Profile; Interview with Paul Winter; Interview with Tim O'Brien; Interview with Edwin Colodny

No. He has recorded in canyons and cathedrals played for presidents and jammed with whales. Stay with us for a conversation with Paul Winter. A prolific pioneering artist Paul Winter has enjoyed a four decade long career with continuous accolades for his musicianship and unique compositions. He's recorded forty seven albums and won four Grammys by responding to and orchestrating the sounds of the creatures on land in the sea and sky with the voices of human cultures around the globe. He has introduced a category of music that is extraordinary and original. He has deeply influenced the music of our times while inspiring environmental and cross-cultural awareness and activism. We are delighted to have Paul Winter with us today. Welcome. Thank you. So you grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania and started playing music at the age of five and had your own band by the time you were 12 years old. Now your father owned a

music store and was a piano tuner but what other family influences did you have on your music career. So my grandfather who was the tuner and he had been a band master in the civil war repeatedly the youngest. Enlisting at the age of 17 in 1862 and he he kind of created the the heritage of music in the family which continued through my. My mother my father's family and my sister and myself and the community where we lived in Altoona was full of music as many Middle American towns were in from the 100 cents re on and music was just something that was in in our life it wasn't something that we were specializing in it was just all around us.

It was it wasn't jazz or folk it was just music was there. Bands of all kinds marching bands dance bands concert bands symphony choruses and jazz. Sure it was it was starting to come in. So you went to Northwestern University and you were an English major. Now is writing a passion you passed somewhere along the line or. Not really. It was something I you had to eventually find some major. So I kind of stumbled into that that I was in a writer and I'm still not a writer but I revere. Great great verbal eloquent but it was I was mainly I was majoring in jazz clubs. Really when I was in Chicago at that school there. Right that was my passion although I had no idea that was going to be my path. Well 1961 and 62 are quite remarkable years and your sextet won the intercollegiate Jazz Festival and you

were awarded a recording contract with Columbia Records in the legendary John Hammond. Then the State Department invites you to a 23 country tour of Latin America that culminates in an invitation to play at the White House the first jazz performance ever by Jackie Kennedy. Now how does a young man deal with this these remarkable two years with this kind of success. It was it was overwhelming. I mean just the idea of getting a recording contract was beyond the wildest dreams of any jazz musician head of our generation in those days. And I had intended to go to law school and had actually registered at the University of Virginia Law School and I thought well let's take a year off from because all the other guys in our group were going to go to graduate school and I thought let's just see what this is like you know. Then the State Department tour

that was actually our idea we approached then and said we would would love to go not only as performers but as students and do workshops in different encounters with with students in these countries. And we were perfectly integrated group we were three blacks three whites at a time when when civil rights was a really burning issue it just was just really burgeoning then. And so in the spirit of the the the earlier years of the Kennedy administration we were they decided to send us to Latin America and the most amazing thing was just to find out the effect that music had on people especially in countries where they they had very little and how much they appreciated the the spirit in energy of the jazz that we played. Even though they had no frame of reference for they'd never heard anything like

it. Wow so you're very well received clearly. Well we were it was just encouraging it wasn't like. Some sort of sense of heroic success. It was just a sense that we are connected. Now since then you've traveled extensively and not only played in 37 different countries on six continents but it is that Antarctica that's left out there we haven't done that's coming. But you really pioneered incorporating the sounds the instruments the voices from other cultures into your music and introducing them to audiences here. Did that begin to that passion begin from that trip or was there something else that that really caught your imagination about world sounds. Well the trip was a great a great expander for us in terms of our own experience in different cultures but jazz really from the beginning has been world music early on and if you think of how jazz emerged here from the

convergence of European and African traditions. It's one of the original world music sort of. Interweaving and jazz has always had a welcoming attitude toward other toward new voices in sounds and traditions and it's kind of always said will come on and join us. And so with that attitude we were we felt very at home with these new idioms that we experienced in Latin America particularly. And then when in 68 I heard the voices of the humpback whale sort of first time. It was really not any different for me than the first time I heard Charlie Parker play saxophone. He was an extraordinary voice that for me sang of the of the soul of of the earth. What was that occasion that you were able to hear those voices.

A friend told me about a lecture that was going to be given by Dr. Roger Payne the whale biologist at Rockefeller University in New York in the spring of 68. And this friend had said when you listen to these whale sounds with headphones on he said it's better than an LSD trip. But in spite of that I went to the to the lecture and it was it was astounding to me. Now bringing in those you heard the voices and it seemed from from reading your decide OG graffiti that an album didn't come out where you actually recorded with whales until 10 years later. So what went on in those intervening years and in your mind about recording with them and how did that idea and how do you go about it. The first thing I did was to get some recordings and I had I went up after that lecture and introduced myself to Roger Payne and he was kind enough few

months later to send me some tapes and we began to. Explore ways we could make music incorporating the sounds it was kind of in the same way I wanted to bring an instrument like cello to many of the people in our audience who hadn't had an experience with symphonic music. And I wanted to share the sounds of the whales and also if we could communicate something about their plight. But nothing really worked too well. We did some pieces and most of the time they would be quite sad and make people feel maybe guilty in a way. And someone came up to me after a concert and said you know you're really not going to you're not going to bring about any change in things by just making people feel guilty you've got to find a way to celebrate these creatures. So I knew then that the only way I could do that is if I actually had a personal experience with him. And the first opportunity came up in in

73 when we were invited to play a benefit for Greenpeace in Vancouver. And after the concert some of the Greenpeace staff came to me and said Would you like to go out on the boat with us tomorrow we're going to go out on the training mission with the whales off in Cooper Island. We're getting ready to go confront the Russian whaling ships. And I jumped at the chance and. They put me and a photographer into a Zodiac a small raft and we went out from the ship and floated among these these brave whales for hours and it was we weren't concerned about being tipped over. Well no because I knew enough then about whales and the people living within this there's little danger that the whales know exactly where you are with their sonar. There's no reason for them to be aggressive toward humans. And I mean in normal I mean unless they're being harpooned and many people have done this is nothing heroic about it. And it was I was just

so moved by the grace of these huge creatures who would suddenly it's like a locomotive slithering up out of the water too to breathe to to to exhale you spout and breathe and then coming down and sometimes as they would they look at you out of this huge eye and it was astounding to me to be there and realize how gentle they were and that it was. They were allowing us to be right there in their neighborhood that was that was to me most humbling. And so that gave me a sense of the kind of grace that I wanted to have in the music that we might make about the men that led to a piece called Ocean dream and then that became part of our album Common Ground in 1977. What about the connection with activism and music. It certainly worked for you. It's not a path a lot of people have followed.

There's that I get this I come from your family that you know that that need to be active in the world and that in a way you are anybody who has been moved by these creatures any creatures whether they're whales or or kittens. Would respond if they saw these creatures being threatened. I mean I don't think it's anything unique about my response there is just that I have the good good luck to get to go be with whales in some cases be near where wolves and some other creatures. And when we've been invited to play an environmental benefits and different cause events We've always agreed and so it's felt like a important way to use our music. You seem to have a pet phonies when you see the whales eyes. Or when you see the wall size.

I've heard you talk about saying millions and millions of years back. I'm curious about how you hear when you hear certain sounds. Do stories come up for you or colors or. I just feel you must have. You're very sensitive to sound. Are there opinions you have when you're hearing things. There have been many sounds and voices that have been alluring to me that have just struck me in a certain way. And it's just something about there the poignancy of the sound or the soulfulness of it. And I've just been fascinated all my life with these particular sounds and particular kinds of sounds and wanted to find a way to to make music with them but I hear them more in a just a pure sonic way a pure musical way just for the beauty of it. And stories sometimes come later. And there have been cases like after I had seen this Wolf that you heard me describe where

I wanted to make a piece of music about the feeling that I had. But before that I had the how I had the recording of the wolf singing and its music just made me want to make make a musical context with it that that would be appropriate. Now travel seems to be not just a way that you discover new voices but also you search out natural environments in which to record you've done amazing recordings in the Grand Canyon and for two decades you've been the artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine divine. And then of course you have your you're born in Connecticut and then yesterday I heard you playing at the breeding barn and Shelburne Farms which is quite remarkable and amazing. What is it about space that allures you to these different types of spaces that there are tours

to record in. You know how a lot of people like to sing in the shower because it sounds better. It's simply that it's simply the sounds are enhanced by be in space and in you it's. Kind of ennobles the sound in a way. So you are concerned about the control one would have in a studio so much. Most the songs I played in studios it's frustrating because the sound if you can you can add reverberation and put on earphones and hear it but you're not living in that space and it's very different when you're in a reverberant place in the Grand Canyon or you're in the cathedral. You you are part of there was acoustics in it's more than the sound it's I'm not sure the word for it. It's more than the

psychological aspect of it or spiritually we don't have the right word for it. It's sort of beyond you it's it it evokes the mystery. And it changes your music. Does it change what you what comes out of you. I think it does I would think that what we play in those places would be a little different than what we play in a recording studio. Is there a place that you have your eye on now another type of space that you'd like to play in that you haven't yet. Well there are many many many places in the world where I love to go and play and. There are great caves there are great places like much of Picchu. And forests often have amazing sound because of the reflection from all of the leaves so. But it's because I'd love to go to these places just as a person

and also play and see what happens that the that I'm. I mean that's that that's the way I'm drawn to them it's not that I have an agenda to go play in all of the remarkable acoustic spaces when it happens and when you you stumble on a place that it is thrilling. Yesterday you were introduced as a contemporary showman. Do you believe that music has healing qualities that it creates vibrations or or whatever. Where are where you are around healing and music. I think it's a profound healing path and into. And I think the vibration the physical vibration is the thing that. It's not so much that particular kinds of music and then maybe it depends totally on

the on the recipient and on the receiver. I always think of the old saying that music the beauty is in the ear of the bee here. And so in one person's Magic is another person's poison perhaps. But any kind of vibrations that we not any kind but I mean gentle vibrations that we introduce into the body. I think in Hants our our being this because we are made up of quite zillions of little vibrations having Were we are nothing but vibrations much of the way in which we live tends to. Due to mute a lot of the vibrating this sedentary lifestyles that we have and the stress all the holding in the when it when we get in into any environment where we

begin moving in the vibe the vibrations begin to come alive again. We feel better. It's I think it's really simple physical process so I encourage anybody if they have any ways of making sound with their voices maybe the most primary thing not worrying about whether it's music or not just chanting vibrating. Any kind of long sounds playing a guitar again because the guitar is a great way to feel immediately the warmth of vibrations blowing a horn or any of those things I think are instantly accessible to anybody and you don't need to have some supposedly expert music maker in order to to avail yourself of that healing benefit. Well I know one person wondered aloud if you knew the power that you have who in tears talked about how listening to your music healed him

through a very difficult time in his life. You must get other people who feel the same way that you indeed can heal through your music. The Certainly the music can in when its that connects with the the right receiver and probably anybody who's ever made music has been able to have some effect like that on different people I don't think there's any. I think any musicians have a corner on that. And it's wonderful. I think it's remarkable and there's no way you could know when you create a piece of music how it would affect it's going to have one people in one. When people do come and tell us stories like that it's deeply gratifying and to me another part of the mystery. Right. You became a husband and father relatively late in your life. Has that fundamentally changed anything I mean were you the wild musician out there and somebody caught you and

are you the same Paul Winter you've always been. Well I would like to think there's more of me here it's changed everything profoundly. And I don't think you can really know how much of a fountain of love you are until you have a child. You've had the highest accolades in your industry. You've had honors from the United Nations and universities and you've had a couple of craters on the moon named after your pieces. Is there an honor of which you are most proud. Yesterday after the event we were walking back along the pilgrimage paths that people took in the morning and I was holding my little girl's hand and she said daddy I love it when you play and that that's as high an honor as I could ever hope for

it. You've recorded with major labels and produced your own albums. You produced your own company to produce albums that you couldn't find support for you even currently in a legal dispute over this Survivor fame stuff. How has the business of music changed or not changed over the years. I mean you present you know you have a persona that's very mellow and giving and yet there must be a good businessman there as well to have been doing so so well for so many years. Has has the business part changed at all for you. Well it's maybe one of the groundings things that has been part of my journey. I think every every musician would love to not have to deal with any of that and just make their music. And there are people I've contemporaries who cut away from early on and have written that for a long time and they had people that did take care of that but

maybe there's been some benefit in having the the humbling aspect of having to deal with those kind of things it's just sort of like having to to clean your house and take out the garbage and sweep the floors and things like that that that maybe keep you in touch with a different reality than if you were off on a star or star trajectory. It's it's an ongoing challenge to deal with certainly lots of things have changed or changing all the time in the media age. It's it's more and more difficult to keep the traditions alive. When the mainstream is constantly moving toward a lower and lower common denominator Although the interesting thing is there there has been this great. Blossoming of interest in different world music tradition yes. In the last

10 or 15 years. So that's encouraging so you have both things going on at the same time. And our quest now is just to find ways to get our music directly to people and not depend on the the industry paths and channels that are so volatile and so increasingly beholden to the fastest easiest money that they can they can achieve. So what's what's next for you you've done Jazz Classical Latin bossa nova world music continuing. What's what's next. The music will continue to get I think more and more personal. I wanted to write a lot more than I have in the past and that's a that's one of my main focuses now we're creating a new kind of performance events that are more participatory in the sense of having

that giving the people the opportunity just to move to dance and chant with the music instead of sitting in rows of chairs as spectators. And unfortunately we're out of time but everyone should should keep their eyes and ears open for one of these events because they are very special and spectacular. Also Mr. Winter will be at the Chandler mint Music Hall in Randolph in late October on the 20th I believe. So that's another place that you might be able to catch him. Thank you so much for being with us. Now you all winter and thank you for joining us on profile. Oh. You.

Are. In the late 1960s Tim O'Brien with a 5 beta kappa Sunil Gulati student with a major in political science. He was a student government president and active in the anti-war movement. Harvard offered him a full scholarship for graduate studies and them to his disbelief. He got his draft notice a 14 month tour on the front lines in Vietnam left indelible memories that have informed his best known work to date. Praised for both his short fiction and novels. Mr. O'Brien won the National Book Award in fiction for going after quite ya though. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Preta may you leave it well Jay among others and his two most recent novels in the Lake of the woods and tom cat in love were national bestsellers. Welcome to Vermont. Thank you. Going to be here. Yeah. You were offered that full scholarship to Harvard as a political scientist. Now when

did you decide to become a writer. I think I decided at two different times in my life I decided initially when I was say eight or nine years old when I would spend my nights in my bedroom with a flashlight reading the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries thinking boy I would sure be wonderful to do this someday. And then I forgot it for the next oh I don't know 15 20 years of my life until Vietnam collided with this ambition to be a writer. And I found myself even during the war. Late at night you know scribbling notes imagining the stories I would tell once the war is over and as soon as the I returned from Vietnam I embarked on what I thought then and have now become of the career of a writer. So you let the diplomacy and the diplomat dreams. By the way so I think I think Vietnam changed me as a as a person not just in terms of career but when anyone is in touch with a daily horror day after day watching

friends die in Vietnam media isn't fearful of your own death. It can't help but do something to your personality. I had gone to the war thinking of myself in a kind of I suppose an arrogant or even smug way as a member of the intelligentsia in touch with my intellectual side. But Vietnam put me in touch with my heart with my own emotions. When you're almost dead every day for a solid year with each step you take you're wondering Will a landmine get me or a sniper. Will something horrible happen. You can't help but look at the things that are valuable to you. You know the things that really count in life family and friends and lovers and and that's all emotional baggage that I realized during the war and of trying to keep with me sense is really important to all of us. The human being is not just a rational animal or also an animal of the heart.

Now as a as a writer your characters seem to be trying to create order and understanding of these horrific events by telling stories by creating stories repeating stories from different perspectives I love how you do that is how the story and repetition function for us in society or now as a as a nation in shock. I think story is important and much underestimated aspect of the human being. All of us tell stories on a daily basis to ourselves and to others. And we live our lives oftentimes on the basis of the stories we tell ourselves as a nation for example. We tell ourselves the story of America the good. America the Lone Ranger galloping off to the rescue of the needy and the beleaguered and the oppressed. A kind of good national story forgetting sometimes to tell the other stories the stories of genocide against the Indian stories of the Jim Crow laws the stories of slavery. The unpalatable stories. And the story can have a

good in about a fact and I'm just using national examples here but I think we'd also do it on an individual basis we like to think of ourselves as I did just before I got drafted. I thought of myself as a good person a person who would never do wrong and learned otherwise in Vietnam. Now one thing that your character Tim and in the things they considered talks about is how the telling the writing down of stories seems to keep him from the tragic psychic damage of of so many Vietnam vets is the power of writing as powerful as storytelling. It is I think I mean who knows but it seems to me now in retrospect that had I not become a writer I might well have ended up dead. I mean literally dead. I came back from Vietnam a changed person full of despair about my fellow man about myself about the

future of the world. Angry at my government then for sending me in the first place for killing so many people in a war that seemed at best loser and its objectives. I came back really shattered and unlike many another veteran I had of at least had an outlet which was my writing. I could begin to deal with these a sense of rage and frustration and despair through telling stories a way of getting it out of myself and I would hope into the hearts and minds of my fellow citizens. A lot of veterans didn't have that outlet. They lived in silence not speaking even their own families about what had happened to them the things they had witnessed or the things that had crippled them psychologically. So in one sense I was extremely lucky luckier than ninety nine point nine percent of my fellow veterans. They have a vent or an outlet for it all. How. However there is one point in your life where even you wrote about being

very distressed wondering about whether life was worth it. How did you make it through that time. Because writing seems to have taken you through so they did I did meet a valise had broken up with the woman I was madly in love with her and vice versa. It ended badly and I was in a way back in Vietnam. Twenty years later the same kinds of emotions a sense of despair I talked about a sense of cynicism. About in this case love for government. Contemplating suicide as I had after Vietnam and in a way again writing rescued me I sat down one bleak Fourth of July and began writing a piece and ended up in the New York Times Magazine about the similarities between the war on the one hand as a kind of we think of it as a global and kind of foreign phenomenon an anomaly. But in point of fact it seemed to me then and it still does all of us.

And I mean everyone from a librarian in Sioux City to a to a soldier to a stockbroker in New York all of us through our lives. Our war you know you look at your watch and your wife is left you haven't. It's 2:00 in the morning and you look again after an hour that's two and you wait another hour and it's 2 0 2 where Time slows down not as to feeling that one gets say in Vietnam at night at a foxhole where Time slows down. God seems absent a sense of incredible loneliness and despair. And we've all been there. My sister for example about a year and a half two years ago was diagnosed with breast cancer went through chemo surgery radiation and she and I talked later on about the similarities between which she had experienced and what I went through in Vietnam.

And my job as a writer is to try to have I think in the in the been the largest respect to make people aware that that what I went through in Vietnam is pretty much what you're going to go through in your life at some point. The Irish have a saying you know sooner or later the world will break your heart. And it does. We're all going to die or are going to have broken hearts. And somehow through through with that knowledge to use it for our for our survival to prevail somehow despite our knowledge that the world will deliver bad things to us that the human spirit it can prevail but it can only prevail with a sense of knowledge self-knowledge. And that's what I try to do in my writing is to examine not more so much of the human heart its capacity to live with the evil. To go beyond it and to try again knowing that probably failure will come and then to try again and again and to be as much as possible fully human and not a chipmunk chipmunks don't know what evil is. Chipmunks don't

feel you know chipmunks don't even know they're going to die. And they use that knowledge as a human being seems to be very important. What about now since the United States has been. We're talking we're we're hearing a lot about evil on television what is what are the recent events I mean to you how is that touching your heart or how does that redefine or bring up evil and how should we look at that. Well all sorts of thoughts go through my mind of course the first being a sense like I suppose every American a sense of incredible horror. Condolences going on to the victims and to the fear families. A cautionary feeling comes over me as well. Vietnam is not identical to what happened in what's happening around us now. But there are enough similarities to frighten me. A sense for example of ignorance about our enemy. We went into Vietnam not knowing much about the Viet Cong about

history history of French colonialism who our enemies were who our friends were. And I just as I think of one a week and a half two weeks ago were to interview a man in the street and said to find Taliban for me. You have got a blank stare and I think even now. You get a lot of blank stares. We went into that war all those years ago not knowing much about that part of the world Southeast Asia and I fear we're going into a new kind of war not knowing a lot about our enemy and not even trying to know much when one watches the CNN and ABC and CBS and you know the sort of standard network coverage there is very little I see about what's gone on in over say the last 20 years in Afghanistan and Pakistan and here in the world and that that terrifies me. Another flock that has come to me is America's capacity to always say tonight is the enemy. That

is Hitler was a Satan and the man was a Satan and Saddam Hussein was a Satan. And now we have a new one and Bin Ladan. Like it or not these are living flesh and blood human beings. They're people. Like it or not we have to I think stop looking at ourselves as only have wearing the white hat and the enemy only the black. This isn't to condone what happened. That was horrid what was what was done was an act of absolute not just terrorism it was an act of of mass murder nonetheless. I don't want America to wake up tomorrow. Look in the mirror and see Bin Ladan staring back it at us. I don't think it's going to help our country to go off killing a teenage girl in a thousand babies. Through a kind of carpet bombing techniques without trying to you know find and identify the enemy. And finally I can say that that in Vietnam among soldiers in Vietnam the primary sensation you

had was one of one of fear. Budding up against frustration that is your return fire of the citizenry of Vietnam. Who is your friend who is your enemy. We don't know. And out of that fear was born of frustration. Who do you shoot at. Who do you kill. And now the nation itself as a nation is experiencing precisely that which I felt in Vietnam. We're afraid we're angry. But we're also frustrated. And one danger of frustration is is a friend like me ally for example would have to be my area of operation in Vietnam where women and kids were just slaughtered over the course of four hours and we became our enemy. We became the worst part of ourselves. And it terrifies me to see of Americans attacking mosques. You know Sikhs are

killing people simply because they are in some way or another resemble Ben Ladan. It really terrifies me. The consequences of that of course are more to what can only be more terror was the consequence in Vietnam when we take out our rage and frustration on a village. Napalm it. Walk through it afterwards and see dead kids lying there dead pigs dead old women very rarely a dead soldier. And to see that repeated with its horrible consequences it simply made the enemy in the world made more enemies and made kids into our enemies who grew up and began carrying rifles. That that I don't want to see our country look in a mirror and see Hitler staring back at him. Or a Bin Ladan. We are a nation of law and decent nation. And somehow we have to preserve that I think. Otherwise we become what that which we hate so much. Now you are currently besides of course writing as much as you can.

It seems you are an artist in residence at Southwest Texas State University. Unlike writing teaching has immediate feedback. It's a more social endevour I'm interested in what you're getting out of teaching and what you feel you need to want to communicate to 19 20 year olds. You know who are of draft age. Well some of what I've just I've tried to communicate some of that I'm just talking about here on this program a sense of caution a sense of maintaining us our own dignity as as human beings. And I've tried to approach it pretty much in this way by saying listen you're here I'm teaching would be writers MFA students who want to someday become writers and I'm paying attention believe it or not to sentences to grammar or to expressing oneself clearly and perhaps and with lucidity and passion. I'm trying to preserve my art which is a part of what makes a nation a world civilized. That is I think I can get a student

to stop using hopefully they're on the way and I made some progress. Or if I can teach the difference between the word farther and further All I know to our viewers it sounds stupid and they probably don't know themselves but they ought to. Human discourse and the rules of conduct rules of communication that which makes a civilized is that which distinguishes us from the terrorist in part a sense of order a sense of decency. And I'm doing what I can in my own small way. Keep writing to and to keep my students attention on the street and in the human heart. Reviewers talk all the time about how truthful your stories are how how true to life they are how alive how real and yet you keep saying it's all fiction. You know none of this is true even though you have all the quotes about to use your own name and one of them is they but

it's sounds a lot like you. But it is it you what is the connection between fact remembrance and truth when you play I think from it all. It all blends together for me that is if a thousand years from now who's going to care who the real Tim O'Brian was what's going to matter. A thousand years or 100 years from now or even 20 years from now I was is the story any good to the touch my heart is a make me think. Have I learned anything. So I borrow from my own life I may well borrow from yours. Who knows in the end what matters to me is the story itself does it really does it touch us. Does it hit our heads in our hearts in our tear it lands in our adenoids does it do something to make your body vibrate the way it vibrates when you sing a really good movie or read a really good book or seen a really beautiful piece of art. It touches you in ways that are not totally explicable. And whether it's done through using the real world or not is in the end irrelevant to me I do use my own life and

when I need to. Hemingway once said that he had never written or read anything that was any good. That was true and in a way I agree with that that is what I think he meant I think is that that art filters truth and arranges it and gives it stability if one were to tell the truth about say the smore. Well you'd have to talk about brushing your teeth and getting on a bat and wiping the stuff out of your eyes and turning I mean you do all kinds of boring and ultimately irrelevant things and the one thing art does is it filters all that stuff out and it gets to the important stuff the heart of it. That man you're going to meet today who whom you may marry or may not you may have to say I'm going to divorce you or not. But those important moments in life are filtering out the irrelevant in a way not even a newspaper story is ever true. That is to say it's true in a sense it's not a lie when much

is filtered out you're given 10 inches to write on such and such a subject and so you throw away that bit of truth in that you throw away that quote in that and you end up with 10 and 20 inches of stuff. In Minnesota where I come from that's called a half truth and part truth that truth is a kind of an elusive concept and I write about that how one has to be careful about enunciating big truths because oftentimes underlying them are a lot of other contradictory truth that don't quite match with it. Now ironically in the last New Yorker you had a story called to skinny in which someone pretends to be you. Now you have websites you've got a huge fan movement that are Want Want to know things from you want to know why you ended things a certain way want to. It seems that they they demand a lot of you and one even pretends to be you I mean did that did that really

happen. Yeah it really happened but a. Woman wrote me a letter to my donor 10 years ago now eight years ago saying I got engaged to a guy who pretended to be you. And he said he wrote under the pseudonym of Tim O'Brien and he was convincing so I began going out with him got engaged to him told my friends and family I was marrying Tim O'Brien we sent out wedding announcements. He got suspicious at one point apparently and he'd been feeding her books. But without my picture on them so she went to a library and found a hardcover copy of one of my books and confronted him with it and said This doesn't look a lot like you. And he said well actually two of us write these books and that's his picture. To her she bought it and continued on with the wedding plans and so on and the story goes on and on. And the point being that I made up when in the story in The New Yorker which is part of a new book I'm working I made up a lot I made up dialogue made up incidents and so on. Which is

kind of what I'm getting at is that is that the story in the book called too skinny I think is a better story in the end than when I got through that letter. More more detail the man comes alive is not just a villain. He's he has his own vulnerabilities and he has his own sense of shame and guilt for it all a sense of being trapped in a lie. And when one thinks about it we've all been there. We've also done something that's not quite true exaggerated made up a detail here or there and then late at night after the cocktail party is over and you're back in your bad your head is swimming up to why did I do that and how do I get out of it. Not in the grand scale of that character for most of us but nonetheless one of the things you try to do in the book is to remind a reader that is you're not a lot different from the persons you're reading about here. We all share things with. With these characters. And that was a fun story to write in a way it

relieved me of the burden I've been carrying around how do I write about that stuff. It was it was also a way of saying I've been there I don't hold it against you I know exactly what you went through. Not in that scale of a lie but I know how it feels to wish I hadn't done something. Are there other responsibilities you feel toward you or your fans people that are really touched by your book and need this. I feel a responsibility by and large to remain silent. That is ultimately the books have to speak for themselves. I can add or subtract. If I had anything more to say for example about Vietnam I'd write it. I feel good when you exhaust your sense of passion and your sense of knowledge about a subject. It's best I think not to amend it or paraphrase it. Let the book speak for itself and so I by and large when I make public appearances I try to

read for my work because I've spent so much time trying to get it right and get the sentences right and and not at the very pace. For example if you're writing a very sober story about war or divorce somewhere in that sober story to have a little wit and a look because life is not relentlessly sober relentlessly tragic in the midst even of this horror we're going through now. I've noticed on television among my friends what we call in Vietnam a little gallows humor. And it's going to be persuaded we're going to see more and more of it as time goes by. It will be done reverently in a way. But there are still smiles on people's faces we're going to baseball games which is what I'm getting at about the human spirit that ultimately we cannot abandon because of what happened in New York and in Washington we can't abandon our humanity. We've got to become more human. And part of being human has is to be able to

laugh cry eat drink go to baseball games and be civilized. Your most recent novel Tomcat love is a comedy. It's it's about a Casanova. How does this book follow in the wake of your past books and where are you now headed. But to me it's like my past books in the sense that yeah it's about a Casanova a man who's a liar a cheat. It's about the human heart. It's the same way a save the Viet Nam Vietnam books are not really about bombs and bullets. Military maneuver is very little that stuff in there and I don't care much about it when I do care about is the human heart our capacity for doing good in our capacity for evil and how we adjudicate these things in our lives how we justify our behaviors. This man for example and tom cat in love. I mean you could as well be I don't know the man on the street or Bill Clinton or a man who is always justifying himself you know making up

reasons for what he has done a man explaining away as evil his bad deeds even to himself. It is so my exploration of the heart is not for me limited to war or Vietnam. I'm really interested in the heart and how it mend itself after after tragedy. Tim O'Brien his work is stunning lyrical. We should have had you read some but I want to hear a lot from you. Check out his books. Totally worthwhile it's been a real joy and as one critic said I love this clear as a Minnesota lake. Thank you so much thank you for being with us and thank you for joining us. That Kolob me was thinking seriously about a career in music. As he closed in on

graduation from Burlington High School. But somewhere during his time at the University of Rochester and then Harvard Law School his violin took a backseat to a remarkable business career from Harvard Law the Korean War took Mr collage made to work at the Pentagon followed by a stint at the Civil Aeronautics Board as a trial lawyer. The airline industry took notice and USAir then Allegheny airlines lured him away from government. He stayed for 35 years working through the ranks to become president and chief executive officer from 1975 to nine hundred ninety one and as chairman of the board for most of that time. It might have been retirement time for some but it has not meant relaxation for Mr. Clodd me. He recently served as chairman of the satellite company Comsat until his retirement a year ago after a successful merger with Lockheed Martin. And this year he took on the University of Vermont to serve as interim president. Welcome back to Berlin to Mr. Klein.

It's nice to be here friend. I like to talk about the airlines industry for just a moment before we get to the university and your work there. Are the airlines going to be OK. Hopefully they will be OK but they're going to go through a terrible period of turmoil while the country reshapes how it deals with their travel bills the security of it and the economics of it. Should we as citizens be concerned about traveling by air. Absolutely not. I feel perfectly safe getting on an airplane. I think the public should. The bigger concern is the economic condition of the industry and whether it will survive with the same number of airlines being as competitive as we were before this tragedy. Well certainly your tenure at U.S. Air. It grew from a

12 million dollar company to a six point five billion dollar company. You took the corporation through mergers acquisitions labor disputes government deregulation which by the way you disagreed. All of these are enormous challenges that you dealt with clearly very well even Warren Buffett invested heavily in your airline. What do you attribute your success. Lot of luck being in the right place at the right time. My training in dealing with the public because of my background. My family were retail grocers. I learned to deal with people with an early age and that was very helpful. Being a musician playing in public that was helpful. The lot training my undergraduate training in political science. Being active in campus fairs

just getting comfortable with myself as an individual as I went through my educational process and then having some great experiences in my early years in the business. Do you have a specific management style that you use. If I have a style and I don't think anybody has one style or several styles it's hands on. Visible being around getting to know the people who run the organization. The management at the top doesn't run the organization they set the direction but they were very dependent on execution by rank and file employees all through whatever business you're in. You certainly have a reputation as a communicator and a good listener. But what do you listen for there's whining and there are legitimate gripes. Well you kind of have to separate the wheat from the chaff

there. There are people who take advantage of your ear and but that's a small price to pay. Better to listen and everybody than to turn people off selectively. But you kind of just get a feel for it. Notably are notable in your career at U.S. Airways as a 35 year employee 16 of them at the helm. How much do you attribute longevity in one place to your success. I think it's a very important factor that you're pointing to my friend Jay Warren McClure had a great saying bloom where you're planted. And I really believe that's an important factor in success in staying with the organization loyalty to the organization.

You learn a lot and the wisdom that comes from being with one business I think is very important. But some people feel you can't be loyal anymore because corporations aren't necessarily loyal to their employees. Well I hear that. And I can only speak to my own experience with my company. I was loyal to our employees sometimes to the extent that it did not benefit the company but the company is the employee and we have to recognize it. I found it interesting that you restored convocation to the University of Vermont this past fall. A ceremony that begins the school year right. To what degree is ceremony important or even a figurehead in an institution. I thought it would be important that the University of Vermont. It had not been held for

some years. If it's a gathering a coming together setting the tone for the whole year by saying we're going to have ritual to start the year and it just kind of signifies importance of what we do. And I wanted to have it. We did it. And I think our students and faculty staff all appreciate it. I enjoyed it by the way. Craze great. You've been on the board of trustees that year all the mater the University of Rochester for about a decade and you were president of the board for some three of those years. So you are certainly familiar with academia during that time. The school cut back on programs that changed its image. It had a financial problem some of these are very similar to things that you're going to have to deal with at UVM What does UVM need to do. Well first and foremost the University of Vermont which is how I

referred to it because outside of Vermont UVM is not a known name. So I like to call it the University of Vermont. Both for its own image and for the fact that it is the University of Vermont and that we have to start off recognizing we are an excellent institution and not be down on ourselves. Take pride in the fact that we have some wonderful faculty. We have some great students. We have a proud tradition a long history of service not only to the state of Vermont but outside the state. We've trained tens of thousands of people who've had successful careers and while we have always had to work very hard to deal with the financial side the university is a great institution and it is the crown jewel of

higher education in the state of Vermont. You laid off 30 700 employees in 1990 when us there wasn't some clay mantle problem. None the less your reputation has been as a gentleman on a really nice guy one. How do you do that. And do you see that you might have to do that you. Yeah. Well I certainly do not expect to have any layoffs at the university. We're faced However with the probability of a freeze on the state of our or our state appropriation for this next year which will mean a very tight budget. It will impact hiring and it certainly will leave people feeling that they won't have all

the resources they need if we don't have more people. But at this point I am not looking to the need for any layoffs. There is a trend to have academic institutions run more like businesses which causes some concern among the academic ranks. In what ways do you think that's an important tram and in what ways might the business model not be appropriate to academia. Well the difference certainly between the university and the academic side versus the business side is in business. The scorecard is profit or loss. We have shareholders the investors expect a return on the investment in the university. We don't have the same scorecard. We're not required to produce a quote profit. We should operate without loss.

But our we don't have the same stakeholders the stakeholders are the employees of the university the students and the communities we serve. So there is a difference but the university still has a lot of aspects that are business. Business is not a bad word. Business means we are doing things for people and we account for accountability and we have to be accountable on how we spend the resources of the university. You deal with numerous unions at U.S. Airways but the faculty union is something very new and very new and to be at your hands and dissipate any problems there. Well it's too early to tell whether there will be problems. It depends how you define problems will there be differences of opinion. Of course collective bargaining is all about resolving differences of opinion.

The faculty will have certain things they would like to see in an in. An agreement. Some of those things will be doable some will not be doable. The process will be time consuming it's going to take a lot of patience. At the end of the day hopefully we'll have an agreement both sides are comfortable with. There's been a lot of debate about globalization and its advantages its evils have been in the forefront recently. You've been a Director of some major corporations including Gulf oil PNC Bank Lockheed Martin. Do you think recent events have changed or will change the corporate mission or climates and in any way. Any time you restrict the normal flow of people goods services yes it will have an

impact when people are fearful of travel. It will impact globalization to some extent but the pendulum for the long term will swing back to what the world requires which is great interaction between peoples from all parts of the world. There are no certainties However when you're dealing with economics and where in globalization but there are going to be many pressures to protect our industries at home particularly in this time. I guess another it's good for corporations focusing just on the stockholders. Or are there as you said Stott

stakeholders in the university are there other stakeholders as well from the corporate point of view the common man seems to think that corporations might not be thinking so much about the common man. Let's hear it with your take on with any business that has a long term vision producing a service or product or technology whatever has to have a view of all of that stakeholders. It will not be successful just focusing on making a profit. Certainly not making a profit at the expense of having employees who are treated fairly. Being able to hire and retain the minds that are bright able and necessary for the business cannot be just looking at the bottom line. Youve got to be broader than that.

You have dealt with the threat of hostile takeovers and union strikes huge losses and tremendous gains and yet you managed or seemingly managed to sail through them all through some problems that would certainly take lesser men down. How do you deal with stress. Well number one have a good family life which I've been blessed with a great wife and terrific children and a couple of grandchildren. I like to relax. Very important to get my sleep. Normally I've slept very well even during stressful periods and I just the ability to make decisions and get them off your plate very critical you can't stew or round about every problem indefinitely. Not every decision will be absolutely the best one but

it isn't always necessary to make the best decision. A decision is sometimes the best thing you can do and you make it work. What comes to mind as one of your toughest decisions that was really tough to to move off your plate. Well certainly deciding to take us there into being a major player in the airline industry was a tough decision. Deciding to be an expansionist airline growing the airline and do a national player was a tough decision because we had to develop all the resources that we didn't have to make it work and doing mergers as part of that particularly with Piedmont Airlines and PSA in the late 80s was a was a major step for us.

And I think that was as tough a decision in many ways as any I've made. But you felt it was the right decision. Absolutely. Going back to your boyhood here in Vermont and in Burlington a favorite memory of your time. Walking to school to Adams school and being able to go home for lunch and just growing up in a wonderful small town. I mean this was a wonderful place to grow up. I had a good violin teacher. He was a professor at the University of Vermont and during my high school days I was a player in the University of Vermont orchestra so I had lots of opportunities to do things that many young people never get. Do you still play.

I do not. Unfortunately my family says I should take it up again. I will need a padded cell in which to do it so they don't hear it. Even though most of your life of course has been spent in Washington D.C. How has being a Vermonter contributed to who you were or you think. I think it's given me a sense of appreciation of beauty. Growing up in an area of the world which is as beautiful as any that I've been to and certainly gave me the chance to get a good education. We have had a wonderful educational system in the elementary and high school in Burlington and that was terrific. Just the whole environment walking down Church Street you know knowing the local shops.

It's a little different now different now. Yes Church Street is different. What are some specific things you're excited about moving or shifting at the University of Vermont. We need a 10 year plan to look downstream and where the university is going to be for the long term. And I want to get the development of that plan underway. We need to be looking at our total academic program for the long term. What should be added to the university. What should be taken away. How do we enhance the academic resources. How do we enhance and enrich the student experience. How do we provide the physical resources and buildings and labs that are required. How do we enhance our image in the state of Vermont

and in the country as a whole to be recognized as a great university. All of these things are part of it. What I would like to see develop during my tenure here. How do you find working in this educational environment is different from working in a corporate environment is it more or less complex is it just different issues or do you find it very similar now. There are similarities and certainly a lot of differences. The university is a very complex organization with lots of moving parts. Governance is quite different with the board of trustees which is made up of public representatives from the legislative side. We operate in the sunshine for the most part with the press sitting through our discussions.

We do not have. As firm a pyramid of control we have a totally different type of control because the academic side is very much controlled separately of the office of the president tries. In my case certainly not fear with the academic side. To permit our provost to be the chief of that operation. I think the university as a whole however still has to deal with money coming in and money going out and we need to account for it and we need to know how we spend it and we need to allocate the resources in a businesslike fashion. So there are a lot of similarities in that regard. If you are looking at at the financial situation I

mean clearly I was interested in your connection with Warren Buffett and us there because he's not going to invest in something that doesn't have fabulous management. How do you look for people of that caliber for the University of Vermont. Where do you begin. Right now you you begin by looking at people that you know who might be interested in joining the team at the university. You also have to look at what is available in the national markets through the use of search firms if you're doing a search for a major position in the university. We use search firms for academic positions for deans. We use search for administrative positions.

People who come here have got to be wanting to be part of a and then student in the state of Vermont. They've they've got to appreciate the values of this area and appreciate that it is different. It isn't New York City or Washington D.C.. This is an interim position for you. You will take it on until you don't. What what is next for you. Clearly it's not the question. What what are you looking for in your future. Good question. Frankly I don't know yet. Wait and see what might come along the pike and. But I will be active somewhere I have and hopefully have the experience I have here. I will be able to

utilize in some fashion. I'm sure you will and speaking of that have you gotten calls in the last couple of weeks from either corporations or the airline industry I would think that your advices is invaluable at this time of crisis in the nation. No I've gotten calls from media but no I have not been in touch with the people who are currently dealing with the airline crisis. I've been away from it for 10 years and I think there's so many others who are there on the scene they're probably getting more advice than they need. Well at Clonaid thank you so much for being here I wish you all the best in your work at the university and so good luck. Thanks friend. Thanks Joy and being part of the scene of her hate. And thank you for joining us on profile.