"I was a Revolutionary"

welcome back to keep your prisons i'm kate mcintyre for the rest of this hour i was a revolutionary by lawrence native andrew malin millward it's a collection of short stories several of which are set in kansas know we spoke at the university of kansas boomer hall in two thousand fifteen as part of qaeda's the commons it's so great to be here are groping lawrence in and it's a place i've always returned to growth in my writing and engine physically family and friends many of whom are in the audience tonight it's great to be here there are three stories in the in the book that take place in lawrence and oman to read one of those tonight obviously it seems fitting it takes place in early two thousand nine after the presidential election and the professors teachers kansas history and their periodic you know hear a couple of america are exceptions that talk about what they're covering in the class the different moments in kansas history that they're covering and since it's the last story in the book it's the book that in some ways talks

about everything that's come before a spoiler i was revolutionary on the first day i'd tell them when searching for the seven cities of cebu corn auto was so disappointed by what he found in the land that would one day become kansas that he strangled the guide who brought him here and turned around no unless they're blank stares communicate only this it's the first day of class don't like you and up the syllabus morsi on tuesday i asked them to find a partner thinking oh haven't entered use one another to the group the cave when i see their eyes roll hear the grounds from the back of the room actually let's start from here next time i say and pass up the syllabus a modicum of relief enters the classroom as they pack their bags and leave the suction from their deaths to the door as if by pneumatic to being afterward i had to the office i share with an emeritus professor who really comes around i check email and find my wife has

written we used to speak openly and directly now we email and hers arrive with all the formality of the communique paul i'd like to get some more of my things this evening please leave the house from seventy eight linda strange to think of her across campus over in sociology at composing this terse missive stranger still to think that when the divorce papers come we could if so inclined to settle the whole matter of the end your campus know at university joke i thought that we get on a hapless academia ok and debating whether to reply when bratton share the history department pops in to say hello welcome back partner he says howe was break cold i say he laughs when asked if my love and thirty when i'm carrie bradshaw is a fine line between administrator and concern colleague a fact that seems to color any conversation i have with them i shouldn't

complain he's always been pretty good to me when the university hired linda almost twenty five years ago he took me on as an instructor i was all the dissertations with a focus on the post civil war period in the south but those first several years i taught whatever they could scrounge up from a general history surveys even the occasional comp costs brad had pushed needed to teach a class on kansas history wanted me to become the department's kansas go and so i put aside my dissertation telling linda it was temporary and educated myself as quickly as i could about a state i'd never given much thought i understood of course the they hired me because the university wanted linda and further that without the dissertation i would never earn tenure even so i've never forgotten his kindness are you going to watch the inauguration he says now ever think you'd actually see this back in the sixties i teach tuesday say and turn back to my computer screen i can feel him lingering they're

the heavy breathing of a big man well i should let you get back to work he says say hello to linda for me that night i walked downtown along massachusetts street while and dilutes our home lawrence's freezing and everyone is inside watching the basketball game i like having the streets to myself most of the stores have closed but occasionally i stop to look in a window before i head to the wheezes from a screen or a boulevard surrounded by folks fixated on the game i wonder how many still remember that are innocuous the smiling mascot an imaginary bluebird got its name from the militant abolitionists the j hawkers who pablo de leite to make kansas a free state during a timeout the mascot runs around the court and treating the crowd to clap to the beat of the band's breast pump i watched the game clock imagining linda moving quietly for our house alone taking things when the game ends it might have

been walking in the cold january night by the time i arrived she's gone she left the day after new year's informing me when she came downstairs with matching luggage as a dose of the final minutes of a bowl game below she said if she didn't do it the second she loses her nerve and before i could even rise she was turning the door knob she says it's too difficult to see me that we need some time apart to get used to the separation so far i have respected her wishes resisting the fleeting temptation to stop by her office announced or my lowest moments to sneak over and watch a teacher in the hallway i haven't made much a fuss because i realize soon after she walked out the door that it was the right thing despite this the last time i called her i made a halfhearted attempt to reconcile when she resisted i pressed her i'm not going to lie in bed next to someone who doesn't love me anymore she said the amazing thing is that you could you could do that paul and you'd never say a word

i was hurt and started to yell but linda cut me off this is why don't wanna talk and hung up and though i know she's right we haven't been in love for a long time it's hard to watch her onto a life we spent nearly forty years creating it's awful these night she asked me to leave the house her incremental disappearance from my world each time i returned home and walked slowly from room to room opening drawers and closets trying to find what she's taken time to sense which is touched and he says when he's teaching sections we talk louisiana purchase in kansas territory we talk about andrew jackson an indian removal we talk about the kansas nebraska act of eighteen fifty four which left the question of whether kansas would be a free stater slave states to be decided by its inhabitants we talk about the new england immigrant aid society is shifting abolitionist and profit seeking he says the kansas how they settled in and establish this town named after their founder amos adams

lawrence we cover kansas becoming the thirty forced on the flat we talk border war and bleeding kansas john brown and jim lane cointreau and george talks to be no point to liberate a more intimate and sixty three that is dan rhoad right up and down massachusetts street murdered some hundred and fifty and are men and boys some do we unpack terms like a hawk or an border rustling we learn about the arena nichols and the failed attempts to gain voting rights for women and blacks we talk broken treaties and ian resettlement and of the dog soldiers who fought back against white progression through the first few weeks of the class a slow to come together they yawn and rub their eyes nurse their hangovers they text message and i pretend not to notice but it eats at me it's tough to fill the one thing you believe you do well with you you've come to depend upon i want them libya's fascinated by the history as i was all those years ago in a library when i should have been doing research for my dissertation on the limits of radical reconstruction of the south but was unable to pull my nose out of a volume in

kansas but they seemed largely uninterested finally i asked why did you take this class my tone betrays my frustration and they look alarmed sitting up a little there are mutterings of from a major no one says that but i'm afraid a reputation as an easy greater has preceded me than a girl and wrote she says because i'm from here truth be told my memory is poor and i still haven't learned names but she stood out as one of the few willing contributors and attentive listeners that's a good reason to care say the history of one's home matters we should understand where we come from the legacies we inherit the thing they need to understand they tell them is that the history of the state like anything is a history of change what makes kansas interesting is i hear these changes tend toward social and political extremes i soapbox like this for another minute ending emphatically with kansas is and always was a radical state

i'm staring hard half expecting the class to rise slowly from their chairs one by one and slow clap my stand and deliver a moment but of course they just sit there there's some nodding of heads a few grins and smiles at the old prof getting worked up a timely can leave early a few days later the girl wrote two approaches me after class lauren i've learnt your name she's petite with a short black top that accentuates the power of her skin she's holding a book against her chest as she approaches and without a word flips around the book's cover announces that as an expose a of the most dangerous professors in the country academics to indoctrinate students with anti american values she opens to a spot showers but martin at the back side by side pictures one a mugshot from nineteen sixty eight and the other a recent photo from the department website underneath is a list of crimes in exports i look away from the book and me her spare but she says nothing

there's a long moment of silence that seems to confuse the nature of this encounter you only to sign it i said it's wide took her class she says there are few things you should know about that book i think what you all did was brave i was in that much a part of it sure seems like it she says looking at the book and i'm trying to think how best to respond and can only offer that was a long time ago it is myself to head to a meeting to turn back to or i'd appreciate if you didn't go around showing that everyone the book isn't a surprise brad approached me about it early in the fall semester is familiar with my past and it's never been an issue this was a matter of pr we've had some calls he said scratching on his bald head from parents in groups with the air stuff in the campaign they're concerned about students taking a class you make it sound like i'm a pedophile i said you know i think you're a great teacher paul he said placing a hand on my shoulder we would never knew their

contract all these years if you were he took his hand away but the weight of his implied threat remained route has begun the ways and not he's tall and thick and i'm sure i mean i ran my hands through my thinning hair sign instead from road like thousands of others who are today's value been contributing members of society i protested the war and went to jail for it as i finish saying this however i opened the book and read my entry for the first time after this he said suddenly i was involved in any of the bombings brad removed a pair of glasses from his breast pocket of his oxford re reading the passage technically doesn't say perpetrated in yemen a sure as hell implies that christ i mean i wasn't even underground when i left before everyone disappeared you've been very honest with me about your involvement he said closing the book on removing as classes what hung in the air between us was obvious truth and its area

distractions carried less weight than the physical existence of the book we thought it would die down but in the final month of the campaign things got worse the calls and letters continued people demanding the university fire a domestic terrorist i was really word for a while without ten year and most vulnerable levees and let me go abroad went to bat for me a testing to my years of excellent teaching a job my spring semester teaching low for my usual three classes to one just two election was over by next fall this won't be an issue for a time i consider legal recourse of some sort but when i talked it over with linda she said it wouldn't do any good this has nothing to do with you she said this is about people who believe we're going to have a black muslim socialist as president we were drinking pino as we stood at the island and i recently remodeled kitchen after a moment of silence she said a girl can dream can she and we both laughed we talk about post civil war

growth an industrial revolution we talk about railroads and on regulated monopolies we talk about exit justice and papp singleton's black colonies and hot swing county we look and then and now pitchers photographs of the giddiness the oldest of surviving all black town west of the mississippi we discuss the people's party and the achievements of the populace we cover the legislative warren the first female elected to political office in the country says an assault or marathon are going we look at the devastation of tribes confined to reservations we talk prohibition and carrie nation raiding bars smashing whiskey bottles we talk progressive era we decode the political and social commentary in a strange concrete sculptures of the speed densmore garden of eden do you know that the appeal the reason the largest circulated radical newspaper in the country was published in girard kansas they do not we discuss granting of the granting of suffrage eight years before the federal government passed the amendment we talk strikes

in oilfields ida b wu and more warm one thursday at the end of classes everyone is shoving notebooks into their backpacks lawrence danson announces that there will be a war protest the following tuesday new the union your subconscious as her classmates its import we make our voices heard everyone looks at me the classes start to turn a corner since my helpers they engage more readily the discussion is more lively i repeat the homework assignment and tell them to have a good day after the others leave one says would you do that for asked her to come to my office we walk down the hallway and silence but when i shut the door comes out and didn't i tell about dropping out and moving from boulder to chicago to join a collective i tell about the days of rage and trying to organize revolutionary working class youth i tell about false ids and training ourselves to fight i tell about getting beaten by police and jailed

what's the point yes and try to explain why i can just say extra credit for any one of those to the protest doesn't mean you have to pretend like you someone or not she says i try to explain about being a spousal hire an uneasy state of my employment after the attention from the book it's why did we only one class a semester to every and she asked why and i try to rationalize and explain until all i can see in her expressions disappointment the slight accusations of cowardice let's glass i arrived to find a flyer for the protest take to the dry erase board lauren doesn't show i leave the handle where does writing dates and names from the kansas passed all around it finally someone asked what it is i take it down and read it aloud they're silent i said it on my desk and continue lecturing and talk time was finished and to skip ahead just a little bit

when linda left it felt strange to have time to myself again between teaching in our life together my tent my attention always was always directed by the concerns of one or the other since january it seems all i've had his time and without marriage teaching as rushed in to fill the void and silver spring break are not on vacation or visiting family i stay home and tinker with my syllabus in course schedule reading a new book i want to incorporate into my class next fall the friday before returning to school i get an email from war and for a brief second i misread the name mistaking it for another please leave the house note from linda and feel relieved when i realize the air lawrence messages brief she says the dc trip fell through and asked if we can eat i typed come by my office monday mike erbes cursor hovers over sand then i don't delete

can type while tomorrow during her my home address in time the following afternoon and grading papers were more knocks forty five minutes late she's wearing jeans and a red sweatshirt too big for her armies i imagine sorry i lost track of time she says a poll on my jacket and step onto the porch a cold front has come through and heavy gust of wind kicks up over the railing she lowers the hood of his sweatshirt and says she needs to make a phone call before we head out forgot myself she says we might have a you know my mom who wanted a second course there's a point toward the kitchen she takes a handset from the cradle on the wall looking over shoulder before dialing i walk upstairs to my study to give her some privacy a minute later she calls out my name and i tell him to come here i've taken off my jacket and sung in over the back of my chair when then i used to work here

together or death set opposite walls surrounded by bookshelves but for a few stray paper clips cruz's cleared out and the bookshelf stand half full the wooden stairs creek from warren's language ascension when she appears in the doorway she is looking all around her like a thief casing the joint last throes of when are out there say i thought we could talk in here she agrees so what tell me what happened with washington and said she explains that the donors who fronted most of the money pulled out two days before an unforeseen result of the ongoing financial collapse she's looking across the hallway where i'd left the bedroom door open i imagine what you seen the built in bookshelves we put in ten years ago that spanned an entire wall the green leather ergonomic reading chair by the window imported from sweden the attached bath we added with a whirlpool into head standing shower

look at this place to citizens of commerce which this could be my parents i feel the rush of embarrassment followed by anger and disgust she's right and often found myself wondering what the hell it become of us over the years when we're young we believe than karl marx and permanent revolution but middle aged come to find her faith and martha stewart and the permanent renovation of our home wasn't always this way for a number of years after leaving the movement was still active politically but slowly after returning to school the concerns of the professional began to eclipse the political we suspend entire days knocking on doors and now we write checks to progressive organizations and donate to democracy now before dashing off to university a meeting at the university it was my wife i say she wanted all of this your wife florence those ex wife i correct thank you

for female unknown or if reading from his two thousand fifteen novel i was a revolutionary no word spoke at skinner hall at the university of kansas as part of the commons at play you know we're to have a new book coming out in november jay hauck or on history home and basketball to be published by the university press of kansas i'm j mcintyre tv our present is the production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas