Radio Times; George Carlin and Barnes Foundation Conflict

The early 1970s, her findings that divorce can be devastating for children, have become an important part of court policies surrounding divorce, but states are still debating how to best serve the needs of children of divorced parents. That story plus all the days news, later today on NPR's All Things Considered. And that's this afternoon at 4 o'clock right here on 91 FM in Philadelphia. I'm Marty Moss, co-ain, don't go away, radio times is coming up next. George Carlin has been performing for almost 40 years, bringing his biting brand of humor to the stage and screen. He joins us in the first hour radio time today to talk about his career and his new book with the poetic title, Brain Dropings. Then it's artscape on radio times and we focus on the dispute between the Barnes Foundation and its neighbors in Lower Marion. We'll be joined by Barnes Foundation President Richard Glanton and neighbors lawyer James Greenfield at issue zoning, parking, civil rights and defamation suits, and a world class art collection.

Two full hours, give us a call after the news from National Public Radio. From National Public Radio News in Washington, I'm Carol Castle. President Glanton speaks today to day long symposium on juvenile violence. Aides say he plans to repeat his call for a ban on young felons owning handguns. The president also wants guns to have trial safety locks. The meeting in Washington was opened this morning by Attorney General Janet Reno. She urged Congress to allocate more money to help rehabilitate juvenile offenders. For too long now, I've heard people say you provide the resources up front for police, but you don't provide the resources for police and courts. And juvenile judge after juvenile judge has said to me, I think I know what to do with

the kids that I get in my court. I just don't have the resources to do it. Congress remains deadlocked over disaster relief, Democrats and Republicans are divided over a spending bill that includes billions of dollars in assistance to 35 states hit by natural disasters in pure Elizabeth Arnold reports. Senate Democrats' man telephones and computers last night in a public relations effort to keep the focus on disaster relief. With video and computer hookups, senators from North and South Dakota and other states waiting for the assistance spoke with local residents and relief workers about their pressing needs. Earlier, Democrats had effectively stopped all legislative business by blocking consideration of anything but the relief bill. Republicans, meanwhile, haven't decided on how best to proceed. Some advocates sending the bill, but President Clinton backed the White House as is without removing controversial provisions. Others are looking for a compromise, especially Republicans from states hit hard by recent

flooding. In the House, South Dakota Republican John Thune pleaded with his colleagues to, quote, let's do something so that people can get on with their lives. I'm Elizabeth Arnold at the Capitol. Authorities in Georgia have arrested a former soldier and accused her of taking part in a spy ring that passed classified defense information to Hungarian and Czechoslovakian communist 10 years ago. Joshua Leves, a member station W-A-B-E, reports from Atlanta. This is the fourth arrest, and the U.S. Army's 10-year probe of alleged espionage ring, Kelly Terese Warren, faces a three-count indictment for conspiracy to aid a foreign government and gathering or delivering classified defense information. Warren did mostly clerical work at the Army's 8th Infantry Division headquarters in Germany between 1986 and 1988. The 8th Infantry helped prepare Western Europe's defense strategy in case of an attack from Warsaw Pact countries.

Its documents reportedly dealt with the possible use of nuclear arms by the U.S. and NATO. Warren is suspected of helping sell those documents to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, who shared information with the Soviet KGB. For National Public Radio, I'm Joshua Leves reporting. This is NPR News. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial averages up 25.54 to 7564.38 trading as moderate, the NASDAQ composite index is down 0.60 to 1,4001.09. Attorneys for a convicted Oklahoma City bomber Temathimik-Vey say that they will wrap up their presentation today in the sentencing phase of his trial. This means that jurors could start deciding later this week what sentence to impose on McVey. They will sentence him to death or life in prison. Medicare patients enrolled in health insurance maintenance organizations are less likely to have cataracts removed than those in traditional health plans. NPR's Patrician Name and Reports on the Study in this week's Journal of the American

Medical Association. Researchers from UCLA and the Rand Corporation looked at about 110,000 Medicare beneficiaries who lived in Southern California. They found those in traditional plans were twice as likely to have cataracts removed as those in HMOs. Earlier studies show HMOs managed costs and surgery more strictly, and in fact do less procedures like heart bypass surgery and cardiac catheterization. At the same time, studies show these procedures are often unnecessarily done in traditional health plans. Researchers say the results of this cataract study demonstrate the need for research that examines why some patients get surgery and others don't. And they question financial incentives in different health plans that might entice doctors to recommend or not recommend surgery. I'm Patrician Name and Reporting. The new Executive Director of the Christian Coalition is Randy Tate. He will succeed Ralph Reed when he steps down from the post on September 1st.

Coalition President Pat Robertson plans to announce Tate's appointment today in Washington. Tate is the Conservative Washington State Republican. This is a National Public Radio News from Washington. Philadelphia Weekly supports 91 FM. Philadelphia Weekly provides comprehensive arts and news coverage every Wednesday and is distributed at more than 3,000 locations throughout the Delaware Valley. For more information, 215-563-7400. I'm Marty Moss, Cohen, and welcome to Radio Times. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. Good evening. My name is George Carlin, and I am a professional comedian. As opposed to the kind you run into at work all day long. It's nice being a comedian. There are certain advantages, naturally. And a few disadvantages.

There are some drawbacks to being a comedian. No one on death row has ever said, before I die, I want to talk to a comedian. Do you hear anyone at the scene of an accident say, quick call a comedian for God's sakes? But it would be kind of fun at an accident to push you away through the crowd and say, may I be of help? I'm a professional comedian. And sooner or later, at least once in your life, when the policeman says to you, what are you, a comedian? You've got to look him right in the eye and say, actually, yes. comedian George Carlin says that three sources have fed his stand-up routines over the years. Carlin is the little world of everyday life, idle thoughts, relationships, pets, food.

One is the big world of politics, social issues, war, race, death. And the third is the English language and all the words and phrases and sayings we use and misuse every day. Carlin has been doing stand-up since the early 60s, performing at coffee houses and folk clubs, and later on TV, where his hippie-dippy weatherman and other bits earned him a devoted following. He soon began to feel the constrictions of TV and the culture. And in the early 1970s, his humor took on a more political edge. He got arrested in Milwaukee in 1972 for his now-famous, seven words you can never use on television. That led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling which upheld the FCC ban on offensive material. That ruling didn't slow George Carlin down. He's released 18 comedy albums, one two Grammys and two Cable Ace Awards, appeared in nine movies, had his own TV sitcom, and has had 10 HBO comedy specials. He's also managed to find time to write a new book and it's called Brain Dropings.

He joins us today on Radio Time to talk about comedy and his career and George Carlin. Good morning and welcome, Radio Time. Thanks for having me on here. You're very welcome. To our listeners, 215-923-2774-215-923-2774, I was watching you listen to yourself from that Carnegie Hall tape. You think you're funny? Oh yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, I make myself laugh, you know, if not out loud all the time. I do laugh at my, when I'm writing and I hit something really good, I kind of know it. And that's a sign that you've hit, you've hit the right thing if you can make yourself laugh. Yeah, well, or if it's just a good, at least a deep appreciation, it may not be a real laugh, but if I say, yeah, that's it, that's right, that's where it should be. And I'm usually right because I'm no one that has to do it. Right. You've got your start in radio, and I wonder if you still think that radio has a kind of freedom that perhaps even performing on the stage or certainly on television doesn't have? Well, I don't know about that. There's an intimacy with radio that's, you know, missing from the stage, of course,

but I don't know. When I started in radio, I was a top 40 disc jockey. I was a teenager, late teenager at the time. Top 40 was just beginning, so was rock and roll. So it was an auspicious time to be a young DJ, play in the music that you were making out to that same night, and promising a girl you'd play a song for her and dedicate it to her back then. That's a lot of power back then. I got you a lot of things. So I don't know the answer to your question, except that radio has changed so much. And even what used to be a wonderfully free form, you used to call it underground radio, the FM's. They're all run by these corporate consultants now, and it's everything in this whole world, much less country, is just sort of one big corporate formula now. One big logo. Were you hoping to change that because, certainly, your comedy has always been very political. You've always gone after things like organized religion or big business. Yeah.

No, never hoping to change anything. It's two enjoyable ways. I mean, I just... What would you laugh about, right? Yeah. You say it or I'm not a person who I'm not a reformer, I don't care about these things. I've really divorced myself from this species a long time ago, and from this culture. So I have no emotional attachment, and therefore I have a really artistic freedom to be fully critical without worrying about some issue that I'm interested in. I noticed a lot of these comedians, this happened to me about, I guess, in the last six or eight years, that a lot of political or social comedians seem to have implicitly in their work, this plea, that if only we could all get together in whole hands and chant in the park and vote for certain bills, everything would be all right. Now, I don't believe that at all. I don't think anything's ever going to be all right. I think we have all the wrong things in front of us now, so I just sort of root for the demise of the civilization, but in a slow and entertaining fashion so that I can enjoy it.

So when you say you don't care, did you have to go through a process of learning not to care? Did you care once? Well, we all have a period at least in our lives, some are more extended than others of thinking that we might save the world. What we find out, some of us find out, is that the world will not cooperate in this idea. Some continue to bang their heads against the wall forever. Some people work different ways. Some are in the courts using their skills with the law to change things, other people get into public life and some are in the street hurling fire bombs. And some of us, even at that point, when I did sort of have a stake in it, try to work by just letting our ideas float down and see what happens. What do you hope that your comedy, though, accomplishes, is it just to make people laugh? That's really the only goal I have, is to entertain them and to sing my song. The first feeling for doing any of this sort of thing, I believe, whether it's playing the piano or painting pictures or running poetry, is that you have something to express,

ineffable, something you can't quite put your finger on. So you say, hey folks, look at this. Watch me. Where do you see what I do? And whether you're passing your paintings around or you're reciting things from a stage, it's essentially a show off situation. And I think, secondly, if what you have to offer has some value or use to another person because of their particular circumstance, then that's a dividend and that's nice and that's good. But you can never begin by aiming for that. You can't say, I have a message here, folks, because then you're dead. You might as well just, you know, you might as well write newspaper articles. Well, do you ever want it to be popular, to be liked, to be quoted? I mean, all the stuff that comes with being on the stage and being well-known for being on the stage. Well, I think what I wanted to be was a famous person. I mean, I think that was at the beginning of my aspirations to be. I wrote it up once in a humorous fashion. I said, all I ever wanted to be was a really famous, well-known celebrity that everyone

recognized. Right. And if I could be that, then I'd worry about how I did it. But it was always a case of, yeah, having some little song to sing and wanting people to not just, you know, they say that the one definition of success is doing something you love, doing it well and being recognized for it. So when they pat you on the head and say, isn't he a clever little boy? My, that is so clever. You really puff up and it draws you to this procedure, you know, of entertaining because you feel the approval. And even at the age of 60, you feel that it just quote you a little boy kind of puffing up and please say, oh, yeah, it's, there's nothing, when I'm writing and I'm getting ready to, I'm putting together something that I know I'm going to use during the next year and it's going to be part of my next HBO show and it has a kind of large scope to it. Like I have a, I have a long piece about men and women that I would love to get into this next show.

And it's very, it's very, it's almost completely written. It needs more work. It needs a little more humor in it because I ran away with the ideas first. But when I write things like that, I look at them and the feeling I'm getting is wiggly here this way, I tell them this one, they're going to love this and I'm going to feel so good saying this. So, so that's the feeling it still has to do with show and tell. We know what's dangerous and exciting about humor, of course, is, is the nastiness to it. There's that famous, I never know who says this, but you know, you slip on a banana peel that's comedy. Yeah. That's tragedy, the idea that someone else is misfortune can be used for humor. Do you find that fine line? Well, my, my aim is usually against, well, you see that there are so many things I, different things I try to do. You mentioned the three areas I draw from. So there's innocence and whimsy and a childlike approach to the world and some of my work. There is also a very adult season skepticism which some people call cynicism.

Some people see it as anger, I see it as sort of just a real discontent with things and I'm feeling a betrayal in the part of my fellow humans. I really think this species had a chance at one time with a, with a number of great gifts it was given including this marvelous brain and we've wound up seeking salad shooters and sneakers with lights in them and mergers and you know, and stock options and all of these, all of these sort of superficial things necessary, I understand, but superficial really in the big scheme. And so, so I'm very disappointed in this and, and it comes out as a kind of anger, it's in impatience and so, so I, I don't worry much, I don't have many individual targets because what I did was to, I found, I didn't do this intentionally, I discovered about myself one day there somewhere along the way that I'm very good about individuals, I don't have a whole lot of complaints to make about people one by one and when I meet them, I connect fairly well with them and I kind of, if I can get a little grand with this, I, I often

say you can look in the eyes of a person and see the hologram for the whole human race because of all the potential we have, but then I see people in groups when I see these individuals clotting when I see 3, 5, 10, 15, 150, whatever it is, they start having little hats and little arm bands and they have slogans and marching songs and in a little list of people they don't like and, and it gets ugly because groups rob the individual of the, of the beauty, that people surrender their beauty to the group mind. So you're not a misanthrope? No, no, I'm not because in one by one, I, I, I think men, and I use that in the, the old fashioned, large M sense that I, I don't think has to be changed, are, are, I think, wondrous creatures, but it's this, this, when they, boy, they get together and they say, what do you want to do tonight? You know, that's going to get dangerous. Well, actually, the last little brain dropping in your book here is called Killer Comic and this is sort of what we're talking about.

You write comedies, nature has two sides, everyone wants a good time and a couple of laughs and of course, the comic wants to be known as a real funny guy, but the language of comedy is fairly grim and violent. It's filled with punchlines, gags and slapsticks, after all, what does a comic worry about the most? Dying. He doesn't want to die. I don't want to die. Boy, I was dying out there. It was a morgue. It was like death out there, but the interesting twist on it is, if he succeeds, if he doesn't die out there and he does well, he can turn around and say, I killed them. Yeah, that's fine. I killed him. This is what warfare? I mean, it's time. It's life and death because it is a high-wire act stand-up comedy. You're out there alone. The only thing you have going for you is you're holding the microphone and you have these ideas in your head that you've memorized presumably and you're only as good as the last few moments. You know, a singer can wait three, four, five minutes for approval every time and they're going to get some polite applause regardless of people even didn't like this one. But the comedian is depending on a spontaneous reaction which people can't fake and it has to happen every five or ten seconds and once you've missed three or four of them in

a row, the audience knows that they begin to smell it and it makes everyone uncomfortable and it's harder to dig out. And what do they smell? A dying carcass? Yeah, the fear. They flop sweat and the embarrassment of someone else doing poorly in public. They feel that. George Carlin is our guest today on Radio Times and he's just written a book. It's called Brain Droppings and it's full of his ideas about comedy and life and people, the world, two, one, five, nine, two, three, two, seven, seven, four. If you'd like to talk to George Carlin today on Radio Times, two, one, five, nine, two, three, two, seven, seven, four, I should add that he will be at borders in Marlton, New Jersey at six o'clock tonight and that's at or en route 73 going south. Sign in books. Sign in books. Let's go to Kenny and Kenny's calling us from Ardmore. Hi Kenny, you're on Radio Times. Hi, thank you very much. I love George Carlin. I'm just cracking up listening to him here. I've been his fan for many, many years and I caught his, I guess, his latest HBO special and I thought, not only is he great, but he's even greater than he used to be and it just

got me thinking about the lack of talent that at least I see from time to time on television. People of the George Carlin caliber and the sort of smarmy comedian type humor that you see in the shows that are on TV and I guess I wanted to hear from George. Where's the next generation of George Carlin's coming from? Who's going to develop this talent? Where do they have a chance to be seen and heard the way you did earlier in your career? Obviously, I guess I saw you when I was much younger when there were still variety shows on television. They're not there anymore. Yeah, Kenny. When you decide not to entertain us anymore, where do we go? Go ahead George Carlin. First of all, there are some things that you have to keep in mind or at least I do when I think about this thing. I have a kind of, not the usual kind of career. When I began, I wanted to take my comedy and have it bring me into the movies or bring me into the sitcom world.

This was in the mid-60s when I first got hot. The idea was once you get hot, you parlay that into a show of your own or a movie career. That was my goal. I found out at the time I couldn't act very well. I was really lost. So I was forced through a series of circumstances to stay with my comedy. I went through my changes and around 1970 got a little more personal and political and continued my comedy. But without the other career to go to, I was forced to be out on the road 100 and 150, 200 days a year, writing material, working all the time. Because my personality is such that I would not want, I didn't want to kind of stand on my past. I wanted to always be moving somewhere with new things, new ideas and growing. I kept coming up with new material, so I've done these 10 HBO shows. Now most careers don't take that shape. Most comedians who have good potential as stand-ups are running to that sitcom and that movie career, and you can't blame them. But they're not forced to go out and develop their art, to develop their craft the way I was.

So it's going to be the rare, it's going to be the exception to the rule who emerges and is a strong enough comedian, has enough vision of material and everything that he or she wants to stay with it for a long period of time and develop it. That's what it takes. Is there any replacement then for that live audience experience when that stand-up comedian is there a loan on a stage in front of maybe 50 people, maybe 50,000 people? Is there any way of re-create that experience somewhere? No, the interesting thing about comedy is it's one of the few things you can't practice alone. You can practice the lines, memorizing them and maybe even the way you want to shade them. But you'll never know the results until you're doing it for real. That's why people will often try things out on loved ones and family members and so forth. But no, the dance between the comedian and the audience is very special. It's the only art form and it is that besides being entertainment, there's art involved. It's the only art form I know of where the practitioner delivers the material to the

audience and at the time of delivery, the audience has a vote in how the shape of the material will turn out. It's true democracy. Yeah, it's really a painting, poem, composition, anything. Those are all separated by time and space from the audience. But this is creativity. Usually, even though you've written it and memorized it, there's a degree of freedom within the performance that is determined by the listener. Thank you, Kenny. Thanks, Kenny. Keep on trucking. OK, thanks. Thanks, Kenny. Can you feel an audience vibe, I mean, even as you enter the stage, you've done so many performances over years. Can you feel that as you go out? This is going to be good. This is not going to be good. Well, a lot has to do with the shape of the house. How well you can hear the audience. Some places, the sounds they make get swallowed up into the roof of the place. The acoustics are designed strictly to go one way.

Smaller places, the little place, the grand opera house in Wilmington is a terrific little venue because you hear them so well. It's like being in a living room. But generally, yeah, at my stage, and for some time now, I've had a pre-sold audience. I mean, I'm not trying to prove myself so much as just show them I have some more stuff for them. So they come there predisposed to like what I do for the most part, most of them. Some of them have been dragged along, maybe by a mate or a spouse. But generally, they let me feel very welcome and sort of give me a license and I take full advantage of it. I read that early on in your career, perhaps one of the first times you actually did stand up was before an audience of nobody. Yeah, down in Baltimore, he's just a baller. There's Dan Boomer, he's on a cure, sitting on a cure. There was a club called The Blue Dog Inn. And it was brand new. It was a brand new club.

The guy opened it on the July 4th weekend, which is not very bright. When everyone leaves town, right? When everyone leaves town, right? Yeah, sure. Yeah, and he didn't do any publicity or PR work or anything. And the place was empty at a 30-thig-guy looked at me and he said, okay show time. And I said, yeah, well, nobody's here, you know, and he said, I know. In case someone comes in, I want them to know there's a show going on. So I did the show for a waiter and a waitress and a bartender, and it was a very quick show. I bet it was. Very quick, yes. About 12 minutes shorter than usual. I read that you really admire Danny K. Well as a child I did. I admired that vocal facility and his face. The faces he made, the accents and things, I thought he was terrific. But as is true in life, all things are not what you think. When I was a little boy, I collected autographs. I would go around to the theaters in New York after school, into the radio networks, and I knew the times of the shows and when the guys were coming and leaving. So I waited around the Roxy, either the Roxy or Radio City.

I think it was the Roxy for Danny K, who was really if I had anyone I could call an idol or a hero. And I don't like those words necessarily, but they are useful. He would be the one. When I waited in the rain, I was the only one at the stage door. It wasn't like there was a crowd there. Waited, maybe an hour or something and he pulled up in a taxi and just went right in past me. And I don't do that. I don't sign. So that took care of that. Right. That took care of Danny K. Right. And I've always, he's always been suspect in my mind with this unicep stuff. I see him with kids. I say how much can he care about those kids? How much of that is for his own ego and to make himself look good and how much does he care about those kids? So you have to, you have to look, you have to look carefully at things. Well, are you careful coming and going places if people want your autographs? I don't think I've ever had to turn anyone down except if I was in an extreme hurry and I really had to make a plane or something, but I've always been pleasant about it if I had to. And it's very rare that I do.

Do you like doing it? I do. I think it's a part of the deal. I think once you stand up in front of people and say, look at me, well, whatever attention comes your way, you've asked for it. I don't think you have the right to then get surly and be saying to people, you know, I'd listen, I don't have time for these people, can't we go in the back door and just skip all of this? I don't think that's part of the deal. And the autograph is a piece of you. That's what people want. Yeah, it's a connection. And it's a big moment for the person who's asking, you know, you might sign 10 of them in a day or more or whatever. And that person may get one autograph a year or maybe one, not even care about any others than yours. So they're going to tell 100 people about it. And if nothing else for your own self, you know, interest, you want to have a good story to 100 people, not a crappy story. Let's go to Anne from Center City, Philadelphia. Hi, Anne, you're on radio time. Hi, Marty. Hi, George. Hi, how are you? Good, thanks. I love listening to you, Todd, because I really appreciate your openness and your honest ness. Thank you.

You're welcome. And I found it to be extremely interesting to hear you actually vocalize that really your goal was to become a famous person. You don't hear many poets or musicians, you know, or actors get up there and say, you know, I wanted to be a famous person. I didn't know exactly what it was going to be. So I found that to be interesting. You sort of answered it with Kenny, but I was wondering if there was that one thing that you were sort of leaning towards that you might have hoped would take precedence over being a comedian that you wanted to be a success in. Well, when I was in fifth grade, I wrote, we had to write a little autobiography. I think fifth grade is a good time for summing up. So the last page of it was what I want to do with my life or something like that. And mine said, when I grow up, I'd like to be, I won't get these things in the original order, but I said I'd like to be an actor, comedian, impersonator, radio announcer, disc jockey, or trumpet player. So it's clear that I was just looking to stand up and have people.

People say it's any wonderful. But if I were to have had the way I planned it as a little boy, and I had a plan when I was 11, and that was that I would start in radio, and that that would lead me to comedy, and that that would lead me to the movies, the Danny K thing. Now I called the Danny K thing being an actor. And over the years, I took on this mission of wanting to be an actor. And what I really only meant as a child was to be a funny guy in the movies. There's a little difference. So actor became the focal point. And then when I got to that stage and discovered I was completely unequipped for it, and that it wasn't second nature, and it was not my birthright, I was greatly disappointed. Now since that time, I have learned a little more about myself, and I have a little more composure, and a little more ability to look inside myself. And I've done a few things in acting now that I'm rather proud of, and I could do more, I hope to do more. But it's no longer the burning deal. It's just a sideline.

Well, I know you went to a Catholic school, and I wonder how the nuns thought about actor, comedian, impersonator, radio announcer, trumpet player, was that what they had in mind for you? Well, it was a very unusual school. It was an experimental Catholic school started in the 1930s in New York called Corpus Christie. It was a diocesan school, one of the parishes, a parish school, like all the others. But very different. We had a pastor, George Ford, who wanted to experiment. You see, we were physically situated right across the street from Columbia University, in particular, Teachers College, on 121st, and that's where John Dewey expounded all of his theories on progressive education. Well, Father Ford was a devotee of John Dewey's theories, and wanted to have the diocese's experiment with one school where things would be different, and it wouldn't be like those discipline mills. So in my Catholic grammar school, we had special nuns from Wisconsin, Cincinnati, Dominicans. He insisted that they all be women who had received master's degrees from secular institutions. He didn't want them coming out of Catholic universities.

Wanted to secularly train nuns. We had no capital, no capital punishment. That's interesting. No corporal punishment. They couldn't touch you. They didn't want you. They were too nice. And there were no grades or marks of any kind. We had no report cards. Wow. Lucky you. Yeah. It was wonderful because there was none of this artificial competition with other people. We did have tests at the end of the year that you were graded on. Were you a good student? I was good. I mean, I grasped material very quickly, and then I was a bad student. I mean, I was good at the work. Good at the work. Yeah. I was disruptive influence. And the other thing about the school was that all the desks were movable. It wasn't that grid pattern of bolted down desk, but they were movable. And that's kind of a metaphor for the mobility of the mind that they gave us, because we had different arrangements of desks every couple of weeks. You had different, we called them neighbors. These are your new neighbors. And everything we did in school was open to discussion, all the lessons. And we were audited by these doctoral candidates from the Teachers College of Columbia who had

heard of this experiment. And all through my eight grades of grammar school, we had adults, civilians, standing at the back of the room watching what we did, which we thought was the norm. Well, it must have been a rude awakening to get to the brothers and priests in first year high school. Right. Because one of the reasons I left school. Yeah, you left school in what grade? After ninth grade. I had nine, nine full years, and then I said, that's it. And you're not teaching what I want. I'll see you later. And what did you do after that? Ninth grade? How were you? To quit school, you have to be 16. So I went for six months to a public school where I didn't attend a single day. I just played hooky for six months. Got to be 16 and quit. Worked for a year at Western Union in an office called Plant and Engineering as a junior clerk, as a 17 year old, and then went in the Air Force. Because my plan was to use the Air Force to accelerate my life, to get my draft obligation out of the way, get the GI Bill, learn to be a disc jockey.

That was my plan. That would be a DJ, and then they can't stop me. You were a planner. Anil from the Word Go. George Carlin is our guest today on Radio Times. Joined us today, of course, to talk about comedy, his life, his career. And he's got a new book. It's the world according to George Carlin, and it's called Brain Dropings. One open line at 2159-2327-74. Let's go to Chris, who's calling us from Winwood. Hi, Chris. Good morning, Chris. Good morning. I really enjoyed your work all these years. Thank you. I had a curiosity listening, and that was, where did we first see on TV and what was the inspiration for the hippie-dippy weather, me? How did I know that was it? Yeah. Well, the first times would have been, he also had another life besides being out sleep to hippie-dippy weatherman for one season, one summer season. He was also Al Pouch, the hippie-dippy mailman. And that was on a show, John Davidson hosted in the summer of 66 called Craft Summer Music

Hall. It took Andy Williams' place that summer. John Davidson and I, and I was the resident writer and the comic each week. We had guests also, Richard Pryor guested, Flip Wilson guested. And I came out as the mailman, Al Pouch, once a week, and gave John the bogus mail that I had written jokes about. So he was actually created prior to that, back in the early 60s when I was still doing folk rooms and coffee houses, and that would be his genesis. Thanks for calling, Chris. Have you had a kind of comedian's version of Writer's Block? I mean, gone through here. No, never. I'm thrilled. I'm happy to say, you know, I just have an excess of things. I have many, many ideas. I have a kind of an active mind, and I've trained it, I guess, without trying real hard. I've sort of trained my mind to do a lot of the work, to seek these patterns that I find that are useful to me.

The ability to take ordinary observations that are maybe interesting and then turn them into what's funny, use, you know, to use what I think of as marvelous language, to find the right words, to make it kind of sing. That's just a talent, a skill, you know, that is like, I guess, playing the violin, something you come by and you develop it. What do you have notebooks, file cabinets, is there a way that you organize this anal part of it? Yes. I have a lot of it now in the computer, but there are still maybe 40% of what I've developed over the years is still in hard, hard copy form, little slips of paper, but they are organized and categorized. I always say, my job is making little piles out of the big pile, and then taking the little piles and making other big piles out of them, and some of my art, but I do, I mean, I've always collected them and I've always faithfully classified them. Jerry, you're on radio times. Hey, George. Hello, Jerry. How the devil did you ever get on Shining Time Station? Well, and if I could follow that with another question quickly and I'll go off the air.

What do you feel about that? I mean, it's such a tremendous contrast between what you normally do in Shining Time Station. Have a good day, George. Thanks, Jerry. The answer to the second part is, and when I first started promoting Shining Time Station, these presumptuous kind of television writers would say to me, now how can you know what? How can someone with these dirty words and this filthy language and all this irreverence, how can you turn around, and I said, well, maybe this is a good opportunity for parents to teach their children that people have more than one facet, that we do have different dimensions all of us, and some of them go and develop. Here I saw an opportunity to show another side of myself, to show a gentler, a more innocent part of me, that is authentic, and I looked down it as a good acting opportunity, because I had already done a few things where I had done a very hot character in one movie and I had done a very, very cool character, and I thought this was a chance to show some more colors, and so I looked at it that way, and because the production values that they

adhere to are so great, I mean, they really care about the quality I felt comfortable, and the reason they found me, excuse me, I'm swallowing, it was just that the Brit Allcroft who owns the project just liked my voice, thought I'd be a good voice for the Thomas the Tank Engine stories, and by extension, that I would make a good Mr. Conductor, so I took Ringo Starr's place, which makes me the anti-peat best, how many people can say that? Have you always cared about language and words? I mean, even as a kid, and wanting people to use language in a meaningful way? Well, I don't know if that second part is, you know, I don't even know if that describes me now, it's more like a critical side of my nature to point out mistakes, especially when they're made by people who are speaking for a living, the news media, you would look for a good example there when you don't get it, it's more fun to attack them, I don't

bother individuals about their speech, but my mother always, you know, let's bring over the dictionary, let's look that up, but one time I came home, I used to bring her newspaper, her world telegram and son in New York, I used to give her her newspaper when she'd come home from work, and I gave her the newspaper once, and she said, oh thank you, I'll peruse this, and you know, whatever, so I said, peruse, what does that mean peruse? She said, well, let's look it up, so I looked it up, and then the next night when I gave her her newspaper, I said, here mom, peruse this newspaper, and she said, well, I'll give it a cursory glance, and I was right back to the dictionary, so that was the practice in our heart. That's great, did you have funny parents? I mean, was... They were both very fun, I didn't know my father, he actually was the national advertising manager of the Philadelphia Bulletin for a while before he went to New York and became the same thing at the New York Sun, but yes, my mother managed the New York office of Philadelphia Bulletin, and that's how they met, he was a salesman who would come up to

New York to make national sales, and she was running that office in New York, so that's how they met, they're both very funny, gifted, both had that Irish gift to gab, and that great sense of humor, and could tell a story, in fact he was a well-known public speaker in his era, he won a lot of awards for public speaking. But you weren't close. He was asked to leave early because he couldn't metabolize ethanol, we saw that he had trouble metabolizing ethanol and it turned him into a bully, so we packed our little stuff and went. We meaning you and your mom. And my brother, I was two months old, he was five years, she went out a window, down the fire escape and threw the backyards with an infant in her arms in the dramatic, and we ran away to the country. George Carlin is our guest today on radio times, a couple of open lines at 2159-2327-7474 if you'd like to get in on the conversation. We have Jeff, who's calling us from Marlton, New Jersey. Hi, Jeff. Hello, Mr. Carlin. I have enjoyed you for years. Thank you. You remember seeing you live when you were out in Hawaii in the late 70s or early 80s.

You did a bid out there that has always intrigued me. It was one where you were placed two words, one of them was killed and another one, you can't mention on the radio. Right. And we've got some competition here, Jeff. Yeah, I got an assistant here. Shining time is over. That's right, that's right. That routine was part of a concert that I believe it would have been the second HBO show, The Phoenix Show, and it was the idea, you know, we talk about sex and violence and we're really preoccupied with sex and we do enjoy our violence. So it was fun to substitute the word kill for the word for fornication and play with that. Yeah, and it made it sort of had a lesson in it, I guess. So I guess speaking of the word fornication, it would be silly to not talk to you about the seven words that of course got you in trouble. This was back in Milwaukee in 1972. Were you looking for trouble?

I mean, did you, were you looking to test the water, test the water, say, you know, come and get me? No, not at all. I just knew that I did, I did these, see, I was doing that routine on stage for a year, so I would know nothing happening. The reason it happened in Milwaukee is because it was an outdoor event and the sound wasn't completely contained in the venue I was working, so it spilled over into the fair where people were there with their children, so the police get very protective at times like that. The arrest was actually for disorderly conduct. It was thrown out as soon as they had a judge who came in rotation who understood the first amendment, but that was not the case that went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court case emanated from a New York radio station, a list of their supported station WBAI. They played a record of the routine. One person complained, it was a professional moralist. He complained FCC, find a station, station refused, went to court, they won the first round, FCC went to the Supreme Court and the FCC won in 1978, 1978 and a five to four decision that

these words were indecent. That was the new word because everything previous to that had been obscenity and this didn't qualify, just indecent. And that was, of course, the word that we still use today, I mean, it's interesting to think what happens to language, I mean, today you certainly can listen to cable and you hear all those words that you got in trouble for, but at the same time there is this kind of overlay of political correctness, of using words that have almost no punch, no meaning to them. Well, what's interesting to me is that some newspapers will print F blank, blank, blank. Now what is a person supposed to make of that? You obviously know what the word is, so the thing you're reading has conveyed that idea to your mind, which is all languages for. Nothing has changed except they left out three letters. The whole effect of it is the same.

It's the same with this bleepen stuff when you see it in the sports. He said he was no bleepen good. Well, everyone knows exactly what was said. So what is, you know, who is protected, who is helped? It's just manners, they think, and it's superstition, largely. It really stems from religion and our fear of sex, our fear of the human body, our discomfort with our human bodies and the parts of it that relate to sex and those functions. Do you read poetry? And the reason I... I don't. Well, the... I mean, the reason I asked that is that reading about you and certainly knowing your work is that you use language so carefully. I know you take a lot of time to craft the kind of comedy that you do and the kind of defiance that you have, the kind of political feelings that you have as well, are kinds that I have found with really good poets. They are a defiant group of people and they care deeply about each and every word that they use. And it reminded me of you to something. No, I've never been drawn to poetry. I've always...

What I experience is impatience with it and a certain impatience that it's not as clear as I'd like it to be. You know, I don't want to engage in the detective story, I don't want to try to figure out what they meant. Tell me. And of course you don't have to know what they meant either. I mean, poetry should just sound right, the meter and the rhythms and the choices of words. And I can enjoy hearing poetry better than reading it probably. Let's go to Marie who's calling us from Two Street as we say in Philadelphia. Marie. Hi, Marie. Hi, I'm Marty. Thank you for taking my call. Sure, George. This is great. Fun for me for a couple of reasons. Those of us who are public radio junkies heard you yesterday at one o'clock on Derrick McIntyre. That's right. He's making the rounds. Oh, no, this is really great because I wanted to call yesterday and I couldn't get through. So thank you. This is great fun. You and I go way back to class clown. Okay. Sorry, your longtime fans can rattle off your seven words and they don't worry, Marty, I won't do it here. My question within anything, if someone had once told me I read a long time ago that words are a vehicle of thought and if you have a really clear thought and you attach the right

word to it, you can express yourself more clearly, which is clearly what you do. I can take your answer off the air, but I'd like to know, excuse me, if you could say a little bit more about how we think and how we can use words as either tools or weapons because I think words are so underrated as either tools or weapons, either in a global sense or in a personal and emotional sense and I'll take your answer off the air. Thanks, Murray. And yet we use them every day. And we did. We have to. Yeah. I mean, do we have to be careful and worry about words, you think? Well, I think we have an obligation to protect each other's feelings except when we're in the mood to deliberately injure someone's feelings and that happens. But I think I don't know that I'm getting the sense of a real question out of what she just said. I guess what I would say is I believe in the full language where these dirty words are concerned or whatever the right term for them is, that's a shorthand is easiest to

use dirty. They're all part of the language. They didn't arrive on a special train from hell. They're products of the human mind. They express certain things for us. And I determined early in my career, even before I started using them on stage, that it made no sense to limit yourself to only a part of the English language. Because another thing I like to point out, which has a little irony in it, is that as a child, I was taught to look up to policemen, look up to soldiers and sailors, and to look up to athletes. And all of them used this language quite freely at work. And there are times and places when it is not appropriate. When other people's feelings are at stake and they're habits, you honor that if you're in someone else's living room or in their home or in their company. But generally I find it's a superstitious thing and that the words certainly don't do any harm. I've never yet heard or seen a study done that proved that these words morally corrupt

children. The reason people worry about their children hearing these words is because they're afraid to try to explain to the child what they mean. They know the kid's going to say, what does that mean, Danny? And he's going to have to start talking about those things he's very uncomfortable with. And I think that's the main reason they do it. Are you basically a serious person? Yeah, I think I am. I mean, I take what I do seriously. And although I think the world is a big joke, my personality is such that I analyze it. Even though I profess not to care, which is probably 90% true, there are times when I care more than others. But I still am interested in the workings of the world. Even in these big political things that happen, which I'm very skeptical of, it's interesting to see how they go about it. So you kind of dissecting it, taking it apart and put it back to the other person. How they did that is not interesting how they got that done, those sort of things. Let's go to Greg who's calling us from Jankin Town.

Hi, Greg. I'm Radio Times. Thanks for taking my call. Slightly. George, I'm probably the only one in the audience listening who remembers you as a disc jockey on KENT and Shreveport, Louisiana. Were you stationed down there, Greg? Yeah. And I wanted to comment that George got his celebrity early on because I was in the same unit. I was in 376. Really? Yeah. Were you in headquarter squad? In headquartered you were in A&A. I have a small, just a small correction. It was K-J-O-E. Oh. KENT was our... 840 years George. Yeah, I know. I mean, it's a small thing, but boy, 376th Bomb Wing Medium. Yes, sir. Well, Greg? And I played that record for Colonel Shakey. Shakey, yeah. Remember? Yeah. Take it back there, Greg. What a great name that was. Well, I had it. My commander, my squadron commander's name was Edward E. Matthews. He was a lieutenant colonel and we called him Shakey because whenever there was an alert of any kind, he would put on a helmet and a hot man and a flashlight and get out and direct foot traffic in the hallway. So he was a nervous guy. He called him Shakey. Well, I was a DJ downtown on the number one station, K-J-O-E, had a show in the afternoon,

the afternoon drive. I was 19 and Elvis Presley's all shook up was just coming into its own. And so one of my friends was drinking vodka in the radio station with me on a Saturday afternoon with the only people in there. And he said, Carlin, you know, it would be real funny. It would be to take that song by Elvis Presley and dedicate it to Shakey. So I said, man, I said, really good idea. So I said, I didn't just dedicate it, it's very simply. Here's how I said it. I said, and now, ladies and gentlemen, here's a song I'm going to send this out from my squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Edward E. Matthews of the 376th Armament and Electronics Maintenance Squadron, Barxtale Air Force Base. Here it is, Shakey, all shook up and they pulled my off base work permit the following Monday. The first sergeant said to me, Carlin, he said, Carlin, you're dumb. And he said, you ain't stupid because I looked at your marks on your records. So you're not stupid, but you are dumb.

And I was waiting and then to get back on the air for quite a while. Well Greg, so was he a celebrity down there? Oh, yes. Everyone knew about this guy down in the A&E who had a dish-jockey showdown. Yeah, you got me. You figure he was going places? Oh, wait, yeah. Everybody living. It's stockade is where they thought I was going. I do remember that episode with Shakey and I was, did you go to Goose Bay Labrador with this one? We had that alert. We flew off with it. We went T.D. Y. in 55 and we went to England, Upper Hayford, England and stopped at Goose Bay on the way. Yeah. All right, I got to jump in here. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thanks for calling. Bye-bye. This is good. Darryl, who's calling us from Overbrook. Hi, Darryl. Hi, Darryl. Good morning, George. How you doing? I think I was just about 14. But it relates to what you were saying about the Danny K. I met you at, I was in charge of room service at the Stofer, Valley Forge and Fan the Music Fair. And you were very friendly.

And my staff really liked you. You were one of the, the, the, the, the friendly celebrities we ever had. Thank you. And my question, I'm about to redirect, because it's been taken. But I remember getting to the argument with a manager, because you're a fruit basket that we were giving you, had cheese in it. And you had just had a stroke. Hard attack. Hard attack. Yeah. And I was wondering how your health is and how things are going, and I'll hang up a list here for a minute. Thanks, Darryl. Good question. Thank you for being kind. Thank you, Darryl. And thanks for the compliment. Because of that cheese, Darryl, I had six more heart attacks that month. Well, I've had a few heart attacks. You've had three, right? I've had three heart attacks. One of them was kind of a junior size. Two of them were pretty good. And I've had a bunch of angioplasty. Some of them connected to the heart attacks. Some of them not. In other words, I didn't have heart attack symptoms. I just had to angina. So I'm doing well. My arteries are holding up. The angioplasty have held up very nicely. I'm asymptomatic at the time, at this time. And I get my little phallium treadmill test every now and then. And so far, so good.

Is there anything funny about a heart attack? Yes. What? The feeling. Well, you know, I'm just, I'm being silly with you. There's, they're not too bad. I'll tell you that. Depending on how much pain you have, I did, I always had just a kind of a minimal, minimalist heart attacks. Just enough pain to know enough to go to the hospital. But the nice thing about a heart attack is once they got you stabilized, there's no pain. There's no bother. I mean, you're just there and you're in the hospital. You're anxious to go home. It's not like with some of these things where you're really in pain and discomfort for weeks and weeks at a time. It's just, once it's over, there you are and you're getting better all of a sudden. You think about your heart a lot. It's just, you know, more than any other organ. Well, yeah, more than any other organ. Well, yes. And probably equally so with one other organ. But, but I, yeah, naturally I'm conscious of things and the society conspires to remind you of things all the time just by mentioning the word fats and cholesterol and strokes and heart attacks.

You're forced to think about it a little bit more than you might otherwise. Let's go to Joe who's calling from his car. Hi, Joe. You're on radio time. Hi, thanks for taking my call. Hi, Joe. Hi, Ellen. Well, I'll tell you, this is great talking with you. I don't know if you recall. You had mentioned earlier how accommodating you are with autographs. I have to tell you about 15 years ago, two friends and myself saw you perform in Scranton. We waited out back for you. Yes. Five minutes after that, someone came out with pictures for us that you had signed with our name. That wasn't enough. We still waited. You came out. You stood there had conversation with us for 10 minutes. You're manager proceeded to leave you there. Right. You were corner in the white Cadillac. You hopped in. Then he got out. You guys left him there, went around the block, came back roaring. My friend said, it's my birthday. You said, oh, well, here. And you ripped the astray at your Cadillac and tended it to her. You recall that? Uh, no, but I believe it. You know, we call ripping the astray at your Cadillac. No. Springs went flying in the air. And she still has it.

Well, that's great. No, I'm afraid. I don't remember it. And probably the reason I don't remember it is the same reason I did it. Whenever was floating through my blood on that particular night, probably prevented the memory from sticking. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. Thanks for reminding her, though. Thank you, memories. Sure. Is your clean and sober? Uh, I drink beer and wine and in fits and starts. I'll have a few months when I drink beer and wine. It never is in my way. You know, I've never, uh, it doesn't change my personality. Doesn't make me weird or drunk or anything. And then I'll stop that after a few months because I don't, you know, I put on a few pounds. It's usually vanity. In terms of drugs, the only thing I do is an occasional hit from a joint and it's usually only one hit is all I need because my, my tolerance is way down. But it's good. I use it when I'm writing and I find if I write things completely clear headed and sober and then later on, look at him a week later and take one hit that I find a lot of things I, I wouldn't have found otherwise. You know, loosens the connections in your brain. Well, you know, I mean, they don't, you know, I think everybody knows that America has a history of writers who have been drunks.

And the reason is because it's very seductive, it opens, it lowers barriers. It lowers inhibitions and that that's part of what art is is to leap past inhibition. So this is a mixed blessing. Mostly drugs I find start as pleasure with very little pain involved and the pain pleasure ratio changes over time. And generally by the time you're deep into them, whether it's alcohol or otherwise, there's far too much pain and discomfort for the pleasure they give. So the ratio is out of hand and you have to look at it intelligently and say, this is stupid. And that's what I did. But, but I do believe in, in great moderation, one can indulge a little. I read that you were interested in developing a one man Broadway show. Is that true? So yeah, I want to take my, my stand up to another place and, and I don't mean just physically to Broadway, but to expand it a little bit, maybe do something closer to what Lily Tomlin does, a through line, some characters, some staging, a little more theatrical. Not a great deal.

I'm not going to abandon my strength, but I'll do one more straight stand up show for HBO next year. And then I'm going to start working on a way to do what I think I was a Broadway show. So if you had a good life, I mean, I know it's not over yet, but I've been very lucky. And I can't even claim credit for the hard work part because that's all genetic too. I believe everything is genetic. So nobody deserves credit for anything. It just comes to you. And I've been lucky and, and, and very happy. And I'm especially happy about the book now because this is a brand new field for me. And it's, it's, uh, it's number 11 on next week's New York Times, number two in L.A. And it's in its third printing. And it's going to be, I think it's going to be a hit book. So I'm happy. Well, I'm very happy you joined us today on radio tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. And the book is called Brain Dropings. And you can catch up with George Carlin tonight at six o'clock at borders in Marleton, New Jersey. We'll do stay with us for the second hour of radio times. Its artscape on radio time should be an interesting discussion as we talk about some of the disputes between the Barnes Foundation and its neighbors in lower Marion. The weather forecast for today is sunny and very warm, not quite as humid or not humid.

Thank goodness. Highs around 90 degrees tonight, partly cloudy, lows in the mid to upper sixties. And then for Thursday, partly sunny in the morning, increasing clouds late in the day, highs in the upper eighties to around 90 degrees. Scotty Williams, engineer for this hour of radio times, Jackie Posey is the associate producer of the show. I'm Marty Moskowane, and you're tuned to 91 FM W-H-Y-Y FM Philadelphia, serving Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware with NPR News 24 hours a day. I love words. I think if you're hearing my words, I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. I love, as I say, my work, my play, my passion, words are all we have, really. We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid, you know. And then we assign a word to a thought, and we're stuck with that word, for that thought. So be careful with words. I like to think, yeah, the same words, you know, that hurt can heal, it's a matter of how you pick them.

There are some people that aren't into all the words. There are some people that would have you not used certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them. I can't say on television. What a ratio that is, 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven, bad word. From Doyle's Town to Delaware, historic houses and gardens are now in bloom. This June, the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia invites WHY members to explore the changing face of historic architecture and landscape in the Delaware Valley. Throughout the entire month, WHY member card holders receive two for one admission at more than 25 select historic houses and gardens. Call the Preservation Alliance for a complete list of participating houses and gardens, directions and hours.

2-1-5-5-4-6-1-1-4-6. I'm Melinda Penn-Cava. A new poll finds more than one million people filed for personal bankruptcy last year. Credit card debt was the culprit in most of those cases. Some of those who went bankrupt thought companies made it too easy for them to get credit and spend. Does the idea of saving your money still exist, improving your personal finances and avoiding bankruptcy next talk of the nation from NPR News? Today at 2 on 91 FM. From National Public Radio News and Washington, I'm Carl Castle. President Clinton will take part in the day long symposium in Washington on juvenile violence. The president is expected to urge steps to better protect children and communities from the rise in crime among juvenile offenders. U.P.I.'s Don Fultzum reports. Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry says the president will announce increased efforts to win the war against gangs and gang violence, and that he will unveil fresh moves to reduce gun violence, particularly among juvenile offenders.

And the president will say essentially that any juvenile justice bill that does not include tough anti-gang provisions and tough provisions on gun violence are not going to cut it with help. The spokesman says the war against gangs is showing some progress and hopeful signs, but that more needs to be done. The president will share the juvenile justice conference podium at Georgetown University with Attorney General Janet Reno. Don Fultzum, the White House. Several House committees have approved Republican plans for a health and welfare. The votes were generally along party lines, but the panel's past Republican-written packages, reshaping welfare, Medicare and Medicaid and expanding medical coverage for children. One session ended moments before midnight. The activity was part of lawmakers' efforts to find the savings that President Clinton and Congressional leaders agreed to last month in their compromise for balancing the budget by 2002. Today the Houseways and Means Committee is to vote on a GOP plan for cutting taxes, another

part of the deal. Senate committees have yet to write their versions of the bills. Opening statements are set for today in the latest assisted suicide trial of Dr. Jack Cavorkian. The judge also is expected to rule on a request by Cavorkian's attorney for a change of venue in P.R. Don Gagne reports. This is the fourth time Cavorkian has gone on trial for allegedly assisting in a suicide. This trial is taking place in the small western Michigan town of Ionia. It centers on the death last August of a woman with multiple sclerosis. Legal analysts have said that an Ionia jury is likely to be more conservative than those from the Detroit area, which return not guilty verdicts in Cavorkian's earlier trials. Cavorkian's lawyer is seeking to have the trial moved elsewhere, citing an ad that ran in the Ionia newspaper in which local doctors expressed opposition to assisted suicide. A decision is expected first thing this morning. The judge has already ruled that Cavorkian can be excused from daily attendance at the

trial, saying he need only be present when a verdict is read. This is Don Gagne reporting. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial averages up 6.17 to 7545.44 trading is active, volume 144 million shares, the NASDAQ composite index is down 1.58 to 1,400.11. This is NPR News. The General Accounting Office said today that fees for automated telemachines more than tripled in the 14 months ending in February. The GAO also found that the number of ATM with surcharges increased in the same period from around 15,400 to 64,400. New York Republican Senator Alfonz Demato has complained that ATM fees should not be going up at a time when banks are posting record profits. He plans to propose again today legislation to ban double charges by banks on ATM transactions. The charges paid to the bank operating at ATM come on top of fees, many customers pay

their own bank when they use another bank's machine. A new report by Federal Health researchers suggest industrial air pollution may contribute to infant mortality. The study appears in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in P.R. as David Barron reports. The scientist studied almost 4 million American children born between 1989 and 91. They found that infants born in cities with high levels of soot in the air were as much as 26 percent more likely to die of sudden infant death syndrome, and 40 percent more likely to die of respiratory causes than their counterparts in cleaner cities. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new regulations to cut down on airborne soot based on dozens of other studies that suggest the pollution contributes to deaths among adults. But the proposed rules have faced sharp criticism on Capitol Hill and by industry. Our medalists hope the new study will encourage the White House to stand by the EPA's proposed action.

A final decision on the new air quality standards could come as soon as this week. I'm David Barron reporting. Today's Wall Street Journal is reporting that a government audit has found that the Federal Medicare program made an estimated $23 billion in improper payments to health care providers last year. The improper payments made the hospitals, nursing homes, doctors and laboratories represent about 12 percent of Medicare's budget. This is NPR News from Washington. Here's a reminder to enter WHOI's Jubilee of Prices sweepstakes. As Jubilee winner, you can add the luxurious look and feel of an original heirloom Persian rug to your home, compliments of the Wayne Oriental Rug Gallery, or create a work of art yourself with a gift certificate from Woodcraft Supply. Select anything from exotic woods to specialty tools. To receive your Jubilee Prize packet call 215-3510-511 today, no purchase necessary. This is ArtScape on Radio Times, I'm Marty Moss, co-ain.

The Barnes Foundation in Lower Marion houses one of the most impressive collections of early French modern and post-impressionist paintings in the world. There are some 1,000 works of art at the Barnes, including 175 Renoirs, 65 Matises, 66 Seisons and many more. The Barnes reflects the vision of its founder, Dr. Albert Barnes, who established the Center in 1922 to quote, promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of art. Barnes was a controversial figure in Philadelphia who thumbed his nose at the Art Establishment of those times, and today controversy still surrounds the Barnes Foundation. In the last few years, a zoning dispute has led to charges of civil rights violations and defamation of character. Today, on ArtScape, we will talk about the problems between the Barnes Foundation and its neighbors, but first, Art's reporter, Peter Clowney, has this look at the difficulties the Barnes has had in fulfilling and adapting the visions of its founder. Albert Barnes was one of the first Americans to see the importance of impressionist and

post-impressionist art. The young millionaire made his fortune early in the century in pharmaceuticals. Barnes then scoured Europe for art that he believed worthy, and when he was led to admire the Impressionist school, he invested in Modigliani's and Soutines and Matises. He unveiled some of the work at Philadelphia Exhibition in 1923. Where the critics laughed at all and said he was an old fool and these were the works of mad men, and that really triggered Barnes's rage. Howard Greenfeld wrote a biography of Dr. Barnes. He pulled everything back into his home in Marion, which he had built for the collection and wouldn't let anybody in to see it. Now, again, it's not true that he wouldn't let anybody, he wouldn't let most people in, he wouldn't let the establishment in. He wouldn't let mainland society, he wouldn't let critics, he wouldn't let academics. But for now, he was angry, he was a very, very angry man. Soon enough, Greenfeld says critics who had called Barnes' collection diseased and pathological

were begging to come see it, but Barnes let few of them in. And Greenfeld says Barnes enjoyed his bad reputation with the Art Establishment of Philadelphia. He would send its members insulting letters, signed by his dog or an imagined secretary. History is written by the people that he had fights with. History is written by the powerful. These were people that were not interested in Barnes' educational theory. They were interested in an expensive, fabulous collection. Nicholas Tanari is a former student of the Barnes Foundation classes. He says the focus has always been too much on Barnes' conflicts and not enough on his real legacy, a system of seeing art based on the educational philosophies of John Dewey. What he did was he developed a method where you could recognize features. What objective features of a painting can we discuss and say this is similar to another one, where this painting is deficient because the line is weak. He basically imposed a vocabulary, he imposed a spoken language on this visual line which

the painters have always known. Tanari says that the Barnes' classes opened his eyes to art. To not know painting, to not know the tools that a painter brings to painting, is sort of to come to painting and say, I like it, it's sensual, there's something about it that reminds me of the seashore or something I know in my past, but you're not having the conversation. It's not coming across. The painter's intent is not coming fully across because you don't have the language that he intended. Barnes wanted students to spend time analyzing the line, color, and form of the work to scientifically understand the art. He grouped the paintings on his walls without labels to encourage this, and he arranged them in odd juxtapositions to tease details out for the viewer. Barnes might hang a red wire next to a pippin, above a piece of iron work near a candlestand. The qualities they reflected in each other would help the students see them more clearly. Greenfield says Barnes tried to get the University of Pennsylvania and the Academy of Fine Arts

to join his educational mission. He would make these marvelous offers, you know, you could have my collection. You could use it for a study, you could use it for your groups, practically offering them anything. They didn't pay enough attention, that's really what it came down to. They were both absolutely wrong, particularly University of Pennsylvania. They could have gained an enormous amount from him, they just ignored him. Barnes eventually wielded trusteeship of its foundation to Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Lincoln is an historically black university, and when the news got out at Barnes' death in 1951, the mainly white art community of Philadelphia took it as a slight. Even though Barnes had a strong friendship with Lincoln University's president, and had expressed a sincere interest in black education for much of his life. Barnes' will laid out very specific instructions for how often the gallery would be open to the public, exactly how classes should be run, and so on. But current Barnes' president, Richard Glanton, says the foundation did more to fulfill the letter of Barnes' will than the spirit.

What happened, unfortunately, is that when Barnes died, the lights went out. It was a suspended, arrested culture. And so Glanton has led the Barnes' trustees in a series of changes since he took over in 1990. Several times, this has meant violating specific portions of Barnes' will. We had to make drastic changes, I initially proposed to what they called deaccession in the art world. They all sell pictures. Don't let them fool you. Now we don't, of course. We don't sell pictures. And this was a crime, as it was described to me. Glanton met with too much resistance to the deaccession plan, but he did convince the courts that it would be in the Barnes' best interest to take some of the paintings on a world tour. The tour raised $18 million to renovate the foundation's buildings, though some claimed that the tour itself damaged some of the more delicate pieces. When the foundation reopened, it was with another innovation. Barnes really wanted this place to be a lot. And what we've tried to do is to create a gallery guide, which is state of the art compact

desk. You can punch in a number under the picture, and you can bring up the background of the artists who painted the picture, as well as an analysis from Barnes' point of view, from the point of view of the artists as to the composition of the canvas. It's a terrific kind of eye-opener, it's like the third Episcopal of John. He was set in darkness to see a great light. Dance is an extraordinary thing, life and rhythm. Those were the words of Henri Matisse. Albert Barnes commissioned Matisse to paint this dance mural in December of 1931. Last Friday at the Barnes Foundation, about 200 visitors milled around the gallery rooms before noon. Nearly every tourist carried the slim black CD-ROM unit that Glanton described for the one-hour audio tour. They had various levels of success with it, though. It was frustrating for me, because I don't know what to look at first in spite of this, but I don't have time to listen to everything, because we have to meet our boss. How have you been using it?

I've been getting into it a little bit, and then going on something else. Too much to take in at one time in a short time. When we first walked in here, we weren't going to get the guide, and then you see all this on the wall with no explanation, really, and you just feel the need for the guide, and the guide is very, very helpful, very, very well. And you said it helps you figure out just what Barnes was getting at. Right. Absolutely. It's magnificent. It's a whole lesson in understanding how one painter comes off another painter. It's like a trail. And there he saw Jachtos Frasco's in the arena, Chapel at Padua. He drew great inspiration from those works, which he later referred to as... Nick Tanare says that the audio tour is exactly the kind of thumbnail sketch that Barnes detested in art critique. It's a sort of a web page mentality of point and click, and move on to the next picture. It's value as a one day, half hour experience, or we're having a long day going to spend in there, is very limited.

Glanton says that the foundation is reaching people. And if Barnes will ask that the paintings be viewed with a certain educational training, Glanton says that's only one man's ideas about paintings that now belong to the public. Once you have an institution that becomes a public trust, if there's some quirky provision in the will that would deny the very people who are the beneficiaries of this public trust, the right to see it, then I would say that you must weigh the public interest against the provisions of the will, and clearly people matter more than anything. And people are more a part of the Barnes Foundation than ever. Last year, largely thanks to the publicity generated by the World Tour, more than 98,000 people came to see the Barnes Collection. Classes continue in Barnes' methods, but Glanton is also looking for ways to open the gallery more, perhaps six days a week. That may affect class schedules drastically, since classes are held in the gallery with

the paintings as teaching tools. Neighbors in this residential community are counting the numbers of visitors to the Barnes, watching the transformation of what used to be a quiet treasure into a very public space on Peter Clowney. And apologies to Howard Greenfeld, Barnes biographer who earlier this morning was misidentified as Howard Greenberg. Joining us now on Artscape on Radio Times is Richard Glanton, president of the Barnes Foundation, our partner with the law firm Reed Smith Shaw and McClay here in Philadelphia. And among many things, he also serves as General Counsel of Lincoln University. Good morning, Richard Glanton. Welcome. Good morning. Nice to have you with us. My pleasure. Also with us is James Greenfield, and he's an attorney for the Latches Lane Neighborhood Association. He is an office in Radner, where he specializes in zoning land use and commercial litigation. And James Greenfield, good morning to you as well. Good morning, Marty. And to our listeners, the lines are open for your questions and comments as we talk about the Barnes Foundation and its ongoing dispute with its neighbors, 215-92327-742159-232774.

We'll have to say I gathered a lot of materials together to do my homework for this particular show to try to figure out all the twists and turns of this whole story has taken. And I do want the audience to understand how a zoning dispute led to hundreds of thousands of dollars with illegal fees and lawsuits and counters, lawsuits and back and forth. But let me begin with you, Richard Glanton. What do you see as the basic disagreement that the Barnes Foundation has with its neighbors? Essentially, we do not have a disagreement with our neighbors now. We have positioned ourselves where we are talking with the neighbors. We are committed to continuing the conversations with the neighbors. And I think the neighbors have had suggestions that have been incorporated into our access policy, which to a large extent I think addresses most of their concerns. As I understand it, they are concerned about the future in terms of what happens at the foundation as we go forward, not necessarily what's happening now.

And I understand they are concerned more now than I did. And actually, I've tried to become familiar with what they are concerned about. And when you become familiar with someone's problems, you begin to understand and forgive any transgressions. And I'm not saying that they are word transgressions, but I'm saying that I'm very sympathetic to them to the extent that they have legitimate concerns. Well, let me put the same question to you, James Greenfield. What do you see as the bottom line dispute here? Well, Marty, I think the, there isn't ongoing dispute, as you know. We're in the court of common pleas of Montgomery County on the zoning appeal, which the barns filed initially in response to an enforcement order that was issued by the township. The zoning hearing board ruled against the barns on that and required the barns to reduce the days and number of visitors of its museum operation. So technically, at least as a matter of court proceedings, there is very much, is a dispute that's still ongoing.

Let me say, Marty, that I think that this, this entire tragic sequence of events could have been avoided. Approximately two years ago, Mr. Glanton, on behalf of the barns, began having some meetings with the neighbors and broached many of the suggestions that he is still putting forward now as to how to improve the situation on Latch's lane. Unfortunately, not a single one of those suggestions has been implemented since then. Which has what, what, what kinds of solutions? Well, these are very much the same solutions that Mr. Glanton last mentioned publicly on April 9th when he appeared before the Lower Murray and Township Building and Planning Committee. Among those suggestions were the establishment of a remote parking lot, from which visitors to the barns could be ferried by some form of environmentally sensitive shuttle, perhaps a propane powered shuttle. That would eliminate the need not only for all the automobile traffic on Latch's lane currently.

It's a very quiet, narrow residential street. But it would also eliminate the, the hordes of tour buses that now bring visitors to the site. Mr. Glanton has also suggested at various times that he is willing to implement a reservation system that would control the flow of visitors to the barns. Only a certain number of people would be permitted to come per hour and people would have designated times when they're expected to show up. So I believe more recently, Mr. Glanton has suggested that access, perhaps by shuttle buses, could be accomplished by Lapsley Lane, which runs off-city line to the rear of the barns property. And that would obviate the need for any traffic, including shuttles, to arrive at the barns by Latch's lane. Well, let me just jump in here and just give Richard Glanton a chance to respond to what you just said. Go ahead, Mr. Glanton. As we are most definitely committed to making these changes provided, we installed the parking lot. And when we installed the parking lot, all these details, which I don't want to go into, will be, in fact, incorporated into the plan.

Suffice it to say, my commitment has been to stress that this is a world-class institution. People from all over the world, including people in Marion, have a right to enjoy it. And my goal has been to stand firm, to ensure that public interest is served, including the interests of the people of Lower Marion. And in fact, it's a great benefit that this world-class treasure is in Marion, PA. And in fact, I can guarantee you that more people know about Marion because of the barns and because of the importance of this collection. This is like one of the seven wonders of the world in the ancient times. And people from all over the world come here. They know about our city. They create business for the hotels, for the businesses, restaurants. And this is a way that people can, in fact, touch our culture, our civilization through the great contributions of art included in the Barnes Collection.

Well, it's interesting because this whole discussion has to do with this world-class art collection and things like zoning, which is an interesting juxtaposition of ideas. Richard Glatton, you mentioned the parking lot. Again, making sure the audience understands what we're talking about, you're saying we can build, or we should build, the parking lot, then on the grounds of the Barnes Foundation in order to take care of the traffic. Is that right? Yes, when the township issues are permit for us to install a lot, all of the conditions relative to a public access policy will be implemented. But they will not be implemented until that parking lot is installed. To do so otherwise would ensure that eventually no one would be able to come to the foundation. And we do not want to hurt the public interest in permitted access as mandated by the court for the public to visit the paintings. And there is no harm, but nothing but benefit in children and people of all walks of life. Many mature people get a lot of enjoyment and pleasure from coming to this great treasure in their local community.

Well, I want to get back to you, but another question to you, Richard Glatton, because this seems to be the driving question about the ongoing dispute. Is the Barnes Foundation a museum, or is it an art education facility, and what is your answer to that? Surely, that's a good question. And it's what the donor designated it to be, which is an educational institution to promote education of the fine arts and horticulture. And in fact, the Supreme Court has so deemed in 1934 in a decision and again in the 1960s that it is an educational institution. So there is no question about that. I do want to stress though that the issues that Mr. Greenfield mentioned are largely issues with the township, not the neighbors. And I think the township has wasted taxpayers' money. They have spent a million dollars. And unfortunately, they don't have the tenacity to own up to having made a mistake in spending all this money.

And so they have prepared, rather than somebody take responsibility and end this litigation, which we've prepared to compromise to do. With no requirements from the township, except we dropped the litigation, they're going to spend another million dollars in trial. And the Marion residents who are heavily burdened by the taxpayer demands to ensure that they maintain the best public schools in Pennsylvania have to also pay for a useless lawsuit that benefits lawyers. And these lawyers are very happy. They're getting paid and they are getting very, very nice launches with these great fees that they're getting out of this lawsuit. Well, I understand too that the Barnes Foundation has had to sell at about $500 or $800,000. About $500,000. About $500,000. And we would like to put that money to further in what we've done with promoting the great cultural asset we have for all people in this country. Well, let me give you a chance to respond, James Greenfield. And again, the driving question, as I understand it, about the zoning dispute, which has led then to other disputes, is whether the Barnes Foundation is a museum, or is it an art education

facility? And this, of course, has an impact on the zoning. How do you see it? Well, the decisions that Mr. Glanton cited go back to the 1960s, and certainly he has correctly relayed what the substance of those decisions was. However, in the 1990s, actually, specifically since November of 1995, the Barnes has become something other than an educational institution. And in fact, as the zoning hearing board found, after at least a dozen hearings in 1996, the Barnes, as a zoning matter, is principally a museum. Now, I wanted to take a moment, Marty, to defend the honor of my native township. Go ahead. I should point out that with regard to Mr. Glanton's allegations that the township has wasted money on litigation. I should note that the Barnes initiated this lawsuit. And it is rather remarkable for Mr. Glanton to be sitting here and criticizing the township for defending itself against these repugnant allegations of racism.

I was personally offended as a native of the township when I heard that. I have never seen any evidence of institutional racism in the township. And I have lived there for most of my 46 years. I imagine the response of the commissioners when this happened. Imagine the response of Orra Pierce, who was a black commissioner from Ardmore when she found out that she had been accused of being a racist. The township was entitled to defend its honor. It has done so aggressively, as could be expected. And now Mr. Glanton says he wants to compromise the litigation. Well, we're near the end of the litigation. I don't believe this matters ever going to get to trial because the Barnes has no evidence of racism. And it would really not make any sense for the township to walk away from it now because if the township prevails in this litigation, it can recover its attorney's fees under federal law from the Barnes. And at this point, in my view, it pays for the Barnes to, it pays for the township to wait and see what the outcome is.

Well, let me just back up because as I said to the audience at the beginning of the show, this is a very complex issue and many overlays of lawsuits and counter lawsuits. But back to you, Richard Glanton, do you think the township and the commissioners have been picking on the Barnes Foundation and asking them to comply to certain zoning ordinances that they haven't asked the Episcopal Academy or Akiba, which I know is basically in that same neighborhood? I would say this, that first and foremost, as Americans, we want to do the right thing to firmly identify our issues and resolve them as adults. President Clinton has identified the issue of race in America as a priority. He's working to resolve that. He's establishing a commission to deal with it. We have to know that, in fact, these are real problems. We don't want to call anyone in low-amerian bad names. We haven't. The newspapers have done that. They've miscast our concerns about name calling. That is not our intention.

Our intention is noble. It's simply to make available for public access a great world-class collection. And there is no harm in that. Clearly, the Barnes has been subject to some requirements that we believe other similarly situated institutions haven't been subject to. But we're willing to put all that aside. We don't want to hurt the name of the township. We want to work together. We are saying, stop the waste of taxpayers spending. These lawyers, of course, can give you a thousand reasons why they should continue to get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on a monthly basis. And I understand that. I'm a lawyer. But at the same time, we waste in taxpayers' money and Barnes' money. I'm more concerned about making available to the greater world and to Europe and to Asia. This collection that benefits this entire region and these problems that we're talking about are very minor issues. We have no problems with the neighbors. We're talking with our neighbors. The issues are with the township.

We can settle those without any compromises that are going to adversely affect either party. My commitment is to do the right thing. We raised $18 million. We restored the gallery. We brought people from all over the world to Philadelphia. We, in fact, produced more indirect benefits for the city of Philadelphia in 1995 with the Barnes exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, than probably any other cultural institution in the history of Philadelphia. Well, and I don't think anyone would argue about the importance of the Barnes Foundation as an institution and as an art collection and something that is a real crown jewel here in the Delaware Valley. But there are several issues here. I just want to get back to this question about the Barnes Foundation as a museum or as an art education facility. My understanding is that a lot more money is now being made from people coming to the gallery than they, than is being made from people coming to take classes at the Barnes. Are you saying that if someone comes to the Barnes Foundation to look at the gallery that

they're getting an education and therefore, even though it's a museum, because they're learning something, that qualifies it as an art, as an education facility. I should do two things. One, put in context, what our educational mission is. And we basically have a plan to have affiliations with institutions with accredited programs that will include an affiliation with the Barnes courses to be established in art appreciation or modern art and horticulture. And that's our commitment, as to whether or not the number of people come to the Barnes makes it a museum, I'd say no. No more so than Judith Rodden's plan at the University of Pennsylvania to create this economic corridor of shops to revive the university makes it a shopping center business. In fact, has all these football games are episcopal right next to us. And I have a great respect for Mr. Crawford, the headmaster, the very fine people. But we don't say that the episcopal, because of all the sports activities, is not an educational institution.

So then you can say that the number of people who come to the Barnes makes it anything other than a gallery with a mission of promoting education. So anything that happens at the Barnes is educational, is what you're saying. That is true, but that is not the source of our primary focus in terms of carrying out the mission of the donor. Let me get a response. Let me get a response. And then we must go to the phones. Go ahead, James. James Greenfield. As both the courts and the zoning board of Lower Marion have pointed out, Marty, almost any experience in life is educational, but that does not turn an institution into an educational institution. There's no question that the classes that the Barnes offers are reflective of an institution that is educational in nature. But from a zoning standpoint, it's quite clear in the same courts that have described the mission of the Barnes over the decades have found that the mere visit to the gallery by a tourist or a visitor who was a transient, who was only going to be there for a couple of hours, is not education. It may be an educational experience, but it is not education.

And there is a distinction in zoning law between a museum, operation, and an educational institution. Clearly, at some point, beginning in November 1995, the Barnes crossed that line and became a museum. And would a parking lot on the grounds of the Barnes, which Mr. Glatton mentioned, would that help to solve the traffic problems on Latches Lane? The parking lot would have a very small impact on the traffic problems. The parking lot is only 50 spaces, and some of those spaces, I think, perhaps 13 of them are going to be taken by people who work at the Barnes. Mr. Glatton said before that he believed that the parking lot was the necessary first step in order to implement these other measures to relieve the traffic problem. Frankly, Marty, that's not the case. All of the other measures could be implemented. Shuttle buses could come in through Latches Lane, or even through the front gate of the Barnes, to drop visitors off in front. Remote parking could be established without any need for this parking lot on the site. We'll get back to that, but let me reintroduce you both.

And on Artscape, on Radio Times today, we're talking about the Barnes Foundation and its dispute with its neighbors. And with us is Richard Glatton, president of the Barnes Foundation. And James Greenfield, attorney for the Latches Lane Neighborhood Association. And if you would like to join our conversation, as we talk about what's at stake here, that phone number 215-923-277-4215-923-277-4, and this dispute is going to court rather soon. The Sector Bill, who's calling us from Lower Marion. Yeah, hi. Thanks a lot. Sure, Bill. Yeah, hi. In my work, I'm a grant writing consultant. I work with a lot of cultural institutions in the area. And I'm also a resident of Lower Marion, but not in the Marion area. And it seems to me that both the township of Lower Marion and the Barnes Foundation need to do a paradigm shift. I think one thing they have been explored is the possibility of building a new building for the Barnes and moving it out of the township. And perhaps having the township as well as the region, the city of Philadelphia, provide financial incentives, or maybe even direct support for doing that.

Bill, that may sound like a simple idea, but I must say it's the first time both of my guests have smiled at each other. Right. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm a fundraiser. I know how hard it is to raise funds. But what I'm suggesting is that the land on that just land where the museum is among the most valuable land in Lower Marion Township, it could bring in a lot of money. And the building, as Mr. Glanton knows, is in bad need of repair and it wasn't really built as a museum. And I think that if they were to start from ground zero, they'll believe me. There's a lot of wealthy individuals out there who would support a new museum. I think it would solve these problems. Well, I don't know. Richard Glanton, you want to respond to Bill's comments? Well, I appreciate the creativity of his suggestion. In fact, I've heard it before. And of course, I think that this would be something that would be quite controversial. I think that his suggestion is well-intentioned. I wish it was as simple as doing that. I think that if you could help get us support to make that happen, that might be a good way of resolving it.

And of course, I think we are open to all kinds of ideas. I'm not saying that this is something I'm adopting or advocating. But I think that with us working together in a constructive fashion, there is no reason that we can't resolve these issues without casting blames or pointing fingers at each other. I am finished with that. That's behind us. We're going to stress the importance of the Barnes as a cultural institution and the benefit it has to the children who come there from all over the world, as well as to the adults from Europe and other places. And so we are determined to resolve this. And if we do not, I think we fail. Thank you, Bill, for calling in. James Greenfield, part of the problem is that this isn't a business moving in from out of town into a pre-existing neighborhood. This is the Barnes Foundation. It was established in 1922 and certainly had a quiet period in the 50s and 60s and 70s and even into the 80s. Now things are different. Things have changed with the Barnes Foundation under the leadership of Richard Glanton and others.

What's the resolution here? And as again, as I said earlier, this is an extraordinary collection of art. One that many people should have a chance to see. If afforded that chance and yet you have a quiet street of people living there in a residential neighborhood, I don't see what the solution is. Now the solution is simply to arrange things so that there is essentially no impact upon the neighborhood. If the Barnes can operate as a museum with no impact on the neighborhood, then I don't think the neighbors are going to object. And would that mean 100 people a day, 200 people a day, as someone come up with figures for that? Well, how do you figure out what that impact is? The zoning board has invited the Barnes to seek a special exception that would define as a matter of law and as a matter of balance with the residential neighborhood, what those attendance limits could be. The Barnes has not done that. At one point, the Barnes said it would. The Barnes now is taking the position that it doesn't intend to do that. It's difficult to place a precise number on what a manageable attendance figure would be on a weekly or daily basis.

But the types of things that Richard has been talking about that would relieve the traffic in the neighborhood, all the things that we went over at the beginning of the program. Certainly would render the Barnes' museum operation almost seamless in the eyes of the neighbors. The neighbors would scarcely notice under those circumstances if all those things were implemented that there was a museum operation going on there. And that's really what we're after. Well, Richard Clinton, do you think the neighbors on Latches Lane have a right to their quiet street, the quiet street that they have lived on for many years and have shared with the Barnes Foundation? It would be quite if you didn't have 2,800 cars, 60 yards from the Barnes' interest entering Episcopal daily and 100 buses, 1100 parking spaces, adjoining the Barnes' property. On the other side of us is St. Joe's University, a great institution led by Father Rashford, and Episcopal is a great institution with a long tradition and a lot of supporters led by Jim Crawford. Both great institutions. It's an illusion to say that in fact the Barnes create the traffic out there, but I want

to get beyond that. We're not talking about who did what. We're saying that there is a way for us to live peacefully with the neighbors and position ourselves so the neighbors will fully appreciate what people all over the world appreciate. The Barnes' Foundation's mythical art collection. Well, what would that be? And again, just because everything that I have read, I mean this is the first time that it sounds even conciliatory. And much of what I have read and certainly heard about is that it's been one dispute leading to the next dispute. And a very nasty situation that's developed between Barnes and its neighbors. That's over. We have... Over why? I mean, why is that over? My feeling is that we had this meeting at the Barnes in April and almost every neighbor along Latches Lane in the surrounding area came. We talked very frankly. They made suggestions. We incorporated those suggestions. The neighbors who've been in the forefront of the movement to require Barnes to limit public access.

Dr. Herman, Mr. and Mrs. Mormon, Mr. and Mrs. Asher. I think I have good relations with most of them and I can talk directly with them when they have a suggestion. Dr. Herman the other day asked me to sign a petition to limit parking on the street and I said I would do so, provided that it was done after the installation of the parking lot. And he said, I understand that. My point is the neighbors said to me when we met, God, I wish you had talked to us two years ago. I said, I did, you wouldn't listen. And they said, no, we were told that you wouldn't talk to us. And they just limited the fact that we hadn't had that kind of really close fruitful discussion. And those are going to continue because we are determined to make changes as appropriate based on the real or imagined fears of the neighbors because we feel that we have to exist with them in a way that is going to be constructive for the community. But I wonder if it's over and you're saying the past is the past and it's time to move

on. Are you willing to withdraw charges of racism and civil rights violations against the township? Well, I would not admit having ever made charges of racism. I think that clearly in America, if you remember that there was a civil war in the 1850s, 1860s. And in fact, there are issues about race today that President Clinton talked about. And there is an article in today's newspaper about the perceptions of blacks and whites. But we are emphasizing the positive that races can live together. This is a strength of America. And clearly, we will dismiss those lawsuits if the township dismisses the action against us. There is nothing to be gained from name calling. We will in the compromise. And I've said that we'll drop those lawsuits. We're not going to pay the lawyers to have them loot the barns the way they've looted the township. And so my commitment is to settle the lawsuit. We'll drop it. And in fact, we'll let the course run as it may in the zone in board and with respect to the actual installation of the parking lot.

Let me get a response from James. We can feel them. We'll get back to the phones. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, chances are it's a duck. When you file a lawsuit and federal court under the laws that relate to discrimination, and you will legend those in that lawsuit that there has been discrimination against the barns on the basis of race, then I think you are in effect referring to the township and its commissioners as racists. There's really no way around that. Certainly, we would like Mr. Glanton and the barns to walk away from that lawsuit. And I think it's appropriate under the circumstances for all the harm that it's done that the barns pay the attorney's fees and costs incurred by the township. The attorneys are only doing what is necessary to aggressively defend the barns, to defend the township. I'm sorry. It would be a terrible thing if there were ever to be a finding of racism, institutional racism against this township. Any township would do the same as low and Marianne is doing. And to criticize the township for wasting money on legal fees under such circumstances is

remarkable. Well, a quick response from you, Richard Glenn, and then we'll get to the phones because this has certainly been part of the ongoing dispute. What began as a zoning issue? The issue to me is what's in the public interest for the barns and the public at large and the taxpayers of the Marianne. And it's not lawyers. Every lawyer can defend for infinity, his right to defend his client to take their money for him providing their representation. I'm simply saying that enough of that, let's stop the spending and the wasting taxpayers money. And go on to emphasize the great strength of the Barnes Foundation. We say that we are willing to work with the neighbors. We will make the changes which they have asked for. We want to showcase this great cultural institution for people all over the world. We want to make Philadelphia America's city. I think the mayor is doing a great job. Why can't we do a great job in helping the mayor in terms of showcasing the Barnes? Because that is the most important cultural vehicle for attracting people to Philadelphia

in this entire state. Would that include some kind of shuttle service if that's what it would take to make the neighbors on Latches Lane happy? Would the Barnes Foundation be willing to do that? We have incorporated that in our plan which would entail the installation of a parking lot and the tour buses at remote sites from which they would be transported passengers on tour buses from those remote sites to the Barnes via a smaller shuttle bus. So that's a go ahead. Oh sure. We've agreed to all of that. Go ahead. We've been having discussions like this for two years. In terms of the relationship between the Barnes and its neighbors, Mr. Glanton speaking in very conciliatory tones about the evolution as it were of a positive relationship. These discussions have been going on for a long time. It's really time to stop the discussions and to take action. It is within the-

What does that mean take action? It is within the sole and exclusive power of the Barnes and of this gentleman sitting here to my left to do what is necessary to implement these changes that we've been talking about during the program. They don't need township approval to establish remote parking and bring people to the Barnes by shuttle bus. They don't need township approval to install a reservation system. They don't need township approval to get access through Latches Lane. All they need to do is to work out a deal with St. Joseph's. These are things that the Barnes could have done and should have done. And those things are done. Then I think you will see the beginning of the evolution of a positive relationship between the Barnes and its neighbors. Will that be done? They will be done when the parking lot permit is issued so that we can install that parking lot within a matter of two months. And- Does the parking lot, what impact does that have on what you just said? Well, let me talk about the parking lot. Again, there's no reason why the Barnes can't do these things without the parking lot. I mean, absolutely not. The Barnes has not moved with-with dispatch on the parking lot. The parking lot was approved by the zoning board in, I believe, last September.

It has now been nine months since then. The Barnes has not yet completed the final application process for that parking lot. The Barnes waited a full six months after the zoning board approval, which is about as long as Barnes could have waited under the law to file their application for the parking lot. I can't understand why it is that the Barnes has not moved more rapidly. It seemed, and certainly the testimony in the federal case reflects this, that the desire for the parking lot was one of the things behind the Barnes filing of the discrimination action. If that's the case, it certainly seems that the Barnes wanted this lot very badly, and it does not seem that the Barnes has moved very quickly to make the parking lot a reality. Okay, and you want to respond, and then I promise we'll take all of that. Very briefly. There was a zoning board decision approving the parking lot, but when we asked for the permit, they said you've got to have a subdivision land application form completed, which required us to tell them about the environmental impact of exhaust fumes, the environmental impact on the squirrels in the in the in the arboretum, and all other kinds of issues that have just

one after another been stonewall and and and and stumbling blocks. But I don't want to raise all of this. I'm simply saying that the bottom line is that we need the permit to install the parking lot. If they give us the permit, we'll install the parking lot immediately. And we don't have the permit despite the fact that we got the approval from the zoning board 10 months ago. The fact of the matter is that you can't install the parking lot without the permit, and they won't give us the permit. So... Township is not holding up the the process, morning. Well, we're time. Let me just jump in here. I'm sorry. This is not rocket science. This parking lot. This is on a flat piece of land. It's a no-brainer. The barns knew before it began the zoning board process or should have known. And it began that process and I believe late 95 with regard to the parking lot. It should have known at that time exactly what the process was going to entail. So to claim surprise now is disingenuous. Well, are you saying, Mr. Glant, and I'm sorry to do this to our listeners, but this

is getting more confusing as we go along. Are you saying Richard Glant, and that the barns is being asked to do something that no one else in that neighborhood has to do? Yes, I think they should have given us the clearance to install the parking lot at the very beginning and if they had done that, which they did for the construction site. We would have had a parking lot that would have been no issues. The cars would have been off the streets and there would have been nothing to complain about in terms of congestion on the street because of traffic. We have 13 acres there around in the barns. We have a little part of the land where there are no trees designated for a parking lot. How that would benefit the handicap, the physically disabled, and everybody else? The barns does not deserve special treatment, it is like anybody else. It is like any other institution in the township in the sense that if it wants a parking lot, it must go through the appropriate processes to get it. And all the barns had to do to get this parking lot was asked for it. Well, we're talking about parking lots zoning and a world-class art collection called

the Barnes Foundation and its relationship with its neighbors in Lower Marion were joined by Richard Glanton, president of the Barnes Foundation, and by James Greenfield, attorney for the Latches Lane Neighborhood Association, 2159-232774. This is Goodabeth, who is calling us from Elfritz Alley here in Philadelphia. Hi, hi, Beth. As a resident of Elfritz Alley, where we have a enormous number of tourists, I understand the neighborhood's problem and of the span of the Barnes Collection, I understand. There's, I also, I'm a professor at Rutgers where I teach courses on negotiation, and what I hear is that this is a great situation for firing the lawyers and hiring a mediator. Well, now don't be a peddling job on the air for yourself, Beth. I'm not myself, I'm sorry, when I was going, you know what I was going to say. But you're saying get rid of the lawyers, bring in the negotiators. Yes, I'm certain, no, what I was saying, I understand. Perhaps, I know you've had many negotiators on your show and perhaps you could make a recommendation, I'm certainly not.

What I hear is that there's a lot of emotion on both sides that's built up from the history of this. But I also hear so many things that could be resolved, that could make a situation where both the town and the collection would benefit enormously and they could become a wonderful alliance. We give us one, Beth, just very quickly. I think that schedules for visiting could be worked out where there were enough people coming in to help the collection, but scheduled in a way that there was minimal impact on the neighborhood. Okay, let me just take that suggestion. Thank you for calling it a really good meeting. What I'm wondering, my question was, would both sides commit to going into mediation rather than litigation? All right, well, it's a fair question, I mean, it's like a divorce. Yes, we, in fact, have proposed this and in fact, the barn still has an offer outstanding that we fire the lawyers, as Shakespeare said, not kill them, but fire them and we have

a mediator and we've suggested some of the most distinguished jurists and the court and the other side have not been receptive to that and unfortunately, it continues. So the barns is completely committed to that and will agree to a mediation in an instance. And fire all the lawyers working for the barns now, at least on these cases. We would terminate the lawyers? Yes, we would do that. Well, what do you think? James Greenfield? I think everybody wants to take my job. I think that with regard to the zoning case, mediation is not really necessary. Mr. Glanton has committed to doing certain things. If he, in fact, does those things, it is going to go a long way toward resolving this issue. There's really no need for a mediator to sit down with the parties to decide what needs to be done because the barns recognize us what has to be done. It simply has to do it.

The people that live on latches, Lane, that you represent, do they all speak with one voice? Are there a variety of opinions to people disagree with each other about barns in its relationship with its neighbors? I think what unified the community as nothing else could have was the inclusion of 17 individual neighbors in the barns' federal racial discrimination suit. Those the neighbors were dismissed from that action at an early stage because certainly it's within your rights as a citizen to appear before your township governing bodies to seek whatever relief you believe is necessary. But the neighbors are pretty much speaking with one voice and always have throughout this process. The only place in America where 100 or so people say the same thing, actually I've talked to them and they say different things to me, but they all will into listen now and be constructive in resolving this, it's the lawyers. Let me get a question, though, to you Richard Glanton about race and you have a reputation for charging racism when you are challenged.

I know that there are other people who have been called in one way, shape or form, a racist by you. And there's no question that race is a serious problem in this country that we all must deal with. But is it a danger, though, to make those charges without having any kind of evidence to back it up? I respectfully disagree strongly with your characterization of statements that are allegedly attributed to me. It's not wrong to speak the truth. And if someone does something and there's a racial animus associated with it and as an American of African descent and someone who was raised in the south and who have many, many, many friends of all ethnic origins, including whites and people of all ethnic origins and religions who have helped me and worked with me throughout my life, there's a sense in America today that you can't even say that the burning down of churches all across America has a racial overtone when they're black churches.

There's a sense in America today to say that these hate crimes are not motivated by race. There's a sense to have amnesia about the whole idea that there was a civil war in this country over slavery. So my feeling is that, no, I don't do that. People who know me would vehemently disagree that I do that. I have basically committed myself to speak the truth because the truth will set you free. I am not one to bite my tongue to speak out about what I see and believe and know in my heart to be the truth. But would you agree in this country some things are race-related or even racist and some things are not? Of course I would agree with that and I think that President Clinton in calling for a panel to deal with this issue is in fact recognizing the very point I'm making. I'm basically saying that this is an issue that we don't have to be divided over. We can all work together. But the fact of the matter is that we, to ignore it or to, in fact, simply attempt to silence

people like Martin Luther King was silenced about the Vietnam War or about race in the South. I think conditions today are worse than they were in the 50s in many respects because there was so much hope and there was a working together and among people of Jews and blacks were hand in hand in opposition to the apartheid laws of the South. And today there are strange relations, hope they'll get better. I think the mayor has done an awful lot to demonstrate leadership in this area. But you have charged people in this township and the township itself of being racist. No, I think you're wrong about that. You should read the complaint. What we have said is that we believe that we've been treated unfairly and we believe that race could be at motivation or an issue in the way that we have been treated. Could be. Could be. Yes, could be. But the fact of the matter is that it's easy for people to appear and appeal to hatred and appeal to what they think most people who are white will believe that blacks all say

that it's race and that there are no other issues except that they'll be treated unfairly. I have never said that unless I had sound reason to say it. And people who know me would vehemently disagree that I ever say that. Let me get a response from James Greenfield and boy, I wish I could stop the clock, but we are just about out of time. Mr. Glanton has never hesitated during his career to call someone a racist. He has in more recent years called Judge I of Orphans Court a racist. He called Judge Brody who was the federal judge sitting in the discrimination case a racist. And if you read the complaint, it's unambiguous as to what he is accusing people of. The other point I wanted to make here, Marty, is that it was very clear to the members of the other members of the Board of Trustees of the Barnes that Mr. Glanton intended to allege racism here. And in fact, Charles Frank, who was then a member of the Board, questioned that and said he would not vote to file the lawsuit. Another member of the Board abstained only two of the four members approved and that made it an illegal lawsuit under Pennsylvania law.

We have just about no time, but back to you, Richard Glanton. Is there a resolution to the problems between Barnes and its neighbors? Yes, in fact, the resolution is in working together and looking beyond this name calling that Mr. Greenfield is just engaged in and in the blatant misstatements he's just made with respect to, with respect to statements attributed to me. I'm going to be big enough and tall enough to say that I am prepared to do the right thing. There's an olive branch, all you have to do is grab it. They refuse to grab it and I regret that. But we'll continue to extend it until they have no choice except to grab it. Because we believe citizens in low-amerian township are going to rise up with taxpayers' lawsuits to stop this wasteful spending against the citizens of low-ameria. Well, I think both of you for joining us today and radio times and I do apologize to our audience for basically ignoring you during this hour. But many things that I wanted to get both sides on. Richard Glanton is president of the Barnes Foundation. James Greenfield is an attorney for the Latches Lane Neighborhood Association. Of course, joining us today on radio times or arts capel on radio times to talk about

the relationship between the Barnes and its neighbors. To stay with us for a card talk up next at 1 o'clock in the Derek McGinty show, it's an hour of open phones. Jackie Posey is the producer of arts capel on radio times. You're tuned to 91 FM, WHY, FM, Philadelphia, serving Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware within PR news 24 hours a day. Coming up on the next Derek McGinty show, Derek leads it up to you, the listeners, to decide the topics. He'll open the phones to your calls about anything in the news or feel free to give him feedback on recent shows. A session of open phones coming up on the next Derek McGinty show. Stay with 91 FM, that's this afternoon at 1 o'clock. After card talk here on public radio, 91 FM, WHY, why?

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