the Marina Safeway on Wednesday nights. And so I went down and I observed this extraordinary heterosexual mating ritual of the women in the rhinestone-studded brush denim pantsuits with like two items in their cart, chatting up similarly duded up guys in the vegetable department. I'm told that it still goes on. I've talked to some young people who say they call it dateway. But I'm just imagining them there standing there, you know, looking at their cell phones in the vegetable department. But I couldn't write a nonfiction story on it because I couldn't get anybody to admit that they went to the grocery store to get laid. So I made up Mary Ann Singleton and in a one-off, Mary Ann Singleton goes to the Safeway. It's the thing that's still in the miniseries with Connie Bradshaw and the carts. And she meets the guy that's finally meets the guy that's not a creep and he's there with his boyfriend. And it was sort of struck a nerve in 1974, I guess it was, and they asked me if I'd keep on writing it. So I did like five episodes for the Pacific Sun bouncing around the things that I knew about.  Well, he was already there from the Marina Safeway and it started to grow. And then I had always had an address in mind, a sort of fantasy address that I would write about one day. It was 28 Barbie Lane. And Charles McCabe, I don't know how long to make this story, but it's kind of interesting. Charles McCabe, if you remember the grand old columnist from The Chronicle. Oh no, just dead out there. Oh, Charles would hate that. But he was a big red faced, homophobic, misogynistic, drunken Irishman who thought all homosexuals in the world were bad except for me. The summaries and he took a liking to me and he had read the thing in the Pacific Sun and said, I think we need something like this in The Chronicle. So he brought me in to meet the Terriot family and the whole thing started. And then they started figuring out there were queers proliferating in this day to day column. Was it every day? It was five days a week. Any writers in the house shivering at that idea? Five days a week? I didn't know enough to be afraid of it as I would be now. They just plowed in and then let things, you know, things started happening. And then they started coming to me.  And I went down there to check it out because it was supposed to be a big single scene. And it was called the Come Clean Center. It was a gift, you know. So it was, you know, then I'd seek things out. I'd hear that there was a coed bath house opening on Valencia Street called the Sutro Baths. Coed meaning that men and women would go there.  And I thought, wouldn't that be funny if Brian, my raving heterosexual character gets all excited about this and goes down to the Sutro Baths to get laid and meets this total babe who's ready to hop in the sack with him. And she begins with, how long have you been gay? And he goes to, I'm not gay, it's okay. So this is whole, he ends up having to scrounge up some experience at camp when he was 13 years old to certify his homosexuality to this woman. And I thought, I was kind of proud of having that twist on, that sort of twist on things that early. Brian is a big character in the first book and all the way up to the ninth book. I mean, Brian, spoiler alert, Brian survives. But I love him, I love him.  And I sort of think of all these characters fondly, but when you actually go back and sort of reread some of the books they're actually quite complex. And one of the great moments is when Brian and Maus, Michael, who are living in the same rooming house, wind up sunbathing side by side. And I imagine that must have been a very novel thing at the time to have an out gay guy and a non-homophobic straight guy hanging out. Talking in generic terms about going out to get laid. And then they go out somewhere where they can both pick someone up, or pick separate people up together. Split up a couple was what Michael said. But it was, yeah, I was just celebrating that thing that sustains me to this day, which is some very tender heterosexual male friendships.  And I wanted to celebrate that. I wanted to actually sort of crack the notion that it was utopian to suggest that the people who lived at 28 Bar-Bri-Layne would never have lived there for real because I saw it happening all around me. There's a moment where Michael's dating John, who's a gynecologist. Or maybe it's the moment when they're not dating quite so closely.  Now a lot of the things in the book seem like they're still very current. But there was something about that moment where I thought, does this still exist where there are these sort of wealthy, closeted men who get together, and I mean, do you think the closet exists in the same way? Not in the same way. Those men still exist. God knows. I don't get invited to their parties. Well, I called it the decorarchy in the books because it was ruled by some very, very, you know, high-flown queens of fashion and design who were extraordinarily racist, you know. The maid would come in and lay the food down at the table. And if they were talking about something they didn't want the maid to hear, he would go. Meaning, brown skin in the room. So a character like Michael Tolliver, who's really the main gay protagonist in the first book, was he someone that you modeled after anyone in particular?  A little of me and a little of what I wanted to go to bed with.  I certainly didn't. I would never have gotten into a jockey-short stance contest. I would have in a million years. But I did meet a guy at the Twin Peaks one night, very handsome, preppy guy who was really coming on strong who, when we got to his house, said, you know what really turns me on about you? Your Ouijins. That's the old penny loafers we wore in the old days. It was like a preppy signifier. And boy did he like Ouijins. I got to his house and he had framed pictures of Ouijins on the walls. Just the Ouijins, you know. He had an ad in the ad for years that said Bass Ouijins. This is not news to people who've read the novel because it's there in the novel. But the detail that I didn't have at the time that I wish I'd had was that he was the desk, he was the night clerk at the Huntington Hotel, which was the last hotel at the time that would shine your shoes if you left them outside the door at night. And this guy would prowl the hall looking for Ouijins. I don't know what surprises the owners found in the morning. I can't even begin to imagine. And that's your Halloween story for tonight. Costume idea, the clerk at the Huntington Hotel. Did you have a sense when you were writing, I mean you're writing for the Chronicle, which goes out to everyone in the city, and yet you're also writing about fetishes and you're writing about underground nightlife. Did you have a sense of how you were supposed to balance those things, or did you just wait for the editors to tell you you can't do that? Yeah, I pretty much waited for them to tell me. So you would push it as far as you could? Yeah, and it would vary it all the time.   That was part of a word, that was shit-kicker. I personally think shit-kicker is much worse than shit, in the scheme of things, but yeah, it was a constant battle with them in that regard.  And there were people who finally wrote and said, have you got anything against Christians? And I thought it was a fair enough question. I'm because of your Calvinist lord in our culture. I can't say the word fuck, so I have to say the name of your lord. It's funny how that worked out. Yeah. So you started out writing really just following these leads like the Safeway and the Come Clean Laundromat, and then at some point was it like, I'm writing a novel in pieces, and what was that sort of realization for you? Did you have to think, oh boy I gotta think about where this is all going? The computer was adjusted basically, is what happened. By the time I'd gotten to Baby Cakes, no, yeah Baby Cakes, the English American one. Which is the fourth in the series. Yeah, the fourth. I knew what I was doing, and I realized that it would take like four daily episodes to make one chapter, and I was thinking in terms of both the novel and the daily column as I was writing. And I had, you know, in all of the books I've had a real shot at working on it when it was done. It was my first draft, and people sort of say reverentially, I want to go out and print out all your early newspaper columns as I think, please don't. Right. I don't want you to see that mess. Let's talk about perhaps the most beloved character in the books, Mrs. Madrigal. I was really interested, okay so maybe this is a spoiler, I was interested to learn that Mrs. Madrigal's identity is not fully explained or revealed in the first volume of Tales of the City. Yeah. You know, they also blur together. I think we can say transgender because I'm proud of it. Yeah, so in the first book when you read it, she's just Mrs. Madrigal, she's Anna. Yeah. And there's this hint that a black male plot is afoot. Right. That someone knows her secret and it doesn't come out right away. But it was interesting to me that it didn't come out in the first book. Was that a conscious choice? You know, I owe that to the chronicle, the pristiness of the chronicle. Because I told, I said Mrs. Madrigal is a transsexual, I think was the term I used at the time. And, oh well you can't, you cannot do that. Not the first year. You can't do that for the first year. It, here's my favorite part. It will upset the people in the sunset. I lived on Russian Hill, but that was kind of frightening sounding, the people in the sunset. They sound like a twilight hoard. Really? Yeah. But that's exactly the way, that's exactly the way they demonized the readership. And they had very little idea of what was happening in the city. So when I introduced, when I responded to Anita Bryant the day after she announced her campaign in the San Francisco Chronicle through my character, they were fighting me like crazy, saying why does anybody in San Francisco care what's going on in South Florida? They didn't even have a dream that, you know, we were riding the crest of an enormous movement. And that was my exhilaration. I have to say, I really want to stress that since I've been given this wonderful opportunity by the library. Thank you very much. This is crazy good to see yourself up in a bus shelter like an Amsterdam whore. It's just a, it's, it's intensely satisfying. I have lingered on the Muni platform far longer than I should have. So how many selfies have you taken with you? Oh, just a few. How do I keep that x-lax ad out of the side though? It's been very satisfying. And, and, and I'm most, I'm, what I'm really proud of is that I feel that I have been part of a revolution. I've been a literary component of a revolution. And, and I've, that's what's mattered to me the most throughout my career. The first it wasn't that obvious because I was having such a good time.   I kind of chickened out in 1989 with Michael because he was HIV positive and I thought he was going to die. And I didn't want to write a story in which the gay man died at the end. And so it was, it was the most thrilling thing in the world was to realize what I wanted to write a new novel. Then I wanted to be about an HIV positive man in his fifties and who's living in San Francisco today. Sort of something that might echo in Christopher Isherwood's a single man, you know, because we all love that book, everybody, every writer I know does. And, and then I realized I had such a guy in Michael Toliver and that he would be alive. And so, you know, it wasn't, it was wonderful to be able to hop back on board the train after my big share exit in 1989. You are the share of writers. Like you've had a hit every decade, right? It's like, for like five decades or something. I know, I don't think. I've been very lucky. I've been very blessed. So let's talk about AIDS because it, you know, you start writing this book in San Francisco during the golden age of promiscuity and everybody is having sex with everybody else in the first book.  That's why it's so warm. The 70s are so friendly. But of course you didn't know, none of us knew that AIDS was coming along. And I'm not sure what that moment would have been like. I'm a little too young to sort of remember the exact beginning of the epidemic. But do you want to talk about that for you? Well, it was a single thing in my life as it is with most of us in the beginning when the epidemic came along. It was just personal. It was someone you knew or maybe a headline on New York magazine that said the gay plague and had everybody talking. But I had a little brother in my extended family who was 25 and had moved to New York to work for Perry Ellis and was just the sweetest guy. He was loved by so many people. And he got one of the first people to die of pneumocystis pneumonia and went very quickly. And we were just gobsmacked, the people in our little household that knew this guy. And then of course it was happening all around us. We were seeing it everywhere. It's so hard to encapsulate this thing, isn't it? It really is.  All of the residual Calvinist guilt that so many of us had to shake off when we came from somewhere else and came rushing back in the midst of terrible suffering and all of that. So I resolved that I was going to have one of the characters die off screen and then show the response to it. It was my version of the death of little Nell in Dickens. I mean people were furious.  That's when I realized that so many of my brothers and sisters were not fully connected to their own true good selves yet. We could so easily miss that connection. But this was the city that rallied really. That's when one more thing San Francisco can be proud about. This city really rallied in every direction. The women, lesbians came in and were ready to roll in terms of caring for people and all of that. Some things are constants and then some things change and I just want to read a line from very early in Tales of the City. Marianne is looking for an apartment quote. She wanted to view a deck and a fireplace for under one hundred and seventy five dollars a month. You're laughing but I wept.  I haven't got any of those things right now. I have a cornice. I'm getting off on Edwardian architectural details. But we can do it with everything. I'm kind of loving living in our modest abode because it is taking me back to my Marianne years and I love being able to have. It's the greatest thrill and one of the reasons that the Castro is so expensive is it offers village life in its purest, most wonderful form. You can get to everything. You can buy what you need. And there are many such neighborhoods like that in San Francisco and we find them. And that all adds up to something that makes a city and was what we were missing when we were living in the most beautiful Adobe house in the middle of the desert. The thing we missed was that dynamic. I'm going to put you on the spot. Rainbow crosswalks in the Castro thumbs up or thumbs down. They're better than anybody else's rainbow crosswalks. I looked them up. The ones in Sydney. I don't think they made them take them up actually the city council said it was distracting to people. You notice how I'm not answering this question. It wasn't a fair question. L.A. ones are big wide among those things. Yeah, I think it's actually used as a reference point the other day. There were two women from from Australia who were saying now we're we're the bars along here where the stuff. I said go down to the rainbow crosswalk and walk off in any direction for two blocks and and then wander out from there. So yeah, they help they're okay. I don't know what I'm scared about is the new street lights. They have some sort of festival lighting or something that comes out of. So we'd be maybe twinkling like a spaceship by this time next week. I have no idea. Well, it's way up at the top. They can do rainbows with them apparently. But I think you can handle lighting because you've been to Burning Man now a couple of times. Yeah, I know. I think we have some burners in the house here. Yeah. Yes, I love that lighting. Very becoming. So in the in the most recent book which just came out this year, which is the days the days of Anna Madrigal, which is a beautifully written book. And thank you. Oh, it's just it's I mean, it's so nostalgic because it's announced as the last of them and Anna Madrigal is quite old. But this is the book where Michael who now has a younger husband named Ben is going to Burning Man. And he's sort of dragged there in a bit of a grouchy mood. Is this is this autobiographical? Imagine that. Yes, it's completely autobiographical. We're going to need the earplugs for what? We have to have earplugs to sleep? How close is the rave? No, I'm not going on the naked bicycle pub crawl. Why not? Okay, one naked.  What was the other pub drunk and naked on a bicycle? I mean, we really did have sort of really comic battles over it. All the while, Chris was just patiently sewing away, making outfits for me and saying, don't worry, it's going to be okay. The reason you have to have lights on you at night when you ride across the playa. And by the time I'd been there for two days, I was already yelling dark wad at people that weren't lit. I was a little bit afraid, and this is reflected in the book, that it would be sort of wonderful but kind of mean, like a summer camp in the same way. And that there would be rules and, you know, of that oppression. I'm not very good at communal stuff. I certainly loved Burning Man, yeah. So you got dragged kicking and screaming the first time, but you went back. So you did find something there. Oh yeah, oh yeah.  And it's the land of serendipity. Anything can happen because nothing can be fully regulated.  And that becomes just a great adventure. I would wander out from our RV, yes we had an RV. Oh there we go. There they are. Oh listen, the RV is leaking as we speak. Put some air in those tires. See that's what... That's the mean Burning Man thing. But where was I? Oh wandering out. I ended up, I didn't have a Playa name the first year. That's the name you give yourself when you go there. And what is your Playa name? Mine? I know you've got one. Pinko. I like that. Yeah, it's sort of a Kami Pinko reference, but also because I just turned... And your coloration when you're... I just turned pink in the sun. That's me too. I just wandered around looking for sofas, so I called myself Sofa Daddy. And strangely there are sofas. Sweetest young people. Yes, oh we have a sofa. Of course, the completely naked young beautiful woman with jewels on her... Everything. On her everything. On her all together. It's magical. And I knew it would be great for the book. I use a lot of this in the book. I use... Michael gets called Sofa Daddy. And precisely because it worked the way San Francisco did. That a lot of really varied people could bump into each other in this place. That Marianne could go for instance. And there's everything from boho to high tech and the twain is always meeting. So I want to veer off a little from the Tales books just for a moment because you've written some other books as well. And in fact, you wrote something as a series of magazine articles that I had a part in digging out of the archives for you that you've recently republished called Jackie Olds. Everything for that Carl. I'll take it. Right here. I'll take it. I credited you in the forward... It was the greatest thrill to have this old piece of this work from 32 years ago and you set up and read it at a Litquake event. And the audience was laughing. And I was laughing because I could barely remember what I'd written. I had that distance on it. So it's a great piece that Armistead had mentioned at a cocktail party and that's when I did some research and dug it out and surprised him with it. But he wrote about a futuristic San Francisco in which Jackie Kennedy is sort of like kind of a gray gardens character. Yeah, she's Edie Beale. I wrote it in 1980 and it's imagining 1999 when Jackie would be... Oh my God, Jackie would be 70. The earthquake, the big earthquake, has happened in the city and people are forced to live in tents in the park. Something that agrees enormously with the gay population in the context of this story. And Jackie... God, I'll tell the whole story and then they can't spend $1.99 on Kindle and read Jackie Old. $1.99 on Amazon people, you can afford it. Well, it's actually like you've imagined Burning Man because there's all these people living in tents and these fabulous... that they've decorated gorgeously. I've always been fascinated by those configurations. That's why the Bohemian Grove intrigued me and significant others and why I butted it up against a women's music festival called Womenwood. I realized when I was writing about Burning Man, oh my God, it's all the same thing. There are social constructs with certain pressures that people are nervous about when they approach them. Another one of your works that I really love is The Night Listener if anyone is familiar with that novel. And it was made into a movie starring Robin Williams. I understand you got to get close to Robin Williams. Oh, I've known Robin since the 70s. I've known him since pre-nanu-nanu. I knew him. I didn't know that. I had my 40th birthday party up at his ranch. He grabbed my little toy poodle and did like 15 minutes with the poodle. I mean... He made the poodle talk. He talked back to the poodle. He had huge fights. Precious and... You know, a man of enormous intelligence. Yeah. So wonderful to be around. And everyone I know had loved him, had the slight feeling that they were doing something wrong because they couldn't get him to stop being on. You yearned for that moment where things were quiet and you could do that. I had a few with him on the set of The Night Listener. Because it's late at night. And it's a special little community, a movie set. But yeah, I was so excited when he called and said that he wanted to do it. So excited. And I think he did a beautiful job. The movie I'm to blame for because I was one of the writers. And the pressure comes suddenly to thrillerize everything. And I knew that the big problem with The Night Listener being a movie is the reason it works as a novel is that there are a lot of phone calls in it. And if you read a phone call in a novel, you picture who's on the other end of the line. If you watch a movie where you're not seeing who's on the other end of the line, you have questions immediately. And that destroys a major spot. I'm trying to talk about it but not without giving it away. But I'm very proud of that. Thank you for your compliment about it. I'm really proud of that book. Oh, it's a wonderful book. I really urge people to read it. And since you're mentioning movies, let's talk for a minute and then we're going to turn it over to questions about the wonderful productions that they made out of Tales of the City. Among other things, the world got to meet Laura Linney and you got to develop a great friendship with her. Wow, yeah, that was one of the big, big blessings of Tales. Meeting her and becoming close to her and realizing how alike we are in a lot of ways. That's why she was so instinctive about Mary Ann because Mary Ann Simois. I mean, a lot of me goes into that character. And yeah, it's been special with Laura. We were between husbands at the same time. We went antiquing together as some men and some women do. Did you go out and try to break up a couple together? No, no, no. We sat around and we got acted depressed and listened to Amy Mann records together. And Amy was, I mean, Laura was so excited when she got to be in an Amy Mann video like a year ago where Amy Mann had a robot and it was played by Laura Linney. You can find it on YouTube at Amy Mann, Laura Linney. We're going to take questions from the audience and I think there's someone from the library who has a mic. Hello. So raise your hand and I'm sorry, what's your name? Jennifer is going to come to you so that you can ask Armistead a question. Here's someone over here. Yes, where did the 28-barber year lane come from in terms of the idea that sort of space that you always wanted to write about it or set your characters there? Well, I lived not far from McAndre Lane on Russian Hill and I knew a lot of other similar places. I lived for many years on Telegraph Hill and there was havens down there when you go down the Filbert steps and you have the notion of the way the city makes these little walkways into city streets and people carry their groceries down to go home and have to move their furniture down to live there in the first place, but it just intrigued me. So I kind of used McAndre, the visual, the staircase and then I described it as being where havens is which is off of up at the crest of Russian Hill anyway. There's a little narrow Barbary lane like alleyway there so it just... I've always had a real strong sense of home and I always loved it when addresses and locales became famous that so much so that you wanted to go visit them. When I was 15, I went to Atlanta with my parents and I said, I know it's fictitious but where would Tara be if it were here? I want to figure out where to whirl my mental skirts. I think it's fun for the writer to connect with the physical geography of it. It helps you, it's an aid in a way. You don't have to sit there and remember all of Narnia because you made it up. Narnia is just outside the door, you know. Thanks.  Did it go beyond just words though? I mean were there episodes or things that you had written that you couldn't actually use in the series? Yeah. There were? No, they didn't get away with it. They tried. I got a call from one of my cohorts in the people department and she said they're going to pull tomorrow's column. This was after whatever the referendum was in Dade County happened and basically the gay folks lost and they needed Bryant won. I actually talked to people who said, well, basically they were saying time to go back in the closet. Right. I asked, I was wondering if perhaps there were scenes like that. I'm sure we all would love to read the scenes that were cut out of the... Well, I don't know how interesting it would be but the particular line that set them off and that seemed like it must be most offensive to people in the sunset was Michael saying making basically the speech I was making. I don't care, you know, how that referendum went when I came out of the closet.  It's really easy to forget that when I started Tales of the City it was a year after homosexuality had stopped being a mental illness according to the American Psychiatric Association. I think it was 75 when they took it off the list of illnesses and the silence imposed on just being gay was enormous. I mean, I had a wonderful advantage with Tales of the City because I could report on things that people weren't even talking about happening. Randy Schultz came a couple of years later and dug in with a journalistic angle on that but it was there. It was this beautiful blossoming, burgeoning thing that you could see. Well, the short version is I called up the editor and said, if you pull that, I'm quitting. And he said, you don't really mean that and I said, yes, I do.  But he called back half an hour later and said, well, all right. And I had the power from that moment on. I could pretty much do what I wanted. It was your Joan Crawford moment. It was, wasn't it?  You know, thank you.  That was just too good.  The sad, gay thing is the minute you said your Joan Crawford moment, I knew what Joan Crawford reference you had. Well, I wasn't accusing you of beating anyone with a wire hanger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. More questions. I'm sorry I'm going to do a little spoiler. In one of your later books, Mary Ann and Michael sort of have a falling out and I was just curious about what led you down that path because that's always been a story that's really kind of stuck with me falling out. You know, it's funny. A lot of that is just psychologically tied in with the fact that I was in my own head. I knew that I was leaving the story. So I had a storyline that I could sort of psychologically work with because Mary Ann was going to leave San Francisco and go to New York and was thereby sort of deserting her family in more ways than one. Not just a husband and a child but a best gay friend and all the dynamics of that. So I sort of moved towards that. If the question is why did Mary Ann... The question that I never use the word, not in this context, but the question that I'm asked most often all around the world is why did Mary Ann become such a bitch? I take it really personally because she's a part of me. I have to ask myself exactly how bad was she, you know? Anyway. It's storytelling. What can I tell you? I mean, we are portrayed by our friends sometimes.  We lose our innocence. It's storytelling. Wouldn't... Say la vie? Say la vie. Say la vie. That's the answer, short answer. Well, it's one of the things that I really admire about these books and why I think they're so great to go back to and why you should buy some copies out there and support the library is because they really do reveal all kinds of nuances.  Yeah, that's right. And there are those among us who do that, who don't fall in love with San Francisco, but who resist and go back home. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would like to say that I had all this psychologically parsed out from the beginning and nothing close to the truth. It's all just fragments of my own emotions and things that I was thinking of the time relationships I was having. We were talking earlier about this great Tennessee Williams biography and by John Larr that's out right now and it's really worth the if you just want to climb in with an enormous book. It's wonderful, but you realize that every crisis in his life, everything that ever knocked him off his feet is there in the next play, not literally, but the emotional content of what's going on. By the time he's got people eating each other alive and suddenly last summer he's doing it to himself. He's self cannibalizing. He's used his life and his miseries to such a degree that it's killing him. Rather scary. Well, luckily known in your books eight anyone else. I didn't get that bad.  No. All right. No. And not just in that way. There was a cannibal cult if you remember correctly. I blocked that out. That was one of the plot lines. Grace Cathedral. When the serious high church Episcopalians who are literally taking the body and blood of Christ too seriously, they're stealing body parts out of a local hospital and consuming them on the catwalk. You thought this was a delicate little story, didn't you, Carl?  Well, I was doing that was my response to all those cults at the time. I went into a comedic direction with it and tried to look at it in that way. It came home to Rooster when we were actually shooting the miniseries up in Canada, the second one and our French-Canadian director said, though, that was the perfect place for me to have a cameo was to be the priest saying the mass and I was to wait for the dismembered foot to fall from the ceiling and land on the altar. I was to be surprised by it and I was just doing all these you know, completely hammy, I've got an actorly bone in my body. I had the two altar boys who both had Canadian Oscars, genies, I guess they're called, giving me acting tips trying to teach me how to and to make matters worse, the foot had rubber in it so it would actually bounce. But that's one of the trippy things about making something up of the moment and then seeing it come to life. Going out and finding the cliff it lands in the big climax of Tales of the City which I'd actually scouted out before I wrote about and then I could take the film crew back there 17 years later and say that's where he goes over.  Oh, thank you. In fact, you're on the top of my fantasy dinner guest list and I have his number if you want. And I want to know who's on yours. Oh, I Who comes to your dinner part? Your fantasy dinner part? Oh, God, I can't do that on the spur of the moment. And most of the ones that I revere I wouldn't want there. I would not like to have Alfred Hitchcock for dinner. But Maybe Tennessee Williams before the second all. That's a pretty good one. That's a pretty good one. I don't know. I'd like to I'd like to dinner with Jan Struther, the woman who wrote Mrs. Miniver which was serialized in the Times of London during the Second World War. It was a series of little domestic vignettes that are just they're beautifully written. It's just a beautiful, beautiful stylistically these little essays just couldn't be more gorgeous to my high and ear. And of course they made kind of a hammy patriotic movie out of it that won the Oscar with Greer Garson. She was apparently very small and beautiful and witty and I think she'd be interesting. Was that a model for you? A literary model? Or were there others? It was. It was one of the inspirations. And Mrs. Madrigal, it was Mrs. Miniver. There are a lot of those unconscious things. You must recognize it yourself where you have this sparkling line and then you see it in you watch Bell Book and Candle again and you see there's a line in there. Oh, I stole that. I didn't know it. I remember the first time I heard of your books I misheard what someone said about the character and I thought her name was Mrs. Madrigal. And I wondered if that was the secret subliminal message I was supposed to get. No, it wasn't. People have said that. Have used that since then. She has a little bit of a kind of psychic intuition about things. My grandmother had that. She was a suffragist in England and she was the biggest influence on me when I was the best influence on me. Probably not the biggest.  She was there always. She thought I was the reincarnation of her cousin Curtis. Her bachelor cousin Curtis. Her extremely artistic bachelor cousin Curtis. And she, you know, we were working Ouija boards and she was very theatrical and a lot of Anna's spirit went into her. But she never taped a joint to your front. No, alas. That came with it. Olympia Dukakis. Well, she didn't tape it. She gave me pot for my birthday and I thought, I love this woman so much. She knew exactly how to be Anna when the moment arose. She's going to be in town shortly, actually. First, I have to say, every time I eat Fakasha bread, I think of you. Thank you. Secondly, I was in the Marine Corps when I started reading your books and you gave me the strength to get out and come out and I was wondering how does it feel to be an inspiration? Oh, thank you very much. It feels great. I hear it a lot and I never stop loving it. I never, never stop loving it and I can't think of a better purpose to have had. It makes me really happy and it was tied up really with my own self-worth. I was feeling better. There was nothing. I wasn't selling anything. I was just reporting on that joy, you know. I still am. We're trying to even in this advanced state. Well, I think we're done. So let's give Mr. Moppin one more round. So much fun.


It's five o'clock, it's five o'clock. So yeah, we're going to do this best thing. And we're going to do the washroom work. So anybody in the room can get around. You know that if you're not here for washroom work, just, like, they always stay pretend we're not here. We're here for washroom work. Does anybody not know how, now that some of you are familiar with body healthy, does everybody know how washroom work goes? Give me a very smooth one. That's great, that's great. Everybody know how washroom work goes? Yes, we're going to spend 20 minutes working on our own work and then we're going to spend remainder of the time. I will answer questions about your creative process. If you have questions about your creative process, I'll be happy to talk with you about your own individual creative process. And we have people behind the camera. We have folks watching online as they do every time we do this. And I'm just going to tell them how to get in touch with those people. So you can get in touch with us with some questions if you want by tweeting at Watch Me Work SLP and you can hashtag HowlRound, which is an H-O-W-L-R-O-U-M-D. And there's a new thing. You can actually use the chat feature on the video chat. There's a little chat bubble when you go to the thing. That gets super cool. And they can like talk? Yeah, they can still type up. But yeah, you can type it into the chat and I'll be looking at that as well. Oh, that's very cool. Yeah. Okay. James, Crystal was usually about 700 tweets. She's actually here, which is very exciting. I'm sorry. Anyway, so we're going to do that.  All right. Are you ready, Audrey? I'm ready. One, two, three. So hopefully we got something. A friend of yours came to the middle of your work session and said hi. That was a familiar work, but he was an awesome actor. And I don't see her quite enough. So it was really nice that she stopped by. Something happened. She was in the middle of work and you get up and hug a friend. And you just get right back to it. So does anybody have any questions or, you know, answers? No questions about your work or your creative process. And we'll talk about it. Remind me of your name. Holly. Holly Berry. Maybe I'll remember that now. And I have to say something. I have to have a little, there's a song, there's a Christmas song.  Is that the holly you mean? Oh, there's that one, too. The holly and the ivy. Holly Jolly Christmas? Oh, there's that one, too. I thought of you of those. The holly and the ivy. We can make a whole playlist, sir. So I, hey, anything? Questions? Solutions? Answers? Where'd you get these?  Did you, last time? No. Go on. I won't bring them. No, it's okay. No, you went up on a mountain. My kids make them. No, it's okay. No, it's okay. No, you went up to the, went up on a mountain. My kids make them mountains. And you lost your, and then you came down the mountains. No, no, what's your question today? That was your question last time. Yeah. So, you know, it's kind of one writing or trying to put a story together.  Oh, yes. Shards of glass. It's all pieces. Yes. And, so coming back to this story of me and then I kind of have to start from scratch, I can't really remember lots of it because I stepped away from it too long as we all saw me cry about it. So I think my question is how do I, you know, even in this, it's pieces. Nothing is in order. How do I, how can I somewhat, because even if in writing the outline or imagining the mental creative imaginary work, there are like clouds, there are gaps in the story. So I feel like I've kind of, I've lost my way as far as even having an order of events. I know that the climax, I know the end, I know the beginning, I know things that kind of lead to certain things, but not necessarily the thread to get back on the work. It's literally working in pieces and projects. But it's kind of frustrating because it feels like, kind of like my attention span, where it's like every which way. So I'm having a little bit of trouble zoning in. And everybody knows that we know what happened just this summer. So Crystal wrote this whole draft and then her computer completely crashed and she lost the draft. It's very traumatic. So we're going to try to talk to you about, we're going to talk to you about ways that you can overcome the mountain, literally, figuratively, emotionally. Right. Because we're constantly, it almost happened today. Like I was looking and I was writing. I was like, oh we might cry today. Just because of the personal. Sure. And it's a really intense story, the thing you're writing about. So it makes it even twice, three times, ten times harder. So it's just kind of emotional preservation. And then artistic writer frustration. Like how do we funnel it in the right place to get to the point of making a cohere? Yeah. So, story. Listen to your story again, I'm thinking, is there any way that having lost some of it is part of the story, the first draft? The written story? Yeah. And I sneak out while she thinks that that's interesting. That's fine, that's fine. You know? Is there any way that that could, I don't know, instead of like trying to just, you know, get over it, which is a harsh, you know, directive. So we're not just saying, just get over it. But I'm saying, is there any way to embrace it, to recognize the fact that you did all this work and lost it, part of the story that you're telling? And it's okay if you get sad about it. We don't. That's okay. You see what you know what I mean? I know. As I remember the story, and it's a fictionalized account of something that went down. But part of the sadness of this actual story was that you guys, the family in the story had done all this work. And it was as if none of it counted. It was a racial thing that happened with the school and like relationships kind of being marred or new relationships being marred because of it. That's what I'm saying.   You see what I'm saying? In favor of some circumstances that are beyond your control. You know what I'm saying? Which sounds a lot like all the work you did is being just washed away. You see what I'm saying? You understand what I'm saying? It's coming slowly. It's okay. Just the connection between what's going on in your day-to-day and the fictionalized story you're trying to tell. Encouraging you to embrace the difficulty instead of just get over it. I'm just going to project for the rest of the time. Thank you. Anyway, just as another sort of coping mechanism, not that that's going to go better or whatever. Also, every time there's a cloud, every time you see a cloud, say, the sun's still out there. I just can't see it.  Do you have anyone, have you ever seen a quilt? It's like a checkpoint. But you know what I mean?   But back in the day, you know, mostly women, because mostly women would do the work, would make quilts for pieces of things. No one had a whole big expanse of cloth to make something.  And they made quilts out of them. Just what you're doing is in the tradition great things. I mean we've talked about this before, but we can talk about it as many times as we have to talk about it. And your task is to persevere and not to say that what you've went through already, the real story, the reality stories are hard enough. But to tell it, this is exactly what used to happen. I know. But we're glad you're here. It's hard, you know? I mean, what would be easier, right? What's easier than writing? Can we think of anything that's easier than writing? Right, I know, right? Isn't it great?  Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. That was an adult word you should not use that word. That was my mistake. I'm sorry. I apologize. You could just sit down and like boom. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. Hey, you know? Or complain about it a lot. People do that.   But you've decided to step up and stand up and do it. You know? Unfortunately, you know, we don't have to, like, march over the Pettus Bridge anytime soon. But just what? You know? Yeah. So just, you know, you could say, I know there's a cloud there, and I can't not remember for the life of you what happened in my first draft. I'm just going to say there's a cloud there. I know there's a sun behind it. I'm just going to write cloud. You can do that. Cloud of scurrying and the beautiful writing that I had with my computer crashed on the mountain. Every time it comes up, you can just write that. Cloud. I know there's a sun behind it. And in it, there's a silver lining because that's what I choose to believe about clouds. You know? You could also believe, oh, it's the end of the world. Everything's going to go, like, become awful. Sorry, limited because my four-letter words are...  But that's something we can do.  Just put cloud, silver lining inside, sunshine behind it. Keep going. Don't let it stop you.  What do you think they meant? You know what I mean? You know what I mean?  This little line of mine, I'm going to let it shine. What do you think they meant, other than that awful-watching TV? I don't watch TV anymore. But there was a show on TV. What's that actor's name? Vincent D'Onofrio. You know? That long order or something. Yeah, he was always doing that. I started doing that years ago. That's not myself. I don't watch TV anymore. I don't want to pick up any more habits like that. But, you know, what do you think they meant? That's what they meant. You don't have to break away and run through the wilderness toward the North, following the North Star anymore. We'll have to do it anytime soon. But, just what? What do you think we're preparing for? Come on, repeat. No, I don't know. We can, you know, this is the thing. The cool thing about this class is that when one person asks a question that is very specific to what you're, she's going through, it has a cool thing where it, I guarantee you it helps somebody else to have a conversation about it. Because that's the magic. Okay? So, you repeat, actually, you're performing a great service because you're doing this really heavy stuff and allowing us to have a conversation about it. So, you're actually performing a great service to the class about going through difficulty. Okay? Thank you. Anybody else have a... Yeah, man, remind me of your name. My name is Wallace. Hi, Wallace. Hi, good to see you again. Good to see you. Yeah. My friend with me. Hi, there. Thank you so much for coming. Oh, wow. What an honor. Another one of my friends over there. Hey, hi. Hi, how are you? What's your name? I'm Alexa. And, man, what do you... Me? Me now? Oh, great to meet you guys. Right. Look at you. Yeah? Well, because it's awesome. Because you're awesome. So, I came here and the reason why I was late is because I'm training for a new job and it's like... Right. But it's not job writing. It's a job making a living and trying to get to where I can have a life where I can write. So, I was thinking recently, it feels like I need a lot of help with, like, focusing my writing practice. Right. Right. And I was thinking graduate program, getting an MFA. I tried to get an MFA before. Okay. But the program really wasn't compatible with the way that I learned. Okay. And so, I'm 51. Okay. So, I was just wondering if you had any suggestions about how to, like, get the most out of, like, how can I best use a MFA program at this... to help a sort of working person focus their writing practice. Because I can't do it by myself. Like, I don't know the first thing about getting... I mean, I know some things about getting a manuscript. Right. But, like, having a professor looking at my stuff and, like, really critiquing it, that's what I would love to know if you could offer some guidance. Sure. Sure, sure, sure. I think MFA's programs can be really great in that they were classes for that way. Not necessarily MFA programs. Those are classes that will culminate in some kind of degree. Great. Yay. Okay. There are a lot of wonderful programs around the city and throughout the country, which you know about. What's cool about classes is that they provide you with some kind of a shape, you know, to your process and help your process, encourage your process. Right. And that's what classes are really good. I take classes, like I have a guitar teacher in Echo and they teach me things. And I take... I'm going to start German classes in a couple weeks. Good. Yeah, that's it with you. I used to speak German because I was a child. You know, I lost her. So classes are great. I think the trick is to, like you said, to choose a type of program that's going to be best suited for what you need. And I... I'm not so knowledgeable about different kinds of programs. I know places like the new school or more kind of... they have flexible... I think they used to do it. They have kind of a flexible program where you can kind of design it. CUNY also might have a cool program. I teach it in my youth but that's kind of rigid, you know. Like they take in people and lots of training.  I don't know if that's... that's a bit about... at least the back into the wild, basically, which has advantages and not so much. But I would say a program that is geared to people who are working people and will give you lots of support and also help you see like, okay, and when I finish these classes, when I graduate from the program I can have some kind of community. Because I think that's the most important thing, right? A community that can give you ongoing support. Also, doesn't have to be an immigrant program again. I know back in the day the poetry project used to have really cool classes. I've taken a lot of classes at the Poetry Project. You know, St. Mark's Poetry Project. Anybody know that? Anyone? Yes. It's like, you know, I'm on 10th Street on 2nd Avenue. They have a lot of cool classes. Really cool community. So you can get a lot of writing done, get critique from a professor and also read your work out loud or perform at the Asian Ethics Theatre, which I used to do a lot of. So, it's tricky. It's finding a program that suits you and you try it once before and you delve a lot about what you need and what you don't need. I mean, I think what I would like to come up with is like a prize and it's like getting published. You know? I've given my work to editors and they say, oh, this needs more work, right? Okay. But then, I'm really proud of what I've done. Right, right. Because you know, I've been like pushing through for years and years without any real support. Right. But I just now would like to be able to focus laser light to say deliver to the editor the thing that will have them say, oh my God. You know? Because it's just like taking it and focusing it. Right, right. That's a great gesture. That's really good. That's really good. Well, have you tried? I mean, have you tried? Have you looked into your school or? No. You know, I've seen the program like at the Burlington and the Bennington, Bennington, okay. There was a school there. Okay. And then Goddard College. Goddard College. And those are some of the things. And then. Leslie University. Leslie. Leslie. Leslie. I have a low res.  Okay. Okay. Right, exactly. Breadloaf, I know, I know Oscar, you used to teach your breadloaf. They have summer programs and maybe it's an on-going thing. So that's, those are cool.  But I know, I'm guessing CUNY, Hunter, I'm just thinking locally, which is great because you're already established in your life here, you know, to take a class at the new school, take a class at CUNY, maybe to take a class at Hunter where they have different age ranges and different levels of professionalism. That's the other thing. It's like having a place where I didn't feel like I was somebody's grandma. Exactly. I know what you're talking about. I know what you're talking about. Also the poetry project. I mean, and this is someone speaking who did not go to grad school. So. I think we're all in there. You know, but, I mean, I took a lot of, but I did take a lot of classes. I just didn't go into formal MFA program. Took a lot of classes at the poetry project. Okay. A lot. And really enjoyed it. Haven't been, haven't taken a class there a while, but it was really great. I learned a lot about writing, how it was surrounded by a really great community. I'll get a lot of the poetry slams and that's all ages of people do that. So, it's not like it's just, you know, 12-year-olds, you know. I wanted to know what kind of writing are you thinking of as a place? What books? Epic poetry. Oh! Epic job! We talk about grand stories. That's right. Oh, that's really great.  But in a poetic form? Yes. Yeah. In some ways, it's like, sometimes it can be forced, you know, but... You know, there's also the poetry center downtown. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is that the one over in Battery City? Yeah. Yeah. The Polar Tap. The Polar Tap, that's what I was trying to think of.  I went back when I was 50. Uh-huh. I loved it. Kids are so nice to you. Say, did you see it? They'd get up and... No, no, I still remember the first term. They had a party at the end. Uh-huh. A beer party and they had a glass of wine for me. Oh! That's good. Okay. Why are you drinking over here? Yeah. But that's beautiful effort. Wow. That's kind of gorgeous. It's just, you know, you can also kind of create your own program by going to different classes around the city. I think what's important is get yourself matriculated into some kind of class.  I mean, it would be like twice a week or once a week where you're actually going to register for a course at some institution or university. That would be great. I'll rent it, of course, but coming here, because this is free. And we love you. And, you know, but definitely... We've got something. Ashley Jenkins is writing in online. She says, when you start writing a play and you start seeing inconsistencies, do you start all over or just get it written and go back later to fix it? What are we saying? You see inconsistencies, do you? Go back. I know we're laughing. People laugh. So that's a great question, Ashley, because a lot of people have that question. And I would suggest that you just... If you're typing it, say, on your word processor, you would just say, oh darn, in the first scene that character's name was Octavia. And now I'm calling her Sally. Continue. You know, I would just say, make a note of it and continue forward. The desire to go back and fix it is, number one, you're thinking you're getting... by the end of it, it's going to be perfect.  Also, it's like, oh, it's that story. Lot's wife. You know, Lot's wife.  It won't happen. She turns... She turns... Right, a pillar of salt. Yeah, so that's what's going to happen. You can be back there with a pillar of salt. Don't... not continue forward. Make notes of your quote-unquote inconsistencies. And when you're finished with your first draft, then you can go back and make them all... and organize them and fix them, because they need to be fixed. Okay? But, yeah, that lure of going back, that's... I know people who do that continually. They rewrite the first, say, three pages of their play, polishing it and polishing it, and they never get any further than that. So, continue. Even if it's... you can... you're telling yourself, like, no, this isn't the greatest writing ever. Who cares? Keep going.  Yes. What's your name? Oh, Biggie. Oh, Biggie. Oh, Biggie? Yes. Oh, that's pretty nice. Thank you. Um, this is cool cause the last... I... I was, um, there when you're at ART. Wow. And it was really... I still hold... ART? That was, like... That was a bit of a go, yeah. Oh, wow. And you gave me, like, really solid advice on... Oh good to know. It wrote it down on the gut and I still I still use it so thank you thank you so much I'm I'm not sleeping and I keep like I keep writing late into the early morning like maybe 3 a.m. yeah no no I wasn't kind of super poetic yeah no like sleep is not the sleep is not coming so I'm just curious so then like I was talking to my doctor today and she was like you should sleep and I was like I'll sleep and right now just I think it's because like the like play that I'm working on it's just kind of bothering me and I'm trying to it's funny you're talking about that polishing the first scene that's happening it's like I'm problem-solving so I guess I'm just curious like if there have been times where you're just like your body is because I know we're trying to all be like you know healthy and everything like I mean I exercise like I'm fine it's much more like sometimes just like the insomniac and the lack of sleep is just not it's just there and I'm like I don't know I don't know I don't want to take melatonin like I don't want to be an enemy I just want to like calm my mind I think it's situational and it's connected to the work it feels right now it's like I think I think it's I mean we have to ask them do you have a meditation I do okay good in the morning well when you wake up you go sleep well in a it's okay yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah like when I when I wake up when you wake up yeah definitely yeah okay good when you go to sleep no when you when you toward the end of the actually no when I to work in the evening when I'm trying to go to sleep I do not have a practice so what yeah the first what we want to do right especially if you don't want to take the melatonin or the whatever else is out there yeah or start drinking you can up your your good things you can up your you can up your meditation practice you have it in the morning hours we can say right and you can double up and do them in the late you know you can also do do some kind of physical something yes that's great up your meditation practice I know that you're inside it's situational so probably you know change once you you want to have a still mind not just a frantic fever here I am like because you know I never had a hamster yes okay well there you go you don't want to be a hamster on that wheel or you know banks he's in town he you know you just see the 14th Street the clock on the corner our fortune Street 6 out of his that clock in that sort of abandoned bank you did a little damn thing so basically that you put a rat in that clock yeah it's really bad so there is you don't want to be like that got it right you don't just want to be radically scrabbley you want to have a clear mind and it will probably taper off right and change because it's not a problem you have all the time it's exciting that you have work that's you're so excited by that you want to stay up and work you know because opposite of course would be someone who comes in it says I can't seem to get any work done because I wake up in the morning I'm sleepy and I always want to go to bed you know I'm tired all the time that's you know yeah that's a difficult place to be want to monitor yourself yeah you know yeah I really love what you said last time about how close or how far you are here right so thank you that was really helpful something I noticed in my writing is I you know I have my own identity and my own voice and my own values and politics and point of view right and sometimes I feel like my point of view can be too overt in my writing and I like using this tool of writing from the character's voices versus knowing what my own voice is and finding a place to kind of park it right at the door right but I wonder if you have any suggestions of exercises to hear kind of your unknown voice or surprise yourself more as opposed to you know like as opposed to just I think a lot of it's almost not didactic but just writing for my own point of view and knowing kind of what I'm saying right so you know what you're trying to say with your play yeah I never do I never know what I'm trying to say you know but I wait for people you know they're critics cover they tell me or talk back you know so I would say be more you be more vigorous in your pursuit of other pairs of shoes you know yeah like your shoes probably you take off your shoes you probably have shoes underneath your shoes right so even when you're walking around someone else's shoes probably still have their shoes on yeah so you have to really take off your shoes and your other shoes and your socks and your feet and walk around someone else's shoes you have allow yourself to go there you're still hold it like your ears oh yeah I'm gonna be her but I'm really gonna be me so your heavy foot you're the weight is still in your you right you say yeah I'm gonna be her but you're not really there you're just kind of right I mean I think it's your best effort but I think you can really go there go there okay you know because trust that you'll always get your point across so well you know you'll always your play will always say something right it will always say something meaningful and important but guess what it's gonna be better if you're not driving I know I know that's where my question like this is not an ad for self-driving cars I know that that's what right right yeah so it's like you have to write I think what you're saying is really useful yeah it's like you have to let go like a little more you hold it you hold it you hold it on and it's easier to let go from trust if you trust in that greater voice the voice that is greater than yours not the same yours isn't you know no that voice that is greater than yours that is somehow greater than yours belongs to everybody is yet and yet is yours alone that makes sense you know I know exactly what you're saying great so just go there right right now it's a little bit like when that greater voice it's not because I just was like great I know exactly how to go there what are the situations that bring that kind of writing about right have you ever you've been there before yeah but not because I consciously I don't know sometimes your characters in the greater voice they won't make sense in a way that you could either you Holly that we see you're now conveniently identified sometimes I was just I teach NYU my students I wrote a scene it doesn't make any sense I don't know if it's my play right I'm like whoa don't erase it keep it hold on to it a minute because that might be your greater voice talking to you in a way that you don't quite understand it you know so sometimes I feel like you might want to make sense as you go forward dare to make nonsense there to be there to like stumble drunken way along the avenue and talk to strangers with people in the eye we know you shouldn't be looking at you know talking about right yeah right right right yeah stare out the window the window stare out the window look into your own reflection for a little too long and you go shit who is that you know I mean yeah you know things that allow you to let go and I'm not talking about yourself in a kind of dangerous situation or you know you know you know go on long walks okay look at the water look up in trees nature have answers look at how you know the way it calls John calls where they're called flowers the daffodils are out look at the walk along the street and look at the daffodils see how many brave braids come out of the ground you know those that's where it is the answers are in the natural world right or in a way kids run around it's not hanging out in those like that there it is you know you come deeply interested in others not in a kind of save the children I'm gonna be a helpful person from the Western people not like that you don't say but deeply interested in something in a way that is not going to get you anything but just out of your own self that works but I was just talking about April 2nd we're back on April 2nd which is the day after which is the first day my journey right well thank you guys for coming this is great if you find the camera are just here this is what you work at the public theater and we love you guys thank you