NOTES

Faith in a Tree

0.   Wiltwyck is named for the school of his brother Junior, where Junior, who was bad and getting worse, is still bad, but is getting better (as man is perfectible).

0.   The teacher, Marilyn Gewirtz, the only real person in this story, a child admirer, told me this.

Cop Tales

0.   Chair of the War Resisters League.

The Gulf War

0.   Dr. Otto Nathan, Einstein’s executor, an economist, said sadly to me one day, “You know, it isn’t guns or butter. If THEY wanted it, the country could have guns and butter.” When I mentioned this to other smart economists they disagreed. The thirty years of simple American malice since then have inclined me to agree with Dr. Nathan.

0.   Vermont, where I now live, elected an independent socialist, a terrible shock to the U.S. Congress.

El Salvador

0.   MADRE is a New York–based nonprofit organization dedicated to developing political and material support for the women of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

0.   The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) publishes the bimonthly Report on the Americas and sponsors research on political, economic, and social developments in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Some Notes on Teaching: Probably Spoken

0.   Really?

Imagining the Present

0.   It turns out that—according to his tapes—Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 also thought the war might not be a good or workable idea.