Erna R. Smith oral history

  • Lauren Bacher: All right it's recording. Alrighty, and if you don't mind we're just gonna be
  • taking some notes. Cynthia Soliday: Well, to [inaudible 00:00:13]
  • Erna Smith: You should take notes. LB: And also I have some questions and stuff
  • on my phone, so if I'm on my phone it's for that, not...
  • ES: Not checking Instagram. LB: No, no.
  • CS: No. LB: I'll put it on silent, in fact.
  • CS: So I guess we should start at the beginning. LB: Yes.
  • CS: And what years did you attend UT? ES: 1971 to I'd say about 1975, 76. I can't
  • remember for sure because I left school before I had the degree.
  • LB: Oh, really? ES: And the degree came in 1977.
  • CS: Oh, okay. So you'd finish classes, and they mailed your degree to you? Or...
  • ES: No I had one incomplete and then I had a library fine for $67.
  • CS: Oh. ES: That I had to basically get a job to pay
  • for, because $67 is a lot of money. CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: So when I left I had this outstanding, I had a job and I had this outstanding incomplete,
  • which I hate to say I paid my sister $50 to write a paper for me. After I got a job, and
  • then I had enough money to pay off my library fees and then they sent me a degree.
  • LB: So you had completed it and then you're just waiting to pay that off get your degree?
  • ES: Yeah. So the degree, I think, came in 1977. That's why... It's weird.
  • LB: Yeah, yeah. CS: Okay, and your degree is in journalism?
  • ES: Mm-hmm (affirmative). CS: So...
  • LB: And you just got your BA? ES: I just got my BA at University of Texas
  • in Austin. CS: So now, was journalism your first choice
  • for your degree? Or did you decide later after you finished your core classes?
  • ES: No I knew why I wanted to come there was for the journalism. And actually, interesting
  • because UT was my fall back. I didn't particularly wanna go there, but I couldn't get into the
  • schools I wanted to, and I got into UT. I knew I wanted it had journalism, that's why
  • I picked it. And so that's why I went there, was to do journalism. I studied a lot of other
  • things, and probably could've had three different majors if I had, had any kind of structure.
  • I was just doing everything, but I got the journalism first. But I took a lot of stuff
  • in political science, and I also think... Yeah probably polysci, I was probably really
  • close in getting a... If I had followed the list of required classes. I certainly took
  • a lot of classes in polysci. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Would you say that's
  • where you find your focus in the journalism world? Is it a bit more on the political side?
  • ES: I think I was interested in journalism primarily because of that.
  • LB: Right. Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: 'Cause it seemed to be about the world
  • and public policy in the world and how government affects people's everyday lives. I was particularly
  • interested obviously in civil rights things. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: Since that was sort of my life. But I was really motivated to get into journalism
  • because I liked to write. And I had always written when I was a child, I had always written
  • stories, and actually the first thing I ever wrote was a ballet, I wrote with my body.
  • So I've always been interested in telling stories. I've always been interested in that,
  • and so I think it just grew out of that. I wanted to be a writer, a fiction, a writer
  • writer. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: But, you have to be practical. So when I was in high school, I'd graduated from Lanier
  • High School, by the way, here in town. I went there for one year, horrible. And I took a
  • journalism class for electives, and the first day the woman said "This is the lead of a
  • story, it answers this question, and I could write one right away." And I said "Oh, well
  • this is a way you could make money and write, and you could be a fiction writer on the side,
  • you can write novels on the side." LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: And so that's really how I got into it, but I was always interested in the world around
  • me, because a number of reasons. My father was in the military, both of my parents are
  • from Texas, and I grew up moving around. And I'm now 65 years old, which means I was moving
  • around, living in Europe and stuff in the early 60s that... I saw how different your
  • experience can be, as a black person, from place to place.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: In not only this country, but in Europe.
  • It was quite different in Europe. So there you are, a little kid in Europe, the first
  • I went to Europe I think I was five, we lived in Germany, maybe I was younger than that.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And you just have different memories of
  • things. My attitude toward white people was quite different because I'd been around them,
  • and the military was integrated, I guess that's it. And so, those sorts of notions that someone
  • would think they were better than you because they were white was just, I mean... What?
  • I never... I experienced it, but when you're... I think it's very hard to have stereotypes
  • about people when you're living around them all the time.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And so it was a really interesting lesson.
  • And so, we lived in France and when I was... Yeah. We lived in France, I must have been
  • in Germany earlier, but from the time I was five til I was 11, I pretty much lived in
  • Europe most of the time. LB: Okay.
  • ES: And then we came back here and we went to El Paso, that was cool to live in a place
  • where the culture was predominantly Hispanic, another experience. Then we went back to Germany
  • for one year, I was 16. And then my father retired and we came here to Austin, and it
  • was shocking to come back to Austin. I went to Lanier High School in 1971, and the school
  • then was predominantly white, it was new, and I think there was seven of us kids in
  • there that were black, I think seven. LB: Seven? Wow.
  • CS: Wow. ES: And one of them was my sister. And what
  • I remember about it is two things. That was I was being taught wasn't... Most of it I
  • already knew, because I'd been taught that before.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And it wasn't as sophisticated, you know?
  • It wasn't. I took a literature class when I was a junior in high school in Karlsburg,
  • Germany, and my teacher had a PhD in Henry James.
  • LB: Wow. ES: And so she has you reading The Bear, William
  • Faulkner's short story that's got like 39 paragraph sentences.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And then you're coming here, and they're
  • still reading Catcher in the Rye. It's like please.
  • LB: Yeah, yeah. ES: So it was quite different, and people
  • [inaudible 00:07:19] high school. I had, at Linear, I had a couple of friends, and one
  • of them was a guy named Evan. I need to find him, and he was a hippie.
  • LB: Yeah. ES: He had longer hair. And we used to walk
  • around with a baseball bat, because people was always attacking. The dominate culture
  • was shit kickers. LB: Wow.
  • ES: So I was really quite ready to get out of Austin. I wanted to go out, and actually
  • I had this crazy dream that I wanted to go to Ratcliffe, and you know why I wanted to
  • go there? Because the movie Love Story had come out, and it was set in Harvard and Ratcliffe,
  • and I'd always heard those were the best schools, but I couldn't get in there. I got into some
  • other Ivy, can't remember what it was, but they weren't gonna give me any money.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: Because my parents made too much money.
  • So I ended up coming here. CS: Oh, wow.
  • ES: Yeah, it's a long story sorry. LB: No.
  • CS: No. LB: You're good, I love it.
  • CS: It's interesting how we end up the places we do.
  • ES: Mm-hmm (affirmative). LB: Yeah.
  • CS: It's always a long story. LB: Yeah, and the experiences that follow
  • it. Wow. Yeah. So when you came to UT... ES: Well, I'll tell you my first experience
  • at UT. LB: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
  • ES: I came for orientation. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: And orientation was in Kinsolving dorm, and they had... I can't remember if I was
  • in the black orientation, but they had some sections there was more black kids, and I
  • think you could pick... I don't remember, but I remember sitting in the lobby there,
  • and we were playing records, and I guess we walked away and I heard “sreetch” and
  • some white kid just scratched the record. I guess he just found it so offensive, this
  • black music and took it off, and I thought "okay, well this is not what I expected."
  • LB: Yeah. ES: I believe it was Roberta Flack.
  • CS: I was just about to ask. ES: Quiet Fire.
  • CS: What were... ES: I believe it was Roberta Flack's album
  • “Quiet Fire”, or something like that. Because I couldn't get over how first of all,
  • someone would scratch a record. It's not their record.
  • LB: Right. ES: And they'd scratch her album like that,
  • because they found it somehow offensive to their ears.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And so that was the beginning of it at
  • UT. LB: So that kind of set the scene.
  • ES: Well, I'd been at Linear, so I kinda knew a little bit.
  • LB: Right. ES: But that was really set, and it set the
  • tone for the experience. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: So you were kinda like... There was this feeling of being on guard.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right ES: Waiting for something to happen.
  • LB: Yeah. Did you live in the dorms? ES: Yes, that's another great story. So I
  • lived in Jester, even though my parents lived here I wanted to live on campus.
  • LB: Right. ES: My parents could afford to pay for me
  • to go to school here. LB: Oh, that's [inaudible 00:10:14].
  • ES: 'Cause it was something like $400 a year, something like that.
  • CS: Oh my goodness. LB: A year?
  • ES: It was always so funny. Maybe it was $800 a year, but anyway it was not that much. My
  • parents had some property in central Texas, and they ran cows on it, they had some cows.
  • So when they wanted to pay the tuition for a [inaudible 00:10:30] my father said “Let's
  • go down a slaughter a heifer, and we'll pay the tuition for the kids.” So slaughter
  • a cow and pay the tuition. That's how cheap it was.
  • LB: Wow. ES: So they could afford it, so they said
  • “Live in the dorms.” Lived in Jester, and my first roommate was this very quiet,
  • a white woman. She never hardly said anything to me. She wasn't unfriendly, she was just
  • really quiet, and so that was no fun. And then my next roommate was also white, but
  • she was from East Texas, well Edinburg. Where's Edinburg, Texas? That's south Texas isn't
  • it? CS: I am not sure.
  • LB: Yeah. ES: Anyway, she was from there, and she was
  • different, she was a hippie. LB: Oh, okay.
  • ES: Jenny Cohan. And she had, had a baby when she was in high school, and in those days
  • if the girl got knocked up, they send them off to these homes, and they would have that
  • baby and they would take that baby from them, and then there was the shame that went with
  • it. LB: Oh.
  • ES: I remember her story, because the first time she had sex she got knocked up, in the
  • back of some car, and her father was insisting, like somehow she did something. Her mother
  • had died recently. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: So there was this sadness about her, but it also made her really sympathetic, empathetic,
  • more empathetic. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: And so she and I became friends and it was through her, I found out that, at least
  • she told me for her, they asked her if she minded having a black roommate.
  • CS: I was gonna ask you that. One of our other classmates said that she wasn't able to get
  • a roommate, because none of the prospective roommates, their parents wouldn't sign for
  • her to be approved. So... ES: Yeah. So I think Jenny just said... She
  • told me that. And she and I became really good friends for, actually, I think, for the
  • rest of the time I was in school. LB: Did She...
  • ES: But we both left the dorm after that. LB: Did you live in West campus or nearby?
  • Or... ES: There wasn't West Campus then.
  • LB: Oh, okay. ES: West campus was regular homes with co-ops
  • in there. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay.
  • ES: So I remember Jenny lived in the cop-op on what was west campus.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. ES: It basically looked like a converted garage.
  • And we used to go over there and smoke a lot of pot, 'cause that was always where the pot
  • smokers were. LB: Was it... Do you remember the name of
  • the co-op? CS: That's where they were.
  • ES: Pardon me? LB: Do you remember the name of the co-op?
  • ES: No. I never lived in one, but she lived in one.
  • LB: Yeah. ES: And I always going over there because
  • you could always get pot. LB: Uh-huh.
  • ES: And it was fun. I went over there... I remember one night, I was hanging out with
  • Jenny and we went to see a Bette Midler. LB: Oh, wow.
  • ES: At the Armadillo World Headquarters. LB: Oh, that's awesome.
  • ES: I'll never forget that. I think that night we had a little coke, but anyway...
  • CS: Oh, my goodness. ES: For the special occasion.
  • CS: Yeah. ES: But I remember it was so much fun, I'd
  • go to concerts with Jenny and you go over there, the co-op and get high, go to the concerts,
  • it'd be fun. But my first [crosstalk 00:13:23]. Yeah anyway, I don't wanna jump around too
  • much. CS: No, you're good.
  • ES: So, I lived in Jester one year, then I moved back home, and then I had jobs, and
  • I lived in my own apartment off of, something up in 40s someplace in the ACB's, I can't
  • remember. My sister and I had an apartment there.
  • CS: Okay. ES: So it was always between home and then
  • living in apartments here and there. CS: Okay.
  • ES: And I pretty much stopped going to class after the first year. I didn't go very much.
  • I became involved with politics. CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: And so that's how I met Linda Lewis. I started working on a political campaign for,
  • her name was Wilhelmina Delco, and when she was first elected to the state legislature,
  • she had been on the school board here, black woman. So she was like the first black woman
  • elected to the Texas state legislature. Well not the first, she was the second, Barbra
  • Jordan was the first, I guess. But, she was the first one from here, and she was the first
  • black representative from here since reconstruction. CS: Wow.
  • ES: So I worked on that campaign. Now that campaign I met Ann Richards, who went on become
  • governor of the state of Texas. CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: She was the campaign treasurer. And, of course, then my mentor for life Linda Lewis.
  • And so I started doing political work, and around the same time at UT, they hired John
  • Warfield, Professor John Warfield, and John, the Warfield Center's named for him, the John
  • Warfield Center for African and African American Studies is named for him.
  • CS: Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: Well, he came here from, I think St. Paul,
  • Minnesota. I can't remember when I met him I was at UT pretty, really young, and I got
  • a job with him being a student assistant. He was so good to us, and I remember he funded
  • the little black paper for us that we started calling Umoja.
  • CS: Oh. CS: How do you spell that?
  • ES: It's the Swahili word, I can't remember how to spell it. Umoja means everybody's kind
  • of oneness. Look it up, it's Swahili. And I should know how to spell that, but it's
  • slipping me now. LB: It's fine.
  • ES: So we started that, and we also worked on a series, speaker series. I helped him
  • to bring in Heman Sweatt, who was the black man who sued UT back in the 50s. You know
  • who he is? LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
  • CS: Yes. ES: So we brought him to campus.
  • LB: Oh, wow. ES: And Huddie Ledbetter, I believe. It was
  • a bunch of people. But what I remember about Heman Sweatt so clearly, was that... I was
  • by that time, in my journalism classes, we'll have to talk about that a little bit more
  • in depth in a minute. LB: All right.
  • ES: But I remember at the point I had been in a class where we had to write for The Daily
  • Texan, and I think I'd written for them. And I told them about it, and I thought that they
  • would cover it, and they didn't. They didn't even cover it.
  • LB: Wow. ES: And so then I remember going in there
  • a couple days later and the editor, the managing editor was actually a Mexican-American woman.
  • LB: Right. CS: Lorie Rodriguez.
  • ES: No, no, no. Lorie was the editor. The managing editor, when I was in school was
  • a woman named Silvia Moreno. I did know Lorie Rodriguez, I'll talk about her in a minute.
  • CS: Oh. ES: And I remember Silvia, [inaudible 00:16:53]
  • I sat with her and she said well I had to make up my mind whether I was a minority or
  • a journalist. And I said “Jesus, what kind of a question?” I said “It's news.”
  • I was pissed off. So, these things would happen and you just be like insist. And so that would,
  • I mean, it was immaturity on my part, because I was so bad at school. I could've responded
  • differently, but I just didn't know what to do with myself, so I just got mad about stuff
  • and then you just like to go “Fuck them, I'm just gonna do my own thing.”
  • LB: Right, you were passionate about it, I mean.
  • ES: Well all I really ended up doing was fucking myself, so people should know that there's
  • a way to say “Fuck you,” Without damaging yourself, and I didn't learn that until many
  • years later, but I'll just never forget that. So we're working on that, and they can't even
  • cover it. The Statesman covered it. LB: Okay, oh.
  • ES: TV people came up, but The Daily Texan, they couldn't really bother, that was unbelievable.
  • LB: Hmm. ES: But John was very instrumental for many
  • people, he was for me, he was the lifeline. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: That was a place you could go in the center, where it was completely a safe space. He was
  • always there to talk to, if you wanted to talk. He always had us doing projects, was
  • always telling you, you were smart. "Just don't pay attention. Just go on, baby."
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And he was just a very supportive, encouraging,
  • professor around which black life happened. There were other people on campus, Almetris
  • Duren, and a guy named Ed, can't remember his last name. There was an office and sometimes
  • you'd go in there and people would be in there crying. Ed Vison, I think I remember his name.
  • You could go in there as well. Almetris Duren, that was MaMa Duren, that's what we'd call
  • her. You could go in there. But for me it was really Warfield.
  • LB: Okay. ES: Because I was more of a kid that lived
  • in my head, so he was better for me, because he could talk these great ideas, he was always
  • giving me books to read. So I got a great education, it just wasn't in the classroom
  • too much. LB: Interesting.
  • ES: It was more going around. And I did have some other great professors. I never took
  • a class with John. LB: Wow.
  • ES: I always did Independent studies. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: Where they'd just give you a list of things to read and then you'd say “Either give
  • me a paper or presentation about it.” And I worked on projects with him, but he was
  • absolutely independent. ES: So one of the things that I got involved
  • with because of him and Linda Lewis, was we started a media coalition, it was called the
  • Austin Black Media Coalition. 'Cause I was learning about... In journalism what I was
  • motivated by, was the fact that when I would look at the news, or when I would look at
  • media in general, with the exception of the black targeted media-
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: In the so called mainstream one, the depiction
  • of black people was no black people I'm in. LB: Right.
  • ES: So always some crime stuff, we're always having a problem and making a mess for people,
  • and that wasn't my life at all. And so I thought, well that this was my purpose, was to be somebody
  • who would go into the media and then make an impact on that.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And it wasn't 'cause I wanted to necessarily...
  • Yes, I did wanna write about it, I wanted to write about issues that were really affecting
  • people, but yes, if it came down to black, or whatever, yeah I wanted to write about
  • that. But, I was very much motivated by that kind of thing, and then John, it was John
  • Warfield, and then you sort of start understanding how systems work.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And so, it was the notion that “Okay,
  • well if we don't actually own any media how is it actually gonna change?” Or “If they
  • don't hire any of us how are things gonna change?” So the Austin Black Media Coalition
  • was a vehicle. And there was a lot of activism around the media in the early 70s in this
  • country. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: Activism because the media was very small then, it was just three networks, national
  • networks, they all had affiliates. And they were all regulated by the Federal Communications
  • Commission, when it used to have teeth. And so, every five or six years they had to have
  • licensing renewal, and they were obligated under the law to actually keep a record of
  • who they hire. LB: Hmm.
  • ES: So we went down, we knew they were all coming up for a license 'cause, I guess John
  • or somebody taught us, me and Lynda and John, went down there and looked at their records,
  • looked at how many black people they had, or people of color, even women. I can't remember
  • the numbers, but it was certainly no black people and not many women. It was just all
  • white men. And so, we knew their license was coming up, so you'd write a letter, and they
  • had to keep all this, it was something called a public file, write a letter to them and
  • CC it to Washington, you know, like, we don't think these people should have a license because
  • they're basically running a segregated news station. So...
  • LB: So, yeah. ES: So then you're invited in of course, and
  • you have to negotiate a settlement with them. So there I was... I think I was like 20.
  • LB: Wow. ES: I went down to every media station with
  • John Warfield and Linda Lewis, and saying “Well, that's really not good enough our
  • contingency was never...” It was like the three of us. “Never going to accept that.”
  • And some people ended up getting hired because of it.
  • LB: That's [inaudible 00:21:51]. ES: They had to make some commitments.
  • LB: Yeah. ES: So that happened when I was in school.
  • Now meanwhile, I'm a journalism major. I'm doing stuff like that, do you think I ever
  • got any class credit for that? Absolutely not.
  • LB: No. ES: I didn't even tell them I did that, 'cause
  • I knew I would get in trouble, if I told them I was out carrying on like that. That would
  • be considered, in those days, completely unacceptable. Now I'd probably get credit.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: But, then it was like, I would not dare
  • tell anyone I was doing that. LB: Wow.
  • ES: You'd be labeled a pinko and that'd be the end of it.
  • CS: Yeah, I was going through The Daily Texan archives and found articles that you wrote.
  • ES: Yeah. CS: And I found an article you wrote about
  • Erwin not wanted to be reappointed after he went through a bad taxes scandal.
  • ES: Frank Erwin? CS: Uh-huh.
  • ES: Okay. CS: And then there was another article you
  • wrote about a historical building that was being demolished in town, and the man who
  • owned the bank that owned the building was also on the board of regions at UT, and I
  • was wondering if you got any pushback for writing those kinds of stories.
  • ES: I don't even remember the stories. So, I guess I don't remember that. Thank you.
  • I should look them up. No, I don't remember any pushback. It's an interesting experience
  • because... Let's talk about my journalism classes now. When I started here, before class,
  • I could even get to the journalism because you have to take all this other stuff, and
  • I just decided I would go volunteer at The Texan, because you could do that then.
  • CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And they were in some shack building,
  • they didn't have the nice thing they have now. I remember just walking in there and
  • asking for a story, and Lorie Rodriguez was there, and I remember she came out when she
  • saw me, Afro and everything, but she came out and said hi, and I said “Well isn't
  • this neat? I'm [inaudible 00:23:47] walking here, and look at her, she's in here.” And
  • I wrote a story. I wrote about the shuttle bus. They gave me this horrible story about
  • the shuttle bus and so I was just told to make lemonade out of lemons.
  • CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: So I did something on the shuttle bus,
  • and then I think I did a couple other articles, I can't remember. And then what happens is,
  • the way it worked at the journalism major then, the first class you take is something
  • called news writing. Now I had already been writing for The Texan, I'd written a bunch
  • of stuff from different places, I get into news writing, it was... I couldn't stand it.
  • They used to give you things out of the book and you were supposed to write it out of this
  • book, and I was used to doing real life. CS: Right.
  • ES: And I had met a woman name Marilyn Marshall, who was from here, she went to UT, and she
  • was journalism major too, and we used to take our classes together so we wouldn't be alone.
  • We did. We took a lot of our journalism classes, we took them together.
  • CS: Love that. ES: And so we were in news writing, we both
  • flunked it the first time. Like, really? And then the second time. Well I did, I don't
  • know if she passed it. For me the second time, I just stopped going. And then it's like F
  • this again. And then they just finally said “We'll let everyone into the next one.”
  • They did. And I went into the next class, was reporting, and I made an A. So it was,
  • like, I didn't really need that other one. CS: Right.
  • ES: But the reporting class, the way it was set up then was, you had a lecture and you
  • had to do a lab. And one of the lab things you had to do was, you had to take a shift
  • on The Daily Texan. CS: Okay, and you had already been there.
  • ES: And I had already been there, as a volunteer. CS: Okay.
  • ES: I only did that a little bit, then I went off and did the black paper, I think. But,
  • the way it worked was you went into lab, you had an instructor and then there was an editor
  • from The Texan, and you just turned in two copies, and you'd get edited twice, it was
  • really a great process. And no one ever wanted to come at night, and because I was so tired
  • of coming up on this campus, going to class and getting enraged by something, someone,
  • somebody said or just seeing what they talked about, that I took the night one. I said “Well
  • I'll come in at four. I'll do the evening shift.” No one wanted to do it, it was fabulous.
  • I went to hear Tennessee Williams, I can't remember who else, but I'll never forget Tennessee
  • Williams. CS: Yes.
  • ES: The great playwright, when he came out in a cape. Was it Tennessee Williams? Was
  • it Truman Capote, I think? CS: Oh, wow.
  • ES: It was one or the other. CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: And I just never forget the like, this is what being a journalist, this is what's
  • so great about it. You get to actually hear these people, and you're up close on them.
  • CS: Right. ES: And I don't know if I even asked him any
  • questions, but I really enjoyed that, and it really did kinda turn my whole mid around
  • about the journalism, and I also met another friend, and her name was Ann Marie Kilde,
  • and she was working on The Texan, and she would really encourage me. She would actually
  • save the good stories for me. She knew I could do it, and she would save them for me. She
  • actually helped me get a job years later, it's funny how the network works.
  • CS: [inaudible 00:26:57] ES: So there was a moment... And then Griff
  • Singer, who was the teacher, Griff Singer. CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: He was also a good guy, in the sense that, you know, he was a stereotypical white Texas
  • man, but the difference about him was that I didn't pick up from him that he thought
  • I was all incompetent or uncompetent, strange. The fact that I could do this well was not
  • surprising to him. How do I put it? He had... His expectations of me did not seem, around
  • some kind of racial thing. CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: It didn't feel like it with him. It just felt different being around him.
  • CS: Yeah. ES: And he was cheerful. But, mostly, I think,
  • he just treated me like a normal person, I felt normal when I was around him.
  • CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative). ES: And it's funny 'cause I talked to him
  • years later, I'm like “Wow, he really was an old redneck.” But, just because somebody
  • is, that doesn't mean anything, they could be a fine person, it's a weird thing to say.
  • CS: Yeah. ES: But anyway, he was good. I felt safe with
  • him, I felt safe around him. And Anne Marie of course I did, and that was very helpful
  • to kind of stimulate my mind. And because of that, the school then sent me to, it was
  • the very first, it was in Washington D.C., it was so exciting, it was the very first
  • meeting of, forgot the group or what it was called, but it was basically a gathering of
  • black communication students from across the country. It was the first one they ever had.
  • I think it was Association of Black Student Communicators, or something, and it was started
  • at Howard University, and the dean at Howard then was a guy who had a great show on PBS
  • then named Tony Brown. CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • ES: And it was the first black show on PBS. And so, we went there, here you are, and you're
  • here from this predominately white school, where you just feel like you're holding your
  • head above water to keep away from these racists, and then you get up there you're surrounded
  • by black people. In chocolate city, it's called Washington D.C., being stimulated by all these
  • ideas and you're meeting these top Black journalists and stuff.
  • And it was just like "ah." It was like "ah, phew," so beautiful. And so I had to write
  • something about it. And turn it in. So I turned it in to the chair of the journalism, his
  • name was Norris Davis, I believe. And I thought I did a really good job of writing it. And
  • then I went in to see him and he handed it back to me and I'll never forget, he probably
  • said something nice, he had just circled where I hadn't put the comma properly, and that
  • was the whole discussion. That's all I remember about it. He may have said something else
  • but all I could see was... he read this thing and all he could do was point out the comma.
  • So I'm like, these people. These people. CS: Got to nitpick something.
  • ES: Yeah, nitpick. There was no discussion of the content, that's what I remember. But
  • it didn't matter, I had that experience and they paid for it. I don't know why it happened
  • but they did. I don't know maybe Griff told them. But that was a good experience. And
  • also at the same period of time, I met a woman named Sheryl Jefferson. I met her through
  • Linda. And Sheryl was producing a show at KUT called In Black America. And that was
  • my first internship, was on that show. Radio show. With her.
  • LB: That was a radio show? ES: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's still on. John
  • Hanson does it now. It's still on, and no one has ever archived that program. They have
  • all those tapes and they've never been archived. And as a matter of fact, it's one of those
  • things...I was told I should go over to UT books and tell them "look, I'll do it but
  • you have to pay me." But no one has ever done it, they're sitting there, all those tapes.
  • And we're talking going back here to 1970. And he did the show once a week.
  • LB: Wow. ES: In Black America. It's still on. With
  • John Hanson. Never been archived. So I worked on that. That was great because for work on
  • a radio show, when you're producing, you're doing research, you have to come up with story
  • ideas and a lot of times we'd be interviewing national people on the phone. So you'd have
  • to get the questions together and stuff like that for the interviewer. And I just learned
  • a lot doing that show. And Sheryl was just wonderful, just a wonderful person to be around.
  • She is a Black woman. She had such positive energy. So it was a horrible thing, but there
  • were these moments. There was just enough to seem to happen at the right time to push
  • you through it, make you think it's all worthwhile. So that was very important to me. But after
  • my success as a student, on the Daily Texan, then I got a job there. And in those days,
  • I think I was a general assignment reporter at first, I can't remember what the pay was
  • but it was enough for me to have an apartment with my sister.
  • LB: Wow, that's good. ES: I think they paid $80 for an apartment
  • or something. LB: Oh, the days.
  • ES: We even had a car. CS: You know you got to pay ten times that
  • amount for an efficiency now. ES: Yeah, I mean, this is an expensive town,
  • children. LB: Oh yes.
  • ES: I came from California, and I was not saving money at all. So I worked there. I
  • forgot what it was. But I think I got $88 a month, it was enough, you know?
  • LB: Yeah. ES: So I worked stories and that's probably
  • where you saw the Irwin story and all that stuff, was probably during that period of
  • time. I don't remember the stuff they'd given me to do.
  • CS: Yeah, there was a good dozen stories that I found that you had authored. I didn't bring
  • my notes in though. ES: Well, I appreciate that, I should look
  • them up. And so I started working there. And then a guy named Michael Ekan became the editor.
  • And Michael was a radical. See what had happened was the student body president and the Daily
  • Texan editor, they formed a coalition and they ran together. So I believe that the president
  • was Bob Binder. Student body president was Bob Binder and Michael Ekan was the Daily
  • Texan editor. It's interesting about these times because I realize, maybe that happened
  • before or after. I don't remember exact dates. It's all murky. But Michael was radical. He
  • was a radical. Much more radical than Bob Binder, though Bob Binder did throw away his
  • Purple Heart at the anti-Vietnam War protest. He did throw it in the flames. But he went
  • on to become mayor actually, Bob Binder. LB: Wow.
  • ES: And Michael ended up dying under mysterious circumstances, investigating the nuclear industry,
  • no one knows what happened to Michael. CS: Wow.
  • ES: But Michael was the editor. And Michael, he was kind of a ham-fisted radical, but he
  • really wanted to have Blacks. They didn't say it like that. So I was on the editorial
  • board, under Michael. And I worked with a guy named Steve Russell, who went on to become
  • a municipal court judge, he's retired now. He was also radical. So I had to learn how
  • to write editorials, which I thought would be easy. It's the hardest writing I ever did,
  • was in editorial. So I did that. Was that Michael or... No, no I'm sorry, Michael was
  • the editor when I was doing general assignment. When I was on editorial board, I think the
  • editor was a guy named Buck Harvey, I'm sorry. We used to call him Legs because he was a
  • sports writing guy, but he had got politics. And he used to always wear shorts, he had
  • beautiful legs. He could have been a frat boy, I think he may have been. But something
  • happened and he went left. ES: I know what happened. He decided that
  • the whole football thing at UT was a kind of corrupt enterprise. And it was always the
  • same, whatever. So he stopped going to games. And he wrote about why he didn't go.
  • LB: And that's like the frats, they... ES: Yes.
  • LB: They still now are like "you go to the games" so, I'm sure it was like that back
  • then. ES: He poked an eye in somebody... Maybe it
  • was because the team was segregated, I can't remember. He was protesting something. So
  • then he got elected Daily Texan editor. And I was on the editorial board under him, I'm
  • sorry. Michael was a previous time. I was on the Daily Texan, I think for about a year.
  • Maybe a year and a half. Getting paid. So I remember being on the editorial board because
  • I started in the summer. And I think Watergate was going on, it was an incredible time. So
  • I think the Watergate hearings are going on, so that time I just remember practically living
  • down there. And you're looking at the Watergate stuff and you're seeing that journalism actually
  • brought down a president. Because we're all reading Woodward and Bernstein like it's mother's
  • milk. And these guys we thought were just so badass. And they got rid of Nixon. Unbelievable.
  • ES: So it was this high time to be a journalist, you're sitting down there at the Daily Texan
  • and you're with this really smart guy, Steve Russell, who's older than all of us, who had
  • been a farm worker. I didn't even know White people were farm workers. But he was. And
  • grew up some place in Texas. Fluent in Spanish. Really didn't see himself as a White person.
  • He didn't... because of his socioeconomic status and how he grew up. He really identified
  • more with people of color, much more so, especially Black people, because that's what he was around.
  • So he told me that when he was a kid he was so excited about Brown vs. the Board of Education
  • because he thought he could go to school with the kids that he picked cotton with. And it
  • didn't work out. And he was very disappointed that they couldn't go to the same school.
  • I'll never forget him telling me that story. LB: Wow.
  • ES: But that was an exciting summer to be down there and Steve was great because he
  • didn't let you get away with being sloppy in your thinking at all. He would just "uh-uh."
  • So that was really great. So those were some highlighting experiences. And Buck Harvey,
  • who was just to me such an unlikely person, because he looked like a frat boy, he grew
  • his hair out and everything. You could tell he was one of these beautiful men. He could
  • have done whatever he wanted to at UT and then somehow, I don't know, he just went left
  • on them. So I love it when that happens, someone so unexpectedly, they break with you think.
  • And I remember I saw him years later and I thanked him, because he was another one of
  • those that I felt very safe around. So. I kind of lost... oh yeah.
  • ES: Last thing I did journalism here was I had an internship with the American Statesman.
  • And those days they gave you... well, they still do, they gave you class credit for it,
  • frankly if it weren't for those independent studies I'm not sure if I would have graduated.
  • Or supervised, whatever. So I had an internship there, I think it was '74 or something. And
  • I remember I was going to school, and I was walking across by the administration building.
  • And I see some people I know running up the stairs to the building there. And I'm like
  • "what are you guys?" "We're going to take over the office." They had a handful of Black
  • people you knew. They had a Black Student Union. And it was some of them running up
  • there, including the guy that would later become my brother-in-law for about five minutes.
  • Noah. Noah Richardson. ES: And they ran up there, they took over
  • the president's office. So the group was called United Students Against Racism at Texas. USARAT.
  • I love that. United Students Against Racism at Texas. They called it USARAT.
  • LB: USARAT, I love that. ES: So they took over the president's office
  • for a minute. So I saw them running up there, and so I just called into work. Because I
  • was a lowly news assistant. I called them and I told them, "they ran up there and they
  • took over the office." And they said, "stay there." I said, "okay, I'll stay." And I was
  • waiting for the big reporters to come. And they sent Wanda Prior, who was the one Black
  • one they had at that time. And she and I covered it. And that was of course front page, that
  • was a big boost to me. And then we ended up writing a series of stories in the Austin
  • American Statesman about the history of integration at UT. And the irony of that is that literally
  • two years ago, year before last, I got a call from a writer named, I think it's Asher Price,
  • who wanted to interview me because he was doing a book on Earl Campbell and he found
  • those articles. LB: Really?
  • ES: It's funny. So I remember covering that. But my job at the Statesman was that most
  • of the time I sat on the desk next to the night editor. And I had to take obits over
  • the phone and write up whatever he told me to. And a couple nights we got court report
  • things. ES: And so, I remember my biggest lesson there
  • was that... obits were free. A funeral home called and the person's name was Barrientos.
  • They must have had 33 survivors. I misspelled Barrientos every single time, and nobody caught
  • it in the paper. Nobody caught it in the paper. And I remember I felt so bad. That's the power
  • of the press. Because I said, people only get in the paper usually when they're born
  • and when they die. And so people will cut that stuff out and keep it. And there you
  • spelled the name wrong. I felt so bad. They ran the whole thing again. But I really felt
  • bad. But later on when I thought about it, I said I'm in Texas, I'm not really from Texas.
  • And no one knew how to spell Barrientos. No one caught it. Because in journalism, you're
  • read at least twice. And nobody saw that was wrong.
  • ES: Years later I kind of thought about it and I was like "wow, in Texas?" That's kind
  • of like being in England and not knowing how to spell the Queen's name or something. I
  • really think it's that basic here. But it sort of told me something. This is what happens
  • when you don't have a mix of people in there. This is what happens. They misspell Barrientos,
  • which is the equivalent of basically Johnson. LB: Yeah.
  • ES: It's a very common name. So it's just weird to me. So that was my whole journalism
  • thing at UT. I think so. Yeah. ES: Is there a question you want to ask me?
  • Because I can just go on and on. LB: Yeah, sorry, I was just finishing up a
  • thought. ES: I'm sorry.
  • LB: No you're good. CS: So it sounds like your experience at UT
  • was partly infuriating but also that you had a real good support system in your community
  • there. And that you were able to make a community there.
  • ES: Yeah, I was able to make one there. And there's great value in when you make a community
  • in an environment in which you feel hostile, alienated from it. You make that community
  • and you just never forget those people. You become tight for the rest of your life. You
  • could talk to them years later, and you had this experience together, and there's just
  • this trust and this loyalty that happens. And this is a great thing, a great reassurance
  • in life over time. We didn't realize it at the time. And then years later you meet people
  • and it's like "huh." Sheryl was over here week before last. And I was in kind of a mood
  • and didn't really want to talk. She was here to see Linda. So I just went into the back.
  • But before I went into the back she said, "I'm so proud of you." And I
  • was like, "aw man." Wow. LB: That's awesome.
  • ES: It gives you chills, you know? It's what gives life meaning. So I don't regret it.
  • You other thing about going to UT, is that I got a very good education. Like I said,
  • it wasn't necessarily in the classroom. Though I did have a couple of really good classes.
  • I had a couple of bad ones too where the teachers were just flat out racist. There's one guy
  • that used to teach here that used to say that a Black would never get more than a C in his
  • class because our brains weren't developed right. There's stuff like that. I had to take
  • swimming to get out of here. I had to learn to tread water for five minutes or I couldn't
  • get out of the school. They made girls be able to tread water, I mean it's all this
  • crazy stuff they did. So you had that. Yeah. I can't find anybody that owns up to it. I
  • said, "who knew about this treading the water business?" Everyone laughs when I tell them
  • that. A&M had it too. If you were a girl you had to be able to tread water for five minutes.
  • CS: And just girls, or just African-American girls?
  • ES: It was just girls. Of any color. And so I remember because that was one class I had
  • where most of the people in it were Black. Because what happened if you couldn't tread
  • the water right away you had to take swimming for a semester. And as many times as I had
  • been to swimming growing up, my mother was afraid of the water. And so when you're taken
  • to swimming lessons by someone who sits way back in the thing, that's frightened the entire
  • time, you don't learn to swim. LB: Yeah.
  • ES: She was sitting there like "oh my God." And so I didn't really learn how to swim well.
  • But it turned out I was buoyant. But I couldn't really swim. So I went to swimming class and
  • I was able to do it pretty quickly but I never forget that class because for Black girls
  • it was just like a nightmare, everyone's worried about their hair and they're clinging onto
  • the side. You could see how frightened they were. Because Black people and swimming, it's
  • changed now, but in my day no, no, no. So I don't know what, I always thought it's a
  • metaphysical thing. One of my friends said many years later, it's that memory of the
  • Middle Passage. You can't get over the water. We don't like the water. It's funny. There
  • were also some studies showing our muscle mass is a little bit higher in the skin level,
  • it is harder for us to float. I read that. And now you see, there have been these great
  • Black swimmers, you're like, maybe that's not all of us.
  • ES: But there's all these reasons why. I prefer the metaphysical one. Memory of the Middle
  • Passage. I can still remember. But that was the weirdness. So that was some of the bad
  • experiences in a classroom. But the good ones were, I remember a class called, I think it
  • was Race, Class, and Gender. And I'm talking about a long time ago. It was summer school.
  • I liked going to summer school because it was smaller, not as many people on campus.
  • And the frat boys didn't seem to take classes in the summer. The sorority girls, they didn't
  • seem to. They were gone. LB: Were they like the worst?
  • ES: Yeah, they were the dominant culture there, and they were in my opinion horrible. Horrible
  • people. CS: There's an article you wrote that says
  • that the frats boys, and the administrators, and somebody else must be in a... and the
  • board of regents, must be in race for mediocrity in education.
  • ES: Oh my goodness. That must have been one of my editorials. I hope so.
  • CS: Yeah, you were writing about the round up for-
  • ES: Oh, the Texas round up. LB: That's this weekend.
  • ES: Really? LB: Still a thing, yup.
  • ES: I'm going to have to look that up, I can show it to my students, what I wrote. And
  • I can tell them, look, you can all write better than me probably at that time.
  • CS: I need to go get my notes after we're done with this so I can show you.
  • ES: Thank you. CS: I pulled some quotes from some of the
  • articles that I really liked a whole lot. ES: Oh, thank you.
  • LB: Yeah, they're really good. CS: Yeah. Another article that I read, you
  • wrote a review of a play called Sty the Blind Pig.
  • ES: Sty the Blind Pig. Yeah, that was the African-American players.
  • CS: And some of our friends from class interviewed Ms. Glo Dean, who started up that... were
  • you friends with them? ES: Yes! Very good friends with her, still
  • friends with her. Glo Dean and Freddy. To me, they were the glamorous Black couple.
  • Because they had been living together forever, and I think she took him from his first wife.
  • [crosstalk 00:46:36] lying but- LB: I think they're still married-
  • ES: No, they're still married. They're still married and they're artists. And she could
  • cook really well. So you ended up at some point always at their house because she always
  • had something fabulous to eat. And she always kept her place so lovely, because none of
  • us had money. And no design sense. But Glo Dean always had fabulous style, with no money.
  • And so she always made everything special. She was an artist. Everything was a creative
  • thing with her. And he was flat out... Freddy... what's Freddy's last name? Freddy... oh, whatever.
  • Freddy was one of the brightest people I have ever met in my life. He was brilliant. Crazy
  • a loon, like a lot of artists. But I had never really been around an artist like him before.
  • They were both artistic, but he was absolutely... because he could do everything, he could play
  • instruments, he could sing, he could act, he could dance, he could do everything. So
  • it was fun being around them. ES: I was no good at being an actress though.
  • I think I was with them for, I don't know, whatever, but I used to write the press releases
  • and stuff. And one time, we were someplace and I had to do lights, and I had no idea
  • what lights I was I had to turn the lights on and whatever, stage lights and whatever,
  • I didn't know what it was. But it didn't really matter to me. Maybe it mattered to them. But
  • it didn't matter because they could act so well. Yeah, I mean, he was just... Freddy
  • Gardner. He was just amazing. To meet somebody that could do all that. And she was that kept
  • it all together. He wouldn't have been anything without her. Even he'll tell you that. He'll
  • tell you, he would have been nothing without her because he was an artist and no discipline
  • so whatever- LB: Free souls.
  • ES: You can't be doing it all night; she brought the structure and the discipline to it. And
  • she herself went to Catholic school, which was an odd thing for a Black girl of her time.
  • I forgot how she got into that White Catholic school she went to, but she went to that.
  • And so there was stuff that she knew. I think when you have different experiences and different
  • things influence you. So I always felt like she had this nun influence, so she could always
  • keep everything running and everything. I used to call her the Black Nun. But yeah.
  • Thank you for reminding me. That was a fun experience, working with them. That was another
  • thing. Again, no class credit. But every experience I had out of the classroom there, was to me
  • like a class. Actually, more than a class. And what I learned from that was that I'm
  • an experiential learner, that's how I learn. Everyone has different learning styles.
  • LB: Yeah, I'm the same way. ES: And if I could have done it again, I would
  • have got to a school that had that. That kind of learning. Like Antioch, or Northeastern,
  • where you did coursework for maybe a year and then you're just out doing stuff. That's
  • what would have worked for me. But thank you for bring that up. That was a nice experience.
  • ES: And again, Linda was in that. Most of these people I met through Linda. Linda Lewis.
  • LB: I think somebody is interviewing her in our group.
  • ES: Yeah, somebody did, somebody did. LB: Okay, yeah, yeah. That's good, yeah. So
  • is there any other organizations that you remember specifically? You weren't in a sorority
  • or? ES: No. No. But they had the best parties.
  • The Black sororities and fraternities had the best parties. But I wasn't a good dancer.
  • I wasn't into all that stuff. So I would go to the parties sometimes because they were
  • always the best parties, but I was never in one. I never had any interest in being in
  • one. LB: Yeah.
  • ES: And it some of it was the time. Because you're talking about the seventies, and you
  • really weren't that far out of the sixties. And so the whole thinking about that stuff
  • was different. Musically, there was a period of time where you had the Motown, but Motown
  • was beginning to recede into popularity, you got more people coming out. And my hero was
  • Shaka Khan. And that was so different, how things were happening. Earth, Wind & Fire
  • were new then and they were completely alternative type Black people. And so those kind of styles
  • of those button-down, straighten your hair thing, no I wasn't into that. It was a period
  • where people were exploring their ethnic identities, their Black identities in a much more profound
  • way. So that was never something that appealed to me, I was always on the other side. That's
  • why when I went to DC, it was an explosion of "oh yeah, okay."
  • ES: The other thing, I took a class, I'm talking about classes that were good. Race, Class,
  • and Gender. I don't remember what the man's name was but he was White, I think he was...
  • I want to say he was Jewish, but I don't really know. But I remember that class because we
  • read Erica Jong, who wrote Fear of Flying. And that book was just about a woman, I don't
  • remember everything it was about, but I know that the controversy about that book was that
  • her character was a woman who basically went around fucking like a man. In other words,
  • she had, she called it the zipless fuck. Now at the time when that book came out, can you
  • imagine? She was a big feminist hero too. ES: So we read that book, it hadn't been out
  • very long. Oh, there was a couple of frat boys in there who were just outraged by that
  • book. And that conversation went on and on about that book, and I was like, "let's get
  • over this book." I thought that was the lightest of the reading but I couldn't wait to go to
  • class to hear... because the teacher was just totally provoking, just kind of crazy stuff
  • to hear. The one or two frat boys in there, the Christians, would get upset and you would
  • just go and watch the show. LB: There's still some classes like that at
  • UT. ES: I just loved it. I couldn't wait to get
  • in there. What is he going to say this time, because he would just shut them down, tell
  • them they were fools or whatever. That's the impression I got. He probably didn't say that
  • but I was just... and then you'd just raise your hand to argue with him. So I thought
  • that was a wonderful class. So we read that and that's the book I remember. There's a
  • couple. I remember the zipless fuck, that's what I remember learning. And I remember writing
  • my papers and actually having fun writing them. Of course, I didn't spend a lot of time
  • on them, I just write them at the last minute and I can remember getting my B+ and thinking,
  • "if you had just maybe spent maybe an hour more maybe you'd got an A" but whatever, it
  • was over. It was a long paper too, it was just one night, all night, 20 pages, here
  • you go. And I thought he was a good professor, I can't remember his name. But he was wonderful.
  • And that was such a fun class. ES: And I had a seminar class with Dennis
  • Brutus. He was a poet. From South Africa. And he helped lead the movement to get South
  • Africa thrown out of the Olympics for being an Apartheid country. He had been imprisoned
  • over there, they tortured him, everything. Somehow he gets over here. John Wharf was
  • amazing at getting these people here. And so Dennis Brutus comes to our school and I
  • took a seminar with him. I knew nothing about poetry. But somehow I got in there. So that
  • was the other thing, I would actually sometimes go and talk to the professor and get into
  • a seminar. LB: Really?
  • ES: Because I believe that one was a graduate one. I think I just talked my way into...
  • go and just talk to them. People should learn that, just go talk to them. And so I got in
  • there. And I remember Dennis because years later I ended up spending a lot of time in
  • South Africa, you can see around here. My job at USC was I directed a graduate internship
  • program in Cape Town, South Africa for nine years. So I got to know South Africa very
  • well. And realized how lucky I was to have had Dennis, I knew I lucky at that time, but
  • to realize what he had really done when you go to that country, it's just breathtaking.
  • I just don't even know how the man even coped. Because they... electrodes on the groins,
  • everything. He did have these electric burns that were black on his arm. From where they
  • tortured him and stuff. ES: But Dennis, I'll never forget, he always
  • wrote a poem on day he got the worst torturing. I think it's called The Day I Got Tortured,
  • and he wrote it over and over again. So he asked us to write a poem about being tortured.
  • LB: Wow. ES: I'll never forget, like... okay. Because
  • I don't think we knew how bad he'd been tortured. He said just been tortured, tormented. So
  • we're all writing something. And then you read his. I'll never forget. We knew he'd
  • been tortured but he was going around listening to ours. "Well, I think that one's better
  • than mine," I'm like "what?" Someone wrote about having a tormented heart or something.
  • And he said he thought that was worse than actually being tortured. I remember sitting
  • there, he also used to drink wine in class, it was a night seminar, so we'd have wine,
  • drink it. I thought it was so grown up and sophisticated, you're with a man of letters
  • who was a great activist and we're drinking wine and he's talking about the poem about
  • someone having a broken heart was worse than being tortured with electrodes on your groin.
  • It was unbelievable. He was amazing. He wasn't the greatest teacher. You were just hanging
  • out with him. LB: Right. The experience of it.
  • ES: Yeah. I don't think it has to be about what's in a book sometimes. If the person
  • is present with you and they got something to teach you. They don't need a book. So he
  • himself was just a lesson. He loved the White girls. But anyways. Dennis was what they call
  • Colored. And I didn't understand that either because I thought most Africans were Black.
  • Like, dark skin. And he was lighter than me. And that's when I learned about the Mixed
  • Race people there, from him. And he had this wild hair, it wasn't quite Afro, but it was
  • fuzzy hair. Some people probably thought he was White or even Jewish, or maybe Latino.
  • And he used to wear a ponytail all the time. And then sometimes when it was out it would
  • just be this wild thing on his head. He'd smoke in class too, because this guy had been
  • through something. And years later I realized the timing when he came here, he was only
  • two or three years out of that, when he came here.
  • CS: Wow. ES: So he had to be still kind of jumpy. I
  • just loved that, he's smoking and have white wine, red wine and talk about being tortured.
  • It was an amazing class with him. So those were these experiences that later on in life,
  • and even at the moment I knew, something nice was happening there. But I also knew, to me
  • that was what college was supposed to be. The class where we're arguing about the zipless
  • fucks and you're hanging out with the torture guy, I mean. To me, that was what college
  • was. Because college was, to me, supposed to get you ready for real life. And real life
  • was sitting in the room. ES: The other thing I'll tell you is I had
  • a Spanish class with a woman from Chile. And she had come over here... what happened was
  • they had democratically elected a Socialist in Chile, in the seventies. His name was...
  • I forgot what his name was- CS: Pinochet? Is that Pinochet in the seventies
  • or? ES: Yes. But the president they elected was
  • Allende. And Pinochet, they crushed that. That democratic movement. Pinochet and the
  • military took over, and the whole thing was planned at the LBJ school, you know.
  • LB: Really? ES: Yeah, those spooks were up there planning,
  • we had a protest about it. They planned that at the LBJ school, in the Latin American studies
  • thing. They had something to do with overthrowing... that's what we thought.
  • I certainly went on a protest there ... But that's what the word was, that they had helped
  • kind of engineer that, in some logistical help.
  • ES: So anyway, they torched up nice people and threw them ... and so one of them, she
  • was a journalist. She'd been a journalist in Chile, and she came here. I don't know
  • how she got here, and they made her teach this ... There was a Spanish class for communications
  • people and she taught that, except her English wasn't that ... She wanted to speak English
  • to us, so I didn't really learn a lot of Spanish but I learned a lot about journalism and ideas
  • and Chile, because I would go talk to her after class. I would say, "Well, what's the
  • story here?", you know? And she would always cancel class if something political was happening
  • but I remember she was just ... Again, it was one of these moments like, oh my God,
  • you're in school, and this person has just been down here in the middle of this huge
  • international story of U.S. interference and overreach in Latin America, and I'm in a class
  • with someone who's been there and seen that. It was, to me ... I thought she was riveting.
  • ES: I think I got a B in there, too, I can't remember. But I do remember she was great,
  • and she also was the one that introduced me to the notion of ... She introduced me to
  • Noam Chomsky. Why it came up in there, I don't know. But yeah, it was amazing. I forgot ... I
  • can't remember her name, but I just could not believe it, that this is who you have
  • for a teacher. ES: So I didn't care if we were conjugating
  • verbs or whatever. That's [inaudible 00:59:25]. Because she would start ... and we'd be talking
  • in Spanish and you know, you couldn't really have much of a conversation, and she was trying
  • to learn English better. So she would just say, "Let's just try and speak English." And
  • you'd try it and put in some Spanish and, you know, it was a lot of fun. I thought she
  • was an amazing ... I thought it was just amazing that we had her. And I did learn about some
  • History about that and something about History, of course ... journalism in Latin America.
  • I found it fascinating. Can't remember the Spanish I learned, but I remember the ideas
  • I learned in there. She was amazing. ES: And the last thing was the people that
  • came to Campus. And someone who had a big effect on me was José Angel Gutiérrez. José
  • Angel Gutiérrez. And he was one of the founders of the Raza Unida Party. The Raza Unida. They
  • were totally radical in the day. First person I ever voted for for governor was Kennedy
  • from the Raza Unida, Ramsey Muniz. But José Angel came, and these guys were from Crystal
  • City down there in South Texas. You know, and South Texas, I didn't really know a lot
  • about a lot from Texas. But when I learned about it, in those days it seemed like the
  • equivalent of Mississippi, for black people. You know, just horrible.
  • ES: And so, I remember, he came out of there. And what happened was there were all these
  • really bright kids, obviously, there. And the Ivy Leagues after the riots and stuff,
  • they started recruiting to try and get more people of color in there. And José was incredibly
  • bright, and so were all those guys, and they all end up going to Ivy League Schools.
  • ES: They go up there, so they take them out of, I don't know, wherever they were. Down
  • there, wherever, the Star City or the Crystal City. Then you're at Harvard with all these
  • ideas, they all became radicalized. All of 'em. All of 'em. And they came back and they
  • started a political party, to take over the state. I just loved it. And so he came to
  • campus, and you could tell ... I don't know what his background was, because I don't think
  • he was completely ... I think he may have been middle class. He was certainly ... he
  • was incredibly ... the way he spoke, you could tell he was like ... Harvard didn't just teach
  • him that. Someone had already ... he'd already had a lot of intellectual guff behind him.
  • ES: But he came, and he was hysterical, I mean he would just talk all this shit. And
  • I'll never forget, he said, "You know, Mexicans are just like crabs. One of us will rise up
  • ... when one of us rises up, another one will just pull us down." And I'm like, "Oh my goodness."
  • And I thought to myself, we say that about black people too. And there was this moment,
  • you know, when you're listening to this guy, and he's very passionate, and he's saying
  • this provocative ... and people were like ... and I thought to myself, "Boy. I really
  • hope this takes off." ES: Because it was also this moment of ... you
  • know you're sitting there ... I think he spoke to the Black Student Union. I kinda forget,
  • was it, it was some kind of mixed group, mostly black and Latino kids, and that was also very
  • different. You never really had a lot of discussion between black and Latino kids, and not political
  • discussions at all. I mean, when I was going to school, one of the things that so strikes
  • me, so different now about UT, not only teaching there, but just such a weirdness ... but the
  • Latino kids, that's what's totally different to me. And the fact that the frat cultures
  • not as dominant as it used to be. But the Latino, Latinx kids, oh no, they ... none
  • of that ... When I was here, you would meet people who were awoke, there was only a handful
  • [inaudible 01:02:52]. It was before they had ... Hispanic had just become a term.
  • LB: So they would just say Spanish speakers? ES: Yeah.
  • LB: Wow. Interesting. ES: Yeah, that's what they said. Spanish ... really?
  • ES: And they did seem like they wanted to be white people. A lot of them, not everybody.
  • ES: And so that José Angel Gutiérrez totally took me. Because here he was, this sharp guy,
  • this very brilliant guy, this leader, and he was talking something else. That we were
  • in occupied territory. That yeah, this was occupied. That's when I heard about the Treaty
  • of Guadalupe, all that, just in the talk. And I was like, "My God!" And I went home
  • and took my father's opinion and all that business. My father was a big one for history.
  • So, when you came home and told him something history he would be like, "Really? You didn't
  • know that? That's a big one for you to know." But he loved hearing how excited you'd get
  • about ideas like that. ES: So that was when I saw, it was kinda like,
  • okay, now Latino people, they can be radical too. And we can be good allies. So that was
  • just amazing to me to see them together like that, to hear him. And especially how irreverent
  • he was, it was just a hoot. I believe he's dead now.
  • ES: But a lot of those guys, for a while, a guy named Armando, what's his last name
  • ... Armando somebody, he wrote this book called Aslan, which was like the big similar book
  • that kinda, at least for me, kinda explained this whole colonization business here in Texas,
  • and a completely different kind of Texas History. And he was in the Political Science department
  • for a while. ES: When I was going to UT, the hot bed of
  • radicalism was in the American Studies actually, which they just started, and Political Science.
  • Those were where the radicals were. You had some, really had some in there. Not a lot.
  • But only it takes was two or three and suddenly you got something. Clearly the guy with the
  • [01:04:53] was left. And he was in there, tenure, yeah, tenure. And then Armando was
  • in there with that crazy book about how we were living in the colonized state, it's ... What
  • did they say, the border crossed us? Or something? Forgot the term he made up ...
  • ES: And then in American Studies, I forgot what this guy's name was, he came out to all
  • the protests... it didn't matter, black students, white, he was always out there. And kids just
  • loved him. And I didn't take his class, but he did ... you know, we never talked about
  • Native Americans, and the book came out ... “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, that came out
  • when I was in college. And this guy, apparently, he taught that book. And I remember just going
  • to one lecture, and he was up there crying, as he was talking about how we'd slaughtered
  • the Native Americans. ES: And then years later, when I lived in
  • Minneapolis, I remembered everything. I remembered everything. I forgot what that guy's name
  • was but he used to come to all the protests. He was a white guy. I remember he always used
  • to wear this same ... he'd always have on a dark T-shirt and jeans. But I remember him,
  • and he would cry, when he'd talk about the slaughtering of the Native Americans. Oh,
  • The Trail of Tears, he would always cry when he'd tell that story. And I will never forget
  • just sitting there thinking to myself, part of me was like, "He shouldn't be up there
  • ... I mean, what's he crying about ..." But the other part was, "Yeah. It was incredibly
  • sad." He's describing genocide. And he would just weep. And he got to be known for his
  • shtick coming here, I forgot what his name was, he'd cry. You know, he'd be the cry of
  • the day. ES: His class was one of those things where
  • people would be sitting who weren't even in the class, and you would go. So he was rockstar
  • like that. And most of it was because he was talking about material that we had not really
  • discussed a lot, which was, the history of this country, and the genocide of Native Americans.
  • So these were all ideas introduced to me at UT, and the other most powerful idea I learned
  • at UT was a psychological concept called cognitive dissonance, when you're trying to understand,
  • how come people don't act in their own interest? ES: And those are concepts I learned here,
  • I think that's just about everything, yeah, I think that's everything that I learned at
  • UT. But it was ... again, if they had ... if there was a different style of learning, I
  • probably would have done better. But I found physically coming on campus to be ... the
  • more I went there, it got worse and worse. I didn't even want to be on campus. I took
  • classes at night just to avoid people. I just didn't want to be around it.
  • LB: Right. ES: I just didn't want to be around it.
  • LB: Just the thought of possibly being around it.
  • ES: No. No. I remember I took a microeconomics class at night. Oh, that was a good story
  • too. And I'm sitting in there and a bunch of Iranian students come in with paper bags
  • on their head, screaming about the SAVAK, the secret police in Iran. The Iranian student
  • association, it was a big deal on campus in the early '70s. You know, what had happened
  • was, we were [friends, 01:07:49] with the Shah. And they did the military training [inaudible
  • 01:07:52]. So a lot of Iranians end up being here and then ... I don't know, they go to
  • school or something and did radical ... And the SAVAK was the secret police, and they'd
  • spy on them all the time, because they were always accusing them of plotting to overthrow
  • the Shah, which maybe they were. A good thing. ES: But SAVAK ... they were always ... the
  • Iranian students would always disrupt something, talking about SAVAK. So they came and disrupted
  • this class, I don't really know why. But I remember they were wearing brown stacks on
  • their head, because they didn't want the SAVAK to see who their faces were. I don't know
  • if they thought the teacher was a spy, I don't know. But I remember thinking, oh, that's
  • nice. So I come here trying to go to class at night, and taking this dull microeconomics
  • class because I have to do some kind of quantitative reasoning class, and the Iranian students
  • come and disrupt the class. I really enjoyed that night. That was good ... it was interesting.
  • I said, "Even macroeconomics can become politicized." LB: So were there many ... you mentioned some
  • protests ... were you heavily involved in things like that ...?
  • ES: No, you know, because, one thing that I really enjoyed about being a journalist
  • was that ... let me just back up. Because I think I grew up in an institution, the U.S.
  • military, I've never really liked being in groups stuff. I've always been kinda suspicious
  • of it. I don't know why that is. I think that's something to do with it. But I've never liked
  • joining groups, I didn't join any kind of group, I still don't.
  • ES: And I think, I don't know if it was because I was rejecting the military or if it was
  • the idea that we grew up as this little ... we were just moving this little unit from place
  • to place, of just feeling like ... so I never really had that desire to be in a big group.
  • I felt safe with my family. And so I didn't join things. I would just be on the edges
  • of it. And then I got interested in being a journalist and I thought my job was actually
  • to observe it. I didn't organize stuff. Never. I would observe it. I would sometimes be around
  • it. Sometimes I would participate. Mostly I'd be on the edge of the crowd, never in
  • the middle. Always on the edge. So I'd see things, but I wouldn't say I was participating,
  • I was witnessing. LB: Right, for journalistic ...
  • ES: And even when I wasn't, that was just my nature. To observe, witness.
  • CS: Do you remember anything that really affected your time at UT? Any specific protest or anything?
  • ES: Yeah. I think it wasn't long after I got there. The Vietnam War was still going on.
  • And they had mined the harbor in Haiphong, I think? And I remember class had to be dismissed
  • because there was this big protest on the [drag 01:10:32], then they tear gassed the
  • kids, when they got to what's called 19th street there, and they tear gassed them. And
  • I remember coming by there not long after they were ... maybe I was there, I can't remember.
  • But I remember the smell of tear gas, that's what I remember. I'd never smelled that before.
  • I had grown up in the military. And I'd never smelled tear gas. That was something. I think
  • it was the first semester. LB: Your first semester ...?
  • CS: Your first semester that you had ...? ES: I think it was. I think it was and I know
  • that they had to shut down the school because I remember coming in and you couldn't ... yeah,
  • I think all classes were canceled. Because they took over the drag and ... that's a bunch
  • of people. LB: Yeah, I remember, we-
  • ES: I did walk in that group but I was also on the side. But I was on the side, but I
  • was like, man, there's a lot of people out here. You know, clearly no class today, so
  • ... LB: Might as well. Yeah, I remember, we talk
  • about The Rag. Were you a part of that at all, or ...
  • ES: I probably wrote something for The Rag. You know, there was a Rag reunion a couple
  • years ago and I was on the panel for it. I think I must've written for them at some point,
  • I don't remember. But yeah, I know some of those people.
  • LB: Yeah, it was just interesting how many protests ... it seemed like protest nature
  • at UT was just ... it almost happened all the time, or at least, maybe that was just
  • the collection of articles they have, but I remember reading one on the Kent State shooting
  • and how basically they protested every day that week that followed it.
  • ES: I was in high school at Lanier when that happened. The three of us wore black arm bands,
  • me and that guy, Evan, he had his bat that day, no one would bother us. Literally we
  • wore arm bands that day, he wore one ... well, they shot and killed some kids. And the main
  • girl that got ... you know, the picture of the girl, she's screaming, she was like 15.
  • LB: Yeah, my aunt went to Kent State when that happened actually.
  • ES: Gee. LB: Yeah.
  • ES: I know somebody, a good friend of mine, he became a big journalist, he'd been to Vietnam,
  • he got out of Vietnam, he was there on G.I. bill, the first semester that happened. But
  • yeah, I was in high school. But it seemed to me like there were a fair amount of protests.
  • And maybe it could be, I don't know if it was more or less, I just don't know ... it
  • seemed like at least once a semester, something would go ... something big would happen.
  • LB: Right. ES: And then there would terrible things that
  • would happen. These frat boys used to have this thing where they auctioned off slaves
  • in some place, and they had an Ugliest Man on Campus contest, they'd give the award to
  • a woman. It was a nightmare, a plan ... I don't know ... I can't tell you exactly what
  • they were because you'd just see it and just go, "Ah", and just run away, but I do remember
  • being on The Texan that summer, you know, the editorial board, and getting this letter,
  • we would get our mail, and we were looking through the mail, from a woman who was on
  • and on about how UT had killed Janis Joplin, and it was a terrible place, and read this
  • page in the biography of Janis Joplin called Buried Alive, which hadn't been out that long.
  • Get the book, open it up, and there's some fraternity in our current ... in all of 'em,
  • they had a contest for Ugliest Man on Campus, and they'd named Janis Joplin. Hurt her feelings
  • real bad. CS: I remember that story. I remember hearing
  • that. LB: Wow, I had no idea about that.
  • ES: I remember at The Daily Texas, someone wrote us a letter, and I think she even called,
  • because we talked about it, and it was like, really? They killed Janis Joplin? And we looked
  • it up, and we were like, they did ... It was terrible. So this was the ... now that obviously
  • happened to Janis Joplin, I wasn't there when that happened, it was many years before I
  • went there, but that was the culture. And that culture was mainstream and considered
  • ... they were the big people on campus. ES: And there was this competing emerging
  • group of radicals that were coming up and they were prominent. So there was this constant
  • stuff between them that went on, you know. The frats and the freaks, we called it, the
  • frats and the freaks. And I always identified more with the freaks, of course.
  • ES: But I don't know if it was a lot but I remember we were ... especially when you get
  • older, you start thinking, oh, you were protesting every minute, and you know, it may have been
  • one a year or something. But it's more than I see now.
  • LB: Yeah, yeah, it seems like it only really happens when the young Conservatives are out
  • there doing something, or ... ES: Yeah, or the affirmative action cupcakes.
  • I just think it's funny. It's very different to me now, and mostly in good ways at UT.
  • And I think that's been the most healing thing for me, about having had this experience.
  • You go for many years, you think, oh my God, I don't even want to hear about UT.
  • CS: And you came back! ES: What happened was, somehow they found
  • me when I was living in Los Angeles, about eight years ago or something. They found me
  • there, and you know, they had the kids that have to call to raise money. And they kept
  • calling me, I'd hang up. And one time I was talking to this kid and I could tell ... I
  • hate to say, I could tell that she was black. And so I'm like, this poor kid, she's probably
  • trying to get ... so I'm just chatting with her, I actually found out she was black. So
  • I decided you can get my money from her. So I gave some money, and then they started writing
  • me letters all the time. And I gave money for a while. I stopped since, but that's how
  • it happened. One night, this girl called me, and I could hear in her voice, and I was like,
  • "Let me talk to this child, because I mean, please, [inaudible 01:16:23]." And I gave
  • money. ES: And so that was the first thing I'd actually
  • even thought about UT in years. And I had long since given up any bitterness because
  • it so helped me when I got out of school, because I went to school. It was like I'd
  • gone to this private club. People helped me get jobs and they thought you were smart or
  • whatever. ES: And I left Texas. I left Texas in 1984.
  • I didn't come back 'til 2016, to live here. It had become, we see it in the distance,
  • and it actually became this story I told about, it wasn't ... I'm some kind of badass because
  • I survived it. So I think it really helped me. I don't think ... it helped me. Not just
  • because of the skills I got and the experiences I had, but it thickened the skin. It thickened
  • the skin. And because real life ... that stuff in school was just play, you get out in real
  • life ... and, I have to say in real life, no one was as crass as some of the stuff I
  • heard at UT. No one was as blatantly racist as some of the things I heard students say
  • almost every day at UT. You'd hear something. You couldn't ... We stood outside [Jester
  • 01:17:42], it was horrible. The police, there was three of us, they'd start circling, come
  • up and ask you for your student ID. ES: You know, I had a friend who used to ride
  • ... what do they call it, the multiple-speed bikes, when they came out. He'd ride across
  • ... just see how far he'd get before he got stopped, because he had to have stolen it.
  • So this whole living while black stuff, I remember that at UT. But it was sometimes
  • for fun. "Let's see how long it's going to take for police to come around for three of
  • us to sit out here." It used to be just sitting out there talking after your dinner and they'd
  • come circling around like you didn't belong there. These types of things, they stiffened
  • your back. So, you know, I appreciate it for that.
  • ES: But also what I really appreciate it for was it turned out it was really, really good
  • education for journalism. And everything that I did here, which would not translate into
  • the most stellar ... I mean, the transcript's a nightmare. But what I learned was world
  • class. Part of it is I learned what I wanted to learn, through different experiences...
  • But it was also because of the exposure ... they had these people, they were there. You'd have
  • to go out and find them. You didn't want to just have anybody's class. But I would look
  • and see, "That sounds like an interesting class." And then I'd go and take it. And then
  • I'd drop it or whatever because I didn't feel like going anymore or didn't have time for
  • it. But I sat in on a lot of classes that I never finished that I thought were interesting.
  • LB: Right. ES: And so, it was to me like a buffet for
  • political thought. I was educated ... my thinking, political philosophy, was very much formed
  • by these classes I'd sit in for five minutes and the run out of because either I was too
  • lazy to do the work, or didn't like the reading list, or I was too busy out being a radical.
  • So I just wouldn't go. I was always ... I called myself the PR person for radicals.
  • You wanted the press release for something, I'd write it for you.
  • LB: Yeah. I love that. ES: So coming back ... I came back here in
  • December 2015. And I'd been thinking about moving back to Austin. I knew when I stopped
  • working full-time I was going to move back here. And for years I'd been looking at houses
  • and this was when you struck in that this gentrification ... this was the airport, when
  • I was growing up here. ES: And I wanted to live on this side of town,
  • because this had been the black part of town. My parents lived out there North, which is
  • now, basically, Central Austin. They lived out there by [Lanier 01:20:12]. There was
  • no black people ... there was a few. But I wanted to live in this area. I've always liked
  • to live more urban. And so, when I was looking around here, this is when I started getting
  • on to the gentrification. I looked for years before I found this place. I would every once
  • in a while when I'd come here to visit, I'd look around [inaudible 01:20:29]. But I had
  • never ... I didn't realize how much it had, boom, changed until ... So I never could find
  • a house that I really liked. I wanted a small house. And they were building these and they
  • weren't even up yet and the price was right and it was more space so I just bought one
  • here before they even built it. I just saw a plan so that one.
  • ES: So I bought this in 2012 or '11, I can't remember. But I didn't move in until 2015.
  • I just rented it out. And so when I came back, I knew I wanted to do something. I just didn't
  • want to just stop cold so I said it would be nice to teach a class at UT. I actually
  • applied for a job at UT. That's right, I had applied for a job at UT, and didn't get it,
  • and it was further confirmation that, oh, these people are just terrible. Because by
  • that time, I had this resume that I though was just fabulous, and I couldn't even get
  • an interview. I'm like, really? I said, "It's still the same." That's what I said, "It's
  • still the same." ES: But I'm glad that didn't work out because
  • if I had done that then I wouldn't have got the job going to South Africa for nine years
  • for USC, which was a better job anyway. And better pay.
  • ES: So I came back and I just wanted to do one class, and I know how it works, you have
  • to know somebody. So I emailed Robert Jenson. I had met him a few ... only on email, because
  • he was the most radical one up there. And I knew him ... I knew that if I sent him an
  • email, he'd answer, though I don't think I'd ever physically met him. I think it'd just
  • been email, because we had similar interests in race and class stuff in the media. So I
  • emailed him and we went over to Mr. Natural's, because he's vegan, we went over there and
  • we chatted, and he said, "Oh, yeah, you know..." He was great and he ... because you had to
  • be introduced. And the person over ... over department ... was a guy, the name RB Brenner.
  • And RB, lovely fella, he'd come out there from Stanford to have that job. And I guess
  • RB was in L.A. and RB took me out to lunch and we had a nice time, chat, chat. I came
  • here and whatever, so they said, "You wanna do this thing?" I said, "Fine." And I didn't
  • want much, which was, I think, kind of surprising to them. I said, "No, I just want one class,"
  • and all that. ES: So then I just started teaching. It was
  • ironic because the woman who's ... applied ... who's job that I'd ... you know, that
  • I'd recently applied for that job, she was my first supervisor. Well-named, Wanda Cash,
  • 'Fluffy'. And I think she knew that. So that was fun. I don't think we ever talked about
  • it. But I enjoyed working with her, because she had done, to me, such an incredible job
  • of re-organizing the class. ES: I left journalism in 1989 and started
  • becoming an academic, started teaching journalism, and studying Media Studies. So I understood
  • about curriculum and things, and she had done, in my opinion, such a fabulous job, of re-organizing
  • the beginning class. And the fact that the school was willing to put those sorts of resources
  • into the beginning classes. So the class is no more than 15 people. You have a lab twice
  • a week. It's like, this is how you have to learn to read, to write. You have to learn.
  • So I was so impressed that she had done it. And it was all online. And to me it was quite
  • easy to teach it because she gave you everything. But I was just blown away because I've taught
  • different places and I'd never seen a class that had that kind of resources, at beginning,
  • and that kind of thought put into it. I thought it was just great.
  • ES: Writing journalism is hard. It's scary, it's stressful. And they put enough money
  • into it. Most people though, in journalism programs I know of, they want to put the resources
  • into the classes at the end, so they pay these journalists to come there, and some of them
  • are good teachers, some of them aren't, to basically just tell some war stories. But
  • the beginning classes, they don't think about them as much. No one wants to do them, they're
  • like, "I don't want to get my hands dirty." They are everybody-taught, the beginning class.
  • ES: And then the second thing ... well, the students. As a group. I started my first ... I
  • taught at Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism. That was my first teaching.
  • Because I taught at San Francisco State University for 19 years and then USC for 8 ... for 9
  • years, I think it was. ES: Now, San Francisco State, I have to say,
  • those were the most interesting students I ever had. When I started there, the average
  • age was 27. Completely different. I was only 35. The dynamic so different from teaching
  • there. And it was like UT was when I went to school. In other words, everybody could
  • actually afford it. So most of my students were self-supporting. It was 800 dollars a
  • year. And so you had these interesting students, it was fun. You know, not as gifted. But when
  • they were ... when you had the life experience, and being mature, some of the most incredible
  • students, and I'm still in touch with them now. Some of them are 50 or whatever. Two
  • of them were here in the last month. Just so lovely.
  • ES: But what I want to say is I've taught a lot. And then I taught at USC, and then
  • I come here. These students here are more like USC in the sense they're traditional
  • college students. But they are brighter, much brighter, and much nicer. Now, and what I
  • mean by that, well, I won't say nicer. They have less of a sense of entitlement. There
  • you go. Less of a sense of entitlement. And it's a pleasure. I just could not get over
  • ... I've never been called ma'am so much in my life. [crosstalk 01:26:24]
  • ES: But it's nice. I just really enjoyed the students. I was stunned at how they were.
  • Some of these assholes I went to class with, and I don't have ... they're not in my classes.
  • It's just so nice to see them. And then of course, much more diverse. Not black. The
  • main difference is the Latino kids. And they're different now. And they're all the range,
  • you know, politically. But they're coming with that Latino thing now. And they're not
  • hiding that. They're playing that ... not playing, they're not a card ... I hate that
  • term. ES: They are not ashamed of who they are.
  • LB: Right. ES: This is so nice to see. It's liberating
  • to see that. And so, I have enjoyed the students very, very much. You know, if you put in the
  • effort with them, and I put in a lot of effort, they show you the appreciation, in some sort
  • of way. LB: Uh huh (affirmative)
  • ES: But what I actually try to do and it doesn't always work, I try to create those best moments
  • I had here. LB: Yeah.
  • ES: So I'm a big one for just bringing some food in there and go "We're just going to
  • eat and talk tonight." Talk about some ideas, you know. To try to, like, bring that back,
  • and some of them get it and some of them, they can't quite get with it. But, I actually
  • enjoy the students, amazingly. So, now I'm teaching in PR, a different kind of classes.
  • Students, a lot more sorority girls, a lot of them.
  • ES: Last semester was such a challenge for me. I had, seemed like seven of them. One
  • of them was named Devin or something like that, like blonde wearing OV, those workout
  • pants. Even wore the same clothes. I had like six of them in one class and I just said "I'm
  • sorry. I can't remember one of y'all from the other. First of all, you're all like this
  • on your phone, so I can't even see your faces. You're all blonde." And I said "And you're
  • all wearing kind of similar clothes. So you're going to have to look up at me and say your
  • name until I... I'm not seeing you as individuals at all. So you're going to have to hold your
  • face up." And I said, "Eventually I'll see who's an individual, but right now you're
  • just a blur." And then they sat together all the time.
  • LB: Yup. ES: So I had them over here, and then this
  • [inaudible 01:28:34]. I didn't know what to do with that, because in journalism that doesn't
  • happen, and a lot of that is because of the way we have the room set up. So you're always
  • sitting in a conference kind of setting. And there you couldn't do that. And I just, I
  • didn't... All semester long, I was like "What am I supposed to do about that? And what are
  • these girls actually getting?" And then I'd have to bust them a few times. You get those
  • stories, and you're like "Nah, nah, no, no, no." And by the end, it was sort of amazing,
  • because I got nothing back from them in terms of any flavor.
  • ES: I knew the kids over... and there was white girls on the other side too, it was
  • interesting the bifurcation. Because the Latino girls, and then they're called the woke white
  • girls, are on one side, and then you had the sorority girls on the other ones. I had a
  • theater major; she was over there with the Hispanics. It was just so interesting to see,
  • and I could tell sometimes when I would crack on the sorority girls [inaudible 01:29:25]
  • it would be fun for them, and so I had them do something on implicit bias. So that was
  • fun. They had to write their reaction to it. ES: And so one girl, she wrote that she was
  • a Trump... she was like, there was some implicit bias, I asked are you a Trump or an Obama,
  • are you more inclined to be a Trump or Obama supporter, of course she came out Trump. And
  • she was proud of that. She wrote this. And so I remembered when I read it, I was literally,
  • this is the thing with Trump, I was literally like "Oh my God, she might as well have said
  • I had a Klansperson in the room." That was my initial reaction, "Oh!" And then I said,
  • "Oh, that's kind of crazy." I knew it wasn't going to act down, but I remember being "Okay,
  • is she one that's going to report me?" Because it's very clear I'm not for Trump. But no,
  • it wasn't like that at all. ES: That's one thing about here that I have
  • to say, they seem to enjoy it when I just... well, I think not all of them, but they enjoy
  • it when I come with them at it. It's like "Oh no, that Trump nonsense." Because you
  • have to keep up with the news, and they don't keep up. So I said "Your opinion is based
  • on nothing, you don't know what you're talking about." So she wrote something about Trump,
  • and Obamacare, it's hard on her father's business, and so that's why she was. And people would
  • be surprised she was, because everyone thinks of Trump supporters like a crazy racist or
  • something. This is what she wrote. ES: I talked to her about it. Actually I wrote
  • back to her, because I didn't want to get [inaudible 01:30:47]. I said "Well, let's
  • push back here." I said, "You're talking about Obamacare, and your father, it was hard on
  • his business. Do you think it might have been more expensive... You know the state of Texas
  • didn't take the money. And did it occur to you that that may have been why those costs
  • went up, and it was bad for your father? Did you know that?" She wrote back, and she said,
  • "No." And I wrote her back, "Would it change your mind?" And she says, "I don't know, but
  • I never thought about it like that." And she said, "This whole class is like that. You're
  • always doing something, telling me something, that I never thought about before." And I
  • was like, "Well that's good then." LB: I feel like that's what college is about.
  • ES: "I've never thought about it before." And I said, "And how do you feel about that?"
  • And she wrote back, "I like it." And that was fine. That was fine. But she never actually
  • said thank you for anything. And then, of course you find, I could tell by the end that
  • she was fine. But I got a note from her saying thank you.
  • LB: Oh. CS: That was nice.
  • ES: I think in a way, here, I think the way I am, and because I went there, and I can
  • have these experiences to share with them. It's been nice, in a way, it's been to me
  • cathartic. So it's been nice to be back teaching there, and of course there was the irony,
  • now my supervisor is a black woman. The director of the school of journalism is a black woman.
  • At USC, I was the only black permanent faculty member. At USC and Brooks School. So liberal.
  • Here, there were three full-time ones when I came here, and the faculty's not as big
  • as USC's. So this school was more integrated on the faculty, and I think the students are
  • about the same. We had more black students at USC, but definitely there's more Latino
  • ones here. So I'm actually in a more integrated environment here.
  • CS: Huh, that's interesting. LB: Wow.
  • ES: Isn't that the weirdest thing? But it's cathartic, and it's been interesting. I don't
  • know how much longer I'll keep teaching at UT, because I think I may have gotten what
  • I need to get out of it LB: Right, yeah.
  • ES: Because I'm taking off... I'm not going to teach in the fall. I'm taking off for six
  • months and I hope to go to Cuba for my birthday in November. I'll see how it feels to not
  • do it. I'm sorry, I'm committed to come back in spring 2020, that may be the last one.
  • Because when they let me teach a course in social justice reporting, again, something
  • they never would have taught when I was here. And so, it's been highly cathartic. Especially
  • in the Trump age, where you feel like everything that maybe you're... a lot of things that
  • my generation, I think, fought for all of it's being just turned over on its ass, basically.
  • LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative) ES: By Trump, just turning back the clock.
  • And you'd think that "Okay, the clock is..." it can make you depressed. And then you walk
  • into this setting, and you realize some things did, and it's kind of inevitable. It just
  • might take longer. I talk about diversity next week to these kids, and every time I
  • say this, it gets to their rivets. And I said "If you want to be in communications and you
  • do not know about diversity, then you're actually putting out fake news."
  • LB: Yeah. ES: Disinformation. You're trying to persuade
  • people. I said, "Because it's reality, and it's not going to change. You are going to
  • have the most diverse generation in the history of the United States. The most diverse. And
  • the largest. And the next one is even more diverse than you. So unless you're going to
  • go and murder all these people, slaughter all of them, it's never going to be a white
  • nation, it's never going to be like, it never was. And isn't that nice? Because everything's
  • not going to be on you now. Maybe you don't have to be the man anymore." And so I say
  • that, and they start laughing, and they look, and they go... You cannot be accurate, you
  • can't. You can't even get close to the truth if you don't understand that. Or at least,
  • you're not going to say it really well, but just know that it's there. And it's not strange,
  • it's normal. So I like to get normalized discussions about that stuff. We always make them do a
  • diversity story, I used to hate that stuff because it seems like it's just knocking off
  • the checklist, and I hated that. ES: But I like to do them here, for these
  • PR students, and they kind of stunned me last semester with what they came up with. I was
  • shocked. Because you're thinking, "PR sorority girls, what do they know?" And then they come
  • up with stuff. I mean, it's weird, one girl wrote about SoulCycle. I'm like, "Why are
  • you writing about them? The teacher's gay?" And she was telling me they have these things
  • up there. I said, "Oh, yes, well, what do they have up there?" She was in New York,
  • and they're big in the Pride movement. Well of course they are, it turns out, because
  • it's some lesbian started it, and there's this whole queer fitness community. And I
  • said, "Well how much of the fitness community's actually around this queer fitness community,
  • how much is it generating, and what?" So she ended up with a really interesting story about
  • that. Because she goes to SoulCycle. But she woke up, and she was looking around, and figuring
  • out some queer policies going on here, and I'm like, "Good for her." So I don't really
  • care, whatever it is in your life, wherever you're at. I'm not trying to change anyone,
  • I'm trying to get you to actually wake up, actually see what's around you for a second.
  • LB: Right. See more than- ES: That's all. That's all you have to do.
  • And they all wrote really interesting... One girl wrote a story about the history of racism
  • in the sororities. The one that was a Trump supporter.
  • LB: Wow. ES: So she tried to, she made the effort.
  • It wasn't perfect, but I couldn't understand how come the Panhellenic Council was all white.
  • The fourteen sororities, why is it all white? Why is it segregated? And then when she looked,
  • her eyes got big, I said "Why is that?" So she tried to figure that out. These are little
  • small things, and being older you kind of can look at that and say, "Well, victory is
  • not necessarily that you end up with this world you think, the way the world... Because
  • the world's never going to be the way I exactly would have wanted it to be. But it's a world
  • where people are just slightly more tolerant, slightly more awake. Not woke, awake to what's
  • around them, and what you're looking at." ES: Because she'd been in sororities all her
  • life, her sisters and brothers and stuff, the whole family, it's a big thing with them.
  • It means a lot to her. I said, "Well, why is it segregated?" She was just like, "You
  • know, it is." And she tried to figure it out, but that was amazing to me. There's moments
  • like that that happened there. So even though I'm sitting there saying "Oh my God, these
  • sorority girls," by the end, I had this moment, these moments, that really kind of said to
  • me, "Okay, well, you can have impact." But you're trying to do that, and you're actually
  • trying to speak to the other group as well. And that's harder, because what I still notice
  • is true is that students of color will not come and... are not as demanding on it.
  • LB: Really? ES: No. They actually... First of all, they
  • don't want you to know that they don't know something, so they're kind of covering up.
  • And then the other thing is, they're more responsible about their own learning, so they're
  • not going to bitch about a grade as... They don't really, as much. Thirty years of teaching
  • and I can tell you this is a fact. So it's almost like you have to go and grab them,
  • and say, "Well, you can talk to me, and talk some shit to me if you want to." But they
  • never do. I have to go and get them, because they don't.
  • ES: I had a girl last semester, but she was actually from Colombia, and she lived here.
  • English was so perfect I just... Mexico City, [inaudible 01:38:27]. And she would come,
  • but I realized her family had money. So she would come to the office hours, so the other
  • thing is people tend to be working, and so they don't have the time. So there's all these
  • reasons why they don't. Sit in the back, and whatever. So you have to draw them out, and
  • I've found a better way to deal with that now, this time, because I didn't want them
  • to feel like... But I realized that they just weren't going to demand as much. They weren't
  • going to ask as much. So I have to kind of pull them in.
  • ES: And that's been nice to be able to do that, because that actually means something
  • to them. I had some girls over here last semester, three girls, all first-generation students,
  • over for dinner, and it was just like, "Wow." I mean, they had such interesting stories,
  • it was so much fun with them. UT has got this, you have these, for a teacher, these very
  • different experiences I could have on both sides of it. I just wish that there was a
  • way, I could figure out a way for the students to talk to each other, because the richness
  • of the experiences that I'm having with them because I see everything, and know how they
  • are, I wish they could find a way, I have to find a way for people to teach to each
  • other. Because I learned a lot from other students when I went to school here. I talk
  • about the teachers, but I also talk about Freddy Gardner, who was a student here.
  • LB: Yeah. ES: Or Steve Russell was a student. People
  • I worked with on The Daily Texan and stuff. And I wish that there was more of a way, or
  • maybe I just don't know because I've been teaching too long, and had to facilitate these
  • type of things. And we'll figure it out. But it has been cathartic, and you say you have
  • your issues... I feel like I've worked out all my shit with UT now.
  • LB: Yeah. CS: That's good.
  • LB: You had your little therapy session with, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, no, I definitely
  • agree with the, I feel like students were... I mean, I find myself doing this too, I'm
  • just like very in my degree and my thoughts, and I have to... I'm just going to class,
  • have to get the grade, have to get the degree, go home. And we don't sit there and talk to
  • each other, but we can learn so much from just... And that's why I like it when I...
  • I used to just really like lecture classes, because I'm like, "I just want to hear the
  • teacher talk, I don't want to hear my... the Trump supporter next to me or whatever." But
  • it's interesting, I like having more discussion classes now because I like hearing from those
  • people, and just getting that perspective and things like that, and I do think it's
  • something that students take for granted. ES: Yeah, you know, with the journalism classes,
  • it's a little bit easier to get a conversation going.
  • LB: Yeah. ES: The social justice class was like that,
  • but I have to figure out some ways, because the other thing is that, they really are much
  • more, and I'm older, I'm much older than them now, and they're very aware of that. Sometimes
  • I'm not, and then I realize, "Oh this is [inaudible 01:41:13], I'm old enough to be their grandparent
  • now." So there is that thing that you have to overcome, because they're very polite,
  • I guess it's the opening the door thing I love here in Texas. Everyone opens the door
  • for you, holds open the door for you, I love that about Texas. California is like, "Ooh."
  • I love it. ES: And every time if my car breaks down or
  • something, it doesn't take but a second, there's some man willing to help me with the car.
  • So I love that about this state. But I think that it's, there is a kind of a politeness
  • that goes on that can be, it's kind of an excuse not to really confront. And so I would
  • like to find a way to kind of make it safe for people to do that. Because in a class
  • like social justice you have to be able to talk about it.
  • CS: I'm an older student too, and I find myself being the one who talks in the class all the
  • time. The other younger students, the teacher will ask something, and be trying to pull
  • out the conversation, and they're all just quiet as mice and they look scared to say
  • anything. It's like, "No, there's no wrong answer, say what you think, and..."
  • LB: Do they say it? CS: Sometimes, it takes a while. It's usually
  • about a third of the way through the semester when people finally start to kind of open
  • up. But yeah, sometimes I wonder, "Am I taking over the class here? Am I talking too much?"
  • ES: You know, girl, if it makes that [inaudible 01:42:39] think, you should talk. I-
  • CS: I worry about it for about a second, and then-
  • ES: A second. CS: I keep on-
  • ES: For me, it's like your excitement of learning is just jumping out. Because when I have someone
  • in class who's chatty, it depends on how they're chatty. But you're chattiness I would love.
  • CS: Mm-hmm (affirmative) ES: And we'd end up having a conversation...
  • I have one student in class now, I would, I love to have, the thing is, I can have more
  • fun with them now too, which is interesting, at this age. They don't have anybody like
  • me. I'm sure for most people, I'm the first African American professor they've ever had.
  • I don't think about it at all, but I know that, so I'm not trying to represent or anything,
  • but I know sometimes I'll be saying stuff where they're just like, "Is it-" I'm like,
  • "You can laugh, it's okay, you can laugh. I'm not going to be offended." Then when they
  • realize they can, then they just have the best time. That one little guy in class, we
  • tease all the time, his name is Phil, and I'm just like, I love to mess with that guy.
  • "I'm going to mess with Phil today." And he loves it, we have the repartee, and the other
  • ones are watching us, they see it's okay. But Phil's okay with it, it's fun.
  • ES: And I also feel like here that it's a much more formal academic environment here.
  • And I really haven't been in formal ones, where it's the teacher and they all want to
  • talk about their PhDs and all this dull work they're doing, I'm sorry, that nobody cares
  • about. They want to make sure you have the proper terminology, intersectionality, and
  • this and that, whatever. And I'm not like that, and I was always in much more informal
  • academic settings. LB: I definitely attach to those classes a
  • lot more, where they're just seem like... I'm actually learning through their experience
  • almost, instead of being taught, I don't know, and being lectured, I guess.
  • ES: But I realize that that's probably also a source of enjoyment, but also fear, or just
  • like foreign. You could see at first. Last semester I taught a class in social justice...
  • I can't remember if it was last semester or the semester before, I make them go out and
  • survey high school students about school policing. You would have thought I had told them to
  • walk into a fire and rescue someone. They were like frightened. You want to be a journalist.
  • How are we supposed to do that? I said, "You go stand out there where the school is, on
  • public space, and grab some kids and talk to them. That's what you do." And somebody
  • even reported me to the research place people, saying that if I was doing research like that,
  • then I have to fill out some paperwork, I'm like, "No, we're doing a story. You shouldn't
  • be calling me about this bullshit." I got mad at them and hung up the phone on them.
  • Then I reported... Because I just couldn't believe that-
  • CS: It's research, it's journalism. ES: We're doing journalism. I said, "Why don't
  • you check with people before you call me about this?" I said, "I'm not doing research. Who
  • told you?" And then they can't tell you that. But they can call you up with, I'm sorry,
  • some bullshit some student said. Because they were too afraid to go out. But I can't say
  • anything when I go back to class, but I tell you, there was a couple who could tell I was
  • suspicious of those kids, trying to figure out which one of them did it, and then I just
  • let it go. But it was really, to me, stunning, that you have journalism students who are
  • afraid to stand outside a high school and talk to kids.
  • ES: Now, I did have a couple older men in there, I told them they couldn't do it, because
  • of the whole creepy thing going on. I told them immediately, "Listen, I don't think it's
  • wise for you to go out, so I'm going to give you something else to do. You go talk to the
  • police." And one of them was a Vietnam veteran, not a Vietnam, Afghani, oh that poor guy.
  • He definitely had PTSD. I had a nice time with him because I realized that he... it
  • was very hard for him to be in the room facing everybody. So he'd always sit in the corner,
  • and be looking off. And I finally got him to turn back around, but I understood that
  • he had, something was going on with him. There was another older guy. So they get that. But
  • I guess all this is to say there have been some times when I'm just realizing how young
  • they are, because for me, that would have been fun, to go out and try to track them...
  • Now finally I told them, "Well you can go to a mall." Oh, and they loved that.
  • LB: That's interesting. ES: They'd go to the mall, which I find that
  • kind of weird. I said, "You have to make sure you get a representative sample of students."
  • They said, "What do you mean?" I said, "What's the demographics of Austin ISD?" And they
  • looked, and I said, "The students have to look like that." And they did it, but it took
  • a little longer, because a lot of Hispanic kids, you can't go out to... they have to
  • find out when the mall... Kids go to malls every place, but there were certain malls
  • that were kind of like all white. Domain was a real good one for a mixed group, and so
  • was Lakeline, it turned out. But we had to find that out, and then they also were...
  • they were comfortable going to Chick-Fil-A, and everybody goes there. It was funny what
  • I learned from them. But going to the school itself, I found that odd.
  • ES: Only one student, and she's now in Teach For America. She was the only one that, first
  • of all, she wasn't afraid of anybody, and she went to Lanier, which is now the most
  • black school. And she interviewed seven, I made them interview six kids each, and she
  • interviewed six, and they were half and half, boys and girls. How their experiences compared
  • to the white kids in other schools, completely different, and you wanted to see that and
  • learn that. And that student went on to do Teach For America. I still hear from her,
  • because everything she learned in class, which was to the abstract for everyone else, for
  • her, has now become a practical reality. And so she's called me to say she's grateful for
  • that. ES: And that's the experience... Again, being
  • here has been, this comeback has been, just amazing really. But I think it might be the
  • time, but all the issues have been worked out, I'm very happy I went to UT. You're never
  • going to see me running around saying, "Hook 'em Horns." You're never going to see me at
  • a football game, because I just hate that shit. But I'm grateful for the experience
  • I had here. I forgot to mention, I did go to school with Earl Campbell, just one semester.
  • He lived in Jester. I remember when he came, I didn't know him, but I remember when he
  • came because he was really country, and none of the girls wanted to have anything to do
  • with him. He was really country, he was so country. "Hey y'all!" He was like some...
  • just off the plantation. That's what it seemed like to me.
  • LB: Wow. ES: But I remember him being really, really
  • sweet, but also thinking how'd he get in? He's here to play football. He's here to make
  • a lot of money for them. And I certainly hope that he ends up wealthy, because they're making...
  • Before he won the Heisman, they're going to make a lot of money off this guy and I hope
  • they take care of him. LB: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
  • ES: Because this is his wealth is going to be in his body. He was such a sweetheart,
  • just feel like a lamb to the slaughter, he seemed so naïve, just country and happy to
  • have a lot of food to eat. It was the deal that [inaudible 01:49:57]. They had a special
  • line, actually one thing about Earl that was really nice, they had some special food for
  • the jocks, and he would always give you a frozen yogurt.
  • LB: Interesting. ES: I thought he was really sweet, but I tell
  • you, the women didn't want to have anything to do with him he was so country. Black girls
  • were like, "Oh no." And he liked black girls, he didn't like white girls. And so he wasn't
  • one, he liked black women. He ended up marrying his high school sweetheart, I think. I think
  • they're still married. But he, the black girls were like "Oh no, that country thing," they
  • didn't want to... He wasn't cool. LB: Yeah.
  • ES: All right, I think that's enough now, I'm rambling and not making any sense at all
  • LB: No, this was like great. CS: It's so interesting. I'm glad that you've
  • got to come back to UT, and that you've got to kind of have that catharsis, and have that
  • healing, and have a different kind of experience, and I'm grateful to hear that student life
  • in Texas and UT has changed, and at least gotten a little bit better than what it was.
  • LB: Yeah. ES: I think it has. I would imagine, this
  • class I've got now, 67 kids, I've got one black student, a girl. And based on my own
  • experiences, I kind of can see what's happening with her a little bit. But I've reached out
  • to her twice, it's worked out fine. But she does the same thing I used to do. She comes
  • in at the very last minute before class starts, sits in the most inconspicuous place you could
  • sit, and she leaves quickly. She's in and out, in and out. And I know exactly what that's
  • about, it's like "I need to get the heck out of here." And she's protecting herself, and
  • so I've talked to her a couple of times. She has some other issues in her life, but when
  • I saw her my heart just went, I said, "Oh no, still just one? Just one?"
  • LB: No, that was a big surprise to me coming here too, where I went to high... I'm from
  • the Houston area- ES: Yeah, yeah. I want the old white people
  • to think we're from Houston. LB: My high school experience was very diverse,
  • it was, you had your really country people, you had a large Hispanic and black population
  • there, and a really good handful of LGBT representation, and things like that. And so I grew up around
  • a lot of diversity, and then coming here was kind of like, "Oh my God, white country people
  • everywhere." ES: I hear that a lot from white students
  • from Houston, I hear that a lot. LB: Yeah.
  • ES: And some even from Dallas, because I have had a few that are not from the suburbs of
  • Dallas. I've had a few that actually grew up in the city, and they have the same reaction
  • when they come here, like "What are all these white people?"
  • CS: I moved here from San Antonio when I was 15, and I lived off of Marbok and Military
  • next to Lackland Air Force Base, and it was a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, and
  • I was one of the minority white students through elementary and middle school, and I remember
  • moving here to Austin, and I was like, "There are so many white people here, oh my gosh,
  • what's going on?" And it was just, the culture was so different, there were so many shit
  • kickers, as you put it, and it was a totally different scene for me when I came here, and
  • I thought it was so much friendlier down in San Antonio, and so much more open. I knew
  • all my neighbors, and it took so long to get to know the neighbors when I finally moved
  • here to Austin. And they were all white people, just like me, and it's like "Really, you don't
  • want to talk to each other?" ES: No, they don't want to. It's just different
  • cultural styles, and we need to accept them, but I think San Antonio is really one of the
  • most fabulous, I think it's one of the most fabulous cities in Texas, and if I had family
  • there, I'd live there. And what I hate so much about the traffic is that, when I was
  • in college, you could get in your car at 4:00 and drive there, be there in less than an
  • hour if you went seven miles like we did, get your drink on, and then come back. The
  • same night. Now, uh uh (negative). I have to take, I don't if it's going to take me
  • how long. It's unpredictable how long it's going to take you to get there, I really,
  • but I always loved it when I went there, because the dominant culture there is Latino. It permeates
  • everything. And military, I think. That has a lot to do with it.
  • CS: Yeah. ES: I loved it. I had an internship there
  • at the San Antonio Express News, and that was later, because it was for journalism education.
  • 2005, I spent the summer there in San Antonio, being a reporter on the paper. And I went
  • all over the city, and just fell in love with it again, it's such a fabulous... I think
  • it's great. And so I can understand. And everyone I meet from San Antonio is, because I think
  • you've had that experience of being in a gumbo culture, that it just, people are much more
  • chill, and more real, and less rigid, I guess. I've been back here in Austin, my sister and
  • I, I have a fifteen-minute rule in Austin. I said, "If I stand some place for ten minutes
  • and I don't see another black person, it's like, I have to tell myself, this is a fifteen
  • minute place." I go to different parts of the city, when I first got here, because I
  • was in California for many, many years, and the first thing, I was in San Francisco, and
  • I had seen Asians who were in the military, I had seen Filipinos, I'd seen Asian people,
  • I'd never seen that many, and then whenever I would leave San Francisco, I'd be like,
  • "What's the weird... Where are the Asians?" Like you said, the Hispanics, where are they?
  • And so I really got used to a gumbo, and got used to being very kind of mainstream even,
  • even my hair and everything was just normal. More normal when I was there.
  • ES: And so you come back here. I remember walking into a coffee shop on 7th Street or
  • something or just over there some place. Everyone turned around and looked at me. I'm like,
  • really? I don't know what that was about, but I just remember thinking, "This is actually
  • used to be the black neighborhood, so I don't know." Who's the stranger here? I was the
  • stranger. So sort of odd, from going to the neighborhood where you weren't a stranger,
  • going back in there, and suddenly you're the stranger. Maybe it's because I'm old, or I
  • don't know what was going on. But for me, what was going through my head was, "These
  • motherfuckers. This used to be our area." And I don't know what they were thinking.
  • They probably were thinking, "Oh, because they didn't know." But it's just this weirdness
  • of being back here and the lack of diversity. ES: Now, it's actually quite a diverse city.
  • But here, it's not very black. But this has the third highest rate of poverty in the state
  • of Texas, Austin does. It's actually quite, the income disparity is huge here. A lot of
  • Latino people. It's much more mixed than it seems. It's just difference in class. And
  • that's the way it reminds me of San Francisco. And it could go all the way that way if they
  • let it. And I think that's what's going to happen. I think it's going to become like
  • San Francisco, where people are raising money, so they won't build a homeless shelter [inaudible
  • 01:57:13]. ES: I have a GoFundMe account now because
  • they want to put some housing for homeless in a rich... not a rich area. They actually
  • had a referendum the tech people funded so they can pick up the homeless, because they
  • don't want to step over them going to work. This income indisparity in this country, I
  • think... and that's at the heart of climate change, as well... that is the biggest problem
  • in the world right now is that. That's the biggest problem.
  • LB: I recently saw a news article that was, it was like a homeless community. They kind
  • of built almost like a campsite somewhere. And now they got a law passed and went in
  • and took it all down, and told them they couldn't do that. And it was like, that was their home,
  • because they had to make do. ES: Now, I understand people that had a problem
  • with homeless people living around. I lived in downtown L.A., and no need to even tell
  • me about the urban homeless problem. I'm walking down the alley and there's a guy out there
  • with the [inaudible 01:58:09]. I'm like... the man is peeing in the alley here. But the
  • cruelty of that, it's cruel. And I find that the casual cruelty, it's casual cruelty, too.
  • Because you're gassing like... Well, where do you think they're going to go? Well, there's
  • services or whatever. They don't want to think about that. They don't want to think that
  • they're, that the harm that... ES: I understand why you physically wouldn't
  • want some kind of, and you're worried about certain things. I understand that. I just
  • don't understand how your response could be so cruel and indifferent.
  • LB: What's interesting- CS: Yeah, well if you don't want to step over
  • homeless people on your way to work, then you better make the investment before these
  • people become homeless, you know? ES: Right! Why don't you vote for policies
  • that- CS: Will uplift people and make sure that
  • these kind of things won't happen. ES: And if you're doing that, and I think
  • if you're actively engaged in that, then you don't mind "stepping over them." It's not
  • like we just put them out. But San Francisco, where I moved in '89 and left, actually left
  • and moved to Opa in '99, they are just unbelievably cruel. I can't stand cruel liberals. I hate
  • the word... At least the Republicans are honest about being-
  • CS: Yeah, this wishy-washy liberalism where you're saying you want to help people and
  • you're not racist, but... well, the policies you promote sure as hell don't speak to that.
  • ES: Or you're indifferent, or your indifference, or... It's very interesting. So I fear the
  • Austin's going to become that way. CS: There's a housing management company called
  • Foundation Communities here in Austin- ES: Yes, I've seen them.
  • CS: And they were building an apartment complex off of Slaughter Lane near my house. And there
  • were people from the Shady Hollow neighborhood protesting this housing community being built
  • because they don't want, they're afraid their property values are going to go down because
  • there's this slow income... And it's like, "Well, where do you want these people to live?"
  • I mean, I lived in a Foundation Communities property around the same time they were building
  • this second one, or this other one, and it was just so insulting to me. It's like, "Look,
  • I can't"- ES: Well, here's the thing. If they want a
  • whole notion... No one ever questions that this whole notion that your property and your
  • value... that's such an insane thing when you think about it... and how... What am I
  • trying to say? I know in the military, the first difference I noticed in life was not
  • racial, but was my class. Because my father, he was... it's a long story, but he became
  • an officer in the military. He was drafted in World War II, and then Harry Truman integrated
  • the men in the military with the stroke of a pen in 1946 or something. And so they suddenly
  • needed black officers. My father [inaudible 02:01:11], and he lost a poker game with some
  • friends, and so he had this... "You're going to go."
  • ES: And so he went, and then he stayed in the military for 30 years. And so he became
  • an officer, and I remember that the officers lived here, and then if you were an NCO you
  • lived there. There wasn't a ton of difference in the houses. Sometimes there was. So if
  • we were an NCO, you lived here, if we lived on a big base. But when we lived in Europe,
  • on bases, everybody was mixed in. LB: Yeah. I remember that when my aunt and
  • uncle lived there for military. All mixed. ES: Everybody was mixed in there together,
  • regardless of class. But I remember when we lived on a big base when we lived at Fort
  • Bliss in El Paso, and we lived on, they called it Colonel's Row because everyone was a colonel
  • and a general on that street. And we had guys come from the prison to clean our lawn and
  • everything. It was crazy. And that's when I noticed. That was the first big difference
  • I noticed in life. And I think that influenced me probably more than anything, because class
  • is what totally hit me in the face. And the race came later, and then I realized how interconnected
  • they were immediately. ES: And so legal question this country...
  • This class system, the way it works, this notion of your property values if somebody
  • poor lives near you. There's several questions in your system that makes that happen. Instead,
  • we just don't want to get rid of the people, because... And on the other hand, these same
  • people will pay a fortune for their child to go have "another experience" in other countries
  • so they can experience poverty. But they want it to be on a vacation, or you want to go
  • to South Africa. Why don't you just go down the street?
  • ES: But these people don't do that. And it used to be the place where everyone came together
  • is public school. And that's where you learned about different things. I went to segregated
  • schools when I was little, and integrated ones, and I remember the segregated ones were...
  • Well, integrated ones I went to, some [inaudible 02:03:07] were great. But I remember going
  • to a so-called segregated school in [inaudible 02:03:11], Marble Heights Elementary School.
  • It was a great school. ES: But what you learn there was that... you
  • got to experience much more of the different classes of people, and how that manifests
  • in their lives. And we had teachers, see, they understood that. In a black community,
  • everybody's different classes. And so you understood that this person doesn't have as
  • much as you do. And it isn't because they're a bad person. For some reason, that was communicated
  • to you. It wasn't because of some inferiority on their part, it was because their parents
  • didn't have something. They inherently weren't worse than you or anything like that.
  • ES: My parents, they were deaf on that. If you had an attitude, it was like... smacked
  • on the head. Back in those days, they wouldn't have half that. And I saw how they treated
  • people "of a lower class," because they came from a lower class. They came off a farm.
  • So instilled in me and all of us, to this day, is that you don't look down your nose
  • at somebody because they don't have the same kind of money as you, because money isn't
  • anything. It's nothing. It's what's in your heart.
  • ES: And people say that because they always... This is a Christian thing. Everybody's talking
  • about they a Christian. And that's fine. Why do you have to keep declaring it? It's kind
  • of like, why, if it doesn't manifest in anything? But people don't question the systems that
  • make it true for that. And in a way, I can't really blame you for that. What are you going
  • to do? And everyone doesn't have a bad heart. There's always a way to reach somebody's heart,
  • in my opinion. There's always more heart than I even know. But we live in a system whereby
  • that is okay. And then at the same time, the parents know that they don't want their child
  • to have this little, tiny existence. But they want them to have "cultural diversity" in
  • their life, but they don't really want to live it.
  • ES: And I know it's hard, because in my own family... Most of us have different classes
  • of people in our families, and I've got people in my family that I visit in jail. For me,
  • it's really not a big deal. And maybe other people are ashamed of that. I mean, maybe
  • we all have it. And that's what we need to pull on. Whatever our crazy... not just the
  • racist ones, because we all got those. It's like the ones who, that didn't make it, or
  • they have different values. They'd rather get their errand done than keep the lights
  • on. I've got people like that in my family. ES: I know that it's a struggle for me sometimes
  • to deal with them... I deal with them a lot... and how they do things, because I just don't
  • do stuff like that. But I know them. They're not aliens to me. Their life is just as valuable
  • as mine, and it hurts me to see how people are so indifferent like that, because I think
  • it diminishes us, it diminishes us. And I think that's why you have Trump at the heart
  • of it, is that psychologically, people, they can somehow rationalize him. I mean, he's
  • rational to some people. And at first it was very depressing to me. And then I thought
  • about it. I said, "It's because in America, we don't really judge politicians by anything
  • except for how we feel about them." LB: Yes. I'm in a class, a rhetoric class,
  • and that was a big thing we talk about, is how everything is based off of feeling now,
  • instead of logic and also incorporating it all.
  • ES: Absolutely. And also, the social media thing [inaudible 02:06:23], I think you guys
  • have been fed a lot of fake news. You totally have been fed fake news. I went to a troll
  • factory in St. Petersburg. CS: I don't think people are aware of the
  • propaganda that they're being fed. ES: But even now in advertising... There's
  • always been the advertising. Now on the politics, because these, I'm trying to test it with
  • these P.R. kids, but they are so, to me, being brainwashed by... There's fake news in the
  • political realm, but for me there is this realm of persuasion news that is more insidious
  • than I've ever seen. So I have to go back to the saying with the $90 sweatpants, Outdoor
  • Voices, O.V. They make a campaign, Doing Things, hashtag. I've seen it and I go, "What the
  • fuck is that?" I said, "They're selling you this notion. It's so insidious." And then
  • they later come on campus and do a Zumba class for free, and they're turning you people into
  • these horrible consumers. She's not selling pants, she's selling this experience, and
  • she's also selling herself. You're a 27-year-old, blonde, and good-looking. She's selling all
  • that, and it's all on Instagram and Snapchat. ES: This is, to me, more insidious, because
  • you can't get people out of it. They feel about them clothes like somebody else feels
  • about... well, I don't want to get into the pet thing, because people gone crazy about
  • pets. But they feel about the clothes like the clothes are alive, you know what I mean?
  • ES: One girl said in the articles, and one of them wrote an article about it. She said,
  • "When I see somebody else wearing, I feel like I'm part of a community wearing the same
  • clothes." I said, "So if you're wearing a uniform, you feel like..." When I said, you
  • know how deep that is? That someone would say, a girl, a sorority girl would say, "I
  • like it when someone else is wearing exactly the same thing I'm wearing because I feel
  • like I'm part of a community." LB: I'm the opposite. If I see somebody wearing
  • the same thing as me, I'm about to go buy something else.
  • ES: I'm on this thing now where, since I know about these story girls, I'm on this thing
  • about fast fashion and climate change. I never thought about it. And so I had a lot of fun
  • fucking with them about that, because they all... I can tell about your, I'm talking
  • about your generation, because I think you're a bit more Gen-X maybe.
  • CS: I'm on that edge of Gen-X and millennial. I'm kind of not sure which one I am.
  • ES: I'd claim Gen-X if I were you, because that-
  • LB: I would, too. ES: That first generation that I taught, and
  • I loved them. It was the smallest generation we ever had in this country, and they were
  • caught in between... they were much more intergenerational in their thinking. There's so many millennials
  • now that I think they're... they don't have much intergenerational, they don't have as
  • much intergenerational intelligence, in my opinion. And they're not as interesting to
  • me, maybe because I'm old. But I think it's because they talk to each other. There's so
  • many of them, why would they talk to anyone else? You guys didn't have a lot of, you had
  • to be able to talk to everybody. There wasn't enough of you to hang out, or to have a whole
  • culture and influence things. And fabulous music came out of Gen-X area, if you ask me.
  • CS: Oh yes. ES: Plus, don't forget, that's where hip-hop
  • came, out of Gen-X. Seminal hip-hop, Chuck D., all those people. But that's the first
  • group I taught. And it was so funny, because I'm still friends with them now. I've got
  • students who are 50, and I'm friends with them, and they're getting ready to retire,
  • so I think I'm going out to party with some of them in California.
  • ES: But the millennials as a thing has only really hit me here, even though I taught at
  • USC. One thing I had at USC was I taught a freshman class. Probably had about three of
  • four TAs, and there, I understood. It was a performance class, so I had felt like that
  • would... But you had a lot of help to have all these bells and whistles and whatever.
  • I could have done a Zumba class, [inaudible 02:10:03] would have liked it. So it was different.
  • I wasn't interacting with them as closely as I do here, and it's just really interesting
  • to me. Whenever they tell me some weird stuff, I try to challenge them. I'm like, "Why are
  • you with these clothes?" And then I tell them about, "I'm a fashion person. I'm a slave
  • to fashion." I say, "Why would anyone want to be a slave at all?"
  • ES: So they care about the clothes, but they also care about these P.R. kids, climate change.
  • This is not a question mark, which is good. And they also care about, so it was climate
  • change and what was the other thing that they care about? Climate change... Well, that was
  • the main one, and clothes. And when I put those two together and tell them, "You're
  • actually killing the planet with these clothes." CS: I know. Most of my clothes, somebody else
  • wore them before me. LB: Oh yeah. The thing is, I actually started
  • a consignment-type shop, an affordable consignment. Yeah, I'm actually doing my first gig tomorrow.
  • I'm so excited. ES: Well, I'm here to do a pop-up.
  • LB: Yeah! ES: Pop-up.
  • LB: I love it, because I think what our big thing is, is either fast fashion or people
  • are really drawn to this vintage thing. But vintage clothing, they up the price so much.
  • And so I'm like, what about affordable fashion that's also good for the environment? And
  • so that's what I'm trying to discover. ES: Interesting, because the Buffalo Exchange
  • started. I think when I was here, it was called something else. And basically, it was some
  • kind of co-op thing. You just take your clothes there, and you get some more clothes. It was
  • bartering. It was completely free, you change the clothes. And it was just some kind of
  • hippy-type thing. Whole Foods started, that was a co-op when I was here. I have a friend
  • Linda, I think she had a membership, and she and [inaudible 02:11:43] actually ate, they
  • were eating organic back in the day- LB: [inaudible 02:11:47] they started off
  • as co-ops. That's so interesting. ES: Yeah, Whole Foods did. [inaudible 02:11:50]
  • co-op, Wheatsville was a co-op. And you just go in there and get these big old bags of
  • whatever. I never understood how they did that, but it was always vegetarians that went
  • there. LB: Still kind of it.
  • ES: But yeah, they were co-ops. And I remember Buffalo Exchange. It wasn't called that. You
  • just went in there and traded clothes. And so it was still the spirit of the '60s a bit.
  • But I was telling the kids in the classes, [inaudible 02:12:13] fast fashion was, it
  • was the second-most polluting industry in the world behind oil and gas. They were like,
  • and I said, "The U.N. said"... And then we leave the U.N., which is nice. And then the
  • eyes get big. And then I say, "Well, you recycle, right?" And they go mm-hmm (affirmative).
  • Well I said, "What do you think you could do?" And they're like, "Well, maybe not buy
  • so many clothes." I'm like, "Well, that's some of it." But I told them a place where
  • you can recycle their clothes. There's a place here. I say you have to drop them off.
  • LB: Really, where is that? I'd like to know where that is.
  • ES: Actually, I, let me see. LB: If you, yeah, if you-
  • ES: I thought... Email me and I'll send it to you.
  • LB: Yeah, yeah, for sure. ES: But there is a textile recycling place
  • here. And then someone said, "Just try buying less one outfit." Guy said, "Go get something
  • used. Every outfit, every third outfit you get, is something someone already wore." And
  • that's the thing. If you have a whole bunch of shoes, you need to really think about that,
  • because shoes always end up being... Shoes are harder to repurpose. And so they end up
  • in landfills. And they end up in landfills in places like Bangladesh. I showed them some
  • horrible pictures of these people. ES: Here are the reports that came out this
  • week saying that the problem with worldwide pollution is caused by people who have money
  • creating these situations in countries where people don't have money. So the source of
  • pollution... China is creating their own pollution, but in India, the pollution is primarily caused
  • by things that we need that they're selling to us in the world with the haves and have-nots.
  • So the problem in the worldwide pollution in third-world countries is basically us,
  • and I guess in developed countries. So the poor are paying for our whatever.
  • ES: So we're all interconnected in some way. It's in the dyes that they use to make the
  • stuff that causes pollution, to the fact that we throw out a third of our clothes in our
  • lifetime. That is what statistics show. So for me, it was interesting, and I only did
  • it because I just couldn't get over how these children were, how they actually believe that
  • this brand is a person and something to belong to. And I said, "Maybe it's because it's so
  • many of them. They have to be individual, but then they wanted to wear the same thing."
  • ES: Psychology is very confusing on the millennials. I think there's just too many of them, and
  • I tell you the other thing. The other thing, and different from the journalism, was the
  • stress. They get stressed out the... just blow on them. I told them, "The reason why
  • I keep working, because I'm sure if they came and got me, you wouldn't even notice I was
  • gone. You're on the phone." "Where's the professor?" I says, "I could be in a concentration camp."
  • I said, "You don't pay attention." They don't, because they're so into this, so they don't
  • really know a lot. But they think they know a lot of things, but they don't know a lot
  • of knowledge. And so they don't know the difference. ES: And that's where I think the most insidious
  • thing, that's the most insidious thing about social media. Yes, the fake is terrible, and
  • the fake can get these people to sit inside all the time, and that's what they do. They
  • can get the kids because they don't pay attention enough. We do studies on news engagement,
  • and people don't keep up with the news at all. And every generation gets worse about
  • keeping up. And so then you end up with Trump. And the people who believe Trump, those people
  • are well-informed. They're informed in that netherworld in which they're informed.
  • ES: I can tell you that people mostly learn stuff from memes now. And these Trump people
  • have some deep theories of [inaudible 02:15:40]. He would not only laugh about it. But they
  • are absolutely, their getting this information has absolutely empowered them. And they have
  • someone else who gets up there and says it. That's what they get. But I don't know what's
  • going to happen. When I go to Europe, people aren't as... you can see it's happening over
  • there. They're going kind of crazy. Brexit was all, that's all because of fake news,
  • Brexit. ES: See, we're just an infection in the world
  • right now. I would like to think it's the last throes, because there's nothing else
  • left. I mean, these guys seem to be telling us now, "We're just going to tear it all down."
  • That seems to be what they're saying. As long as we keep weighing in, we're just going to
  • take everything we can as long as we can. That's why I'm getting the sense of that.
  • But they won't live forever. And the way you think about it, Trump, these people, they've
  • got about 10 years left, hopefully, before they can't walk even. But what's going to
  • be left for us to pick up, I don't know. But it has to be a fundamentally different kind
  • of pick-up. You just can't elect some Democrat and then say everything's okay. I would be
  • happy with a normal Republican now, because I just find it nerve-wracking. It's so cruel.
  • It's so overtly cruel. CS: I would be happy with somebody who can
  • speak in complete sentences, honestly. LB: Yes, yes. Honestly, anyone with a good,
  • yeah, with eloquency, honestly. Because at this rate-
  • ES: But he's really being ignorant. That's very a popular thing [inaudible 02:17:06].
  • But I interviewed Donald Trump in the '80s for the Wall Street Journal.
  • LB: Really? ES: Yeah, and he was... Yes, I should say,
  • not yeah. He was actually still building things. He hasn't really built anything since the
  • '80s. And it was a phone interview. One thing I remember, it was a long story short, but
  • anyway, it was the Journal, Washington Journal, and it was late at night, and the story came
  • out in the New York Times. Reporter wasn't around, so we had to try to put... I was on
  • the copy desk and being editor. And so we had to call. We couldn't find our reporter
  • to call, so we had some kid go down and get all the number share for Donald Trump. That's
  • where you had Rolodexes in those days. And came back, there was like 10 numbers for him,
  • and that was just in his apartment. There were two numbers just in what was the bathroom.
  • ES: So it was five of us, and it was my dial on the second ring. And I said, "Is this Donald
  • Trump?" And he said, "Who is this?" I said, "Erna Smith from Washington Journal." He answered,
  • "This is the Donald." I'm not lying to you. His wife is the first wife to call him the
  • Donald. He said that on the phone. "This is the Donald." I'll never forget that. Just
  • like, what, this guy's insane. And then we talked some more. But the sentences were complete.
  • We call them media whores. He knew how to do media. The sentences were complete. I remember
  • because he was talking, and I was writing so I wasn't saying anything. He said, "You
  • getting everything down? Should I say it again?" I was like, "No, I've got it. Got it, Mr.
  • Trump." And he said, "Another question, blah blah."
  • ES: And then I get through with him. He's like, "Is there anything else you need?" I
  • said, "No, it isn't." "Well, thank you very much." Was a quite normal conversation.
  • LB: Right. LB: You'd never guess that now.
  • ES: No, no. So I really feel like he has mentally deteriorated. He definitely has deteriorated
  • mentally. This cruelty in him, this was probably always there. But in the '80s and '90s when
  • he was making his... That wasn't a thing with him. It was, everyone thought he was a [inaudible
  • 02:19:14], everyone thought he was a con artist, and everyone knew that about him. When he
  • was in the business world, it was known. But there was just something funny about it, and
  • there was something... I always thought he got that he was a joke. But I guess not.
  • CS: That is really playing up to it, because- ES: Yeah, you know where things change? I
  • really think that first, everyone thought his first wife was the one who was the smart
  • one, who made everything happen. Yeah, everyone thought it was her. She was incredibly intelligent.
  • I interviewed her once, too. Very intelligent, very intelligent. And you could tell she was
  • just, she latched onto him and had dressed him up a little bit, made him more civilized.
  • But I understood exactly what she was doing with him. She got that man. She was an athlete.
  • She was doing the Olympics. She was an Olympic swimmer and skier.
  • CS: I didn't know that about her. ES: So she is a really... And she's from the
  • Czech Republic, and I've been to Czechoslovakia in 1988. I was working with Wall Street Journal,
  • and we took a cheap... Then a long story short, I went over there with [inaudible 02:20:14]
  • "Who wants to see the Iron Curtain, behind the Iron Curtain?" And I know how smart the
  • Czech people are. They had to be surrounded, they've been occupied by everybody. She speaks
  • five languages, his wife. LB: I'm actually studying abroad there this
  • May. ES: Are you? You going to Prague?
  • LB: Yep, Prague, and I'm... for photojournalism, actually.
  • ES: Are you going with... They were just talking about that program yesterday.
  • LB: This is the last semester that he's- ES: Who you going with?
  • LB: Dennis Starling. This is his last semester, and then he's retiring. This is the last time
  • they're going there. They're actually doing another... They've started another study abroad,
  • and it's in London. It's for video journalism. But this one's photography-
  • ES: You know that one with one of the [inaudible 02:21:00]... I've eaten London. In my opinion...
  • The [inaudible 02:21:04] are off? Is yours off there?
  • LB: Oh yeah.