New Haven, Family, Travel, and Washington, DC

Proto: “I‘ve done a broad range of things, including painting with watercolors and value drawing, which I don’t do enough of, taking courses on film-making and acting, and ballroom dancing with my sister Diana when we were children. A respect for poise came out of the dancing, music used for a purpose, and the value of real experience early. I wanted to play Little League baseball. Third base. The ‘hot spot.’ And with it learning in terms of analogues, the player as model that I wanted to know and emulate but not as a substitute for doing it myself. For sensing in the moment the skill and feeling of the ‘great play;’ the ‘flubbed play;’ and the efforts of teammates striving collaboratively.”

Proto: “I had twenty-nine cousins within walking distance on my father’s side alone. Parental guidance everywhere. It was the Fair Haven area of New Haven. Ethnically diverse neighborhoods. Junior high school, high school, and college intensified the diversity, as did regular Saturday, day-long visits to my Aunt Rosie’s house to play pick-up basketball games with cousins and neighborhood kids. In my own family — I wrote about some of this in ‘The Crimson Horde” and in the ‘Author’ section of Sacco and Vanzetti — two compelling forces were evident: the sharing of memory and my mother’s encouragement to learn and not to be ordinary. It also was learning from the era lived by multiple mentors — parents, uncles, my older cousins, and brother, Richard, and making it my own. Generational obligation went with it.”

Proto: “I came to an appreciation of the value of moving sideways, of exploring the range of interests and skills inside of me. Being determined and persistent in that and not being linear. And integrating what I learned into what I knew. Not wanting later in life to wonder whether there were skills or talents I had or knowledge I could appreciate that hadn’t been explored or given enough play to see if joy or a form of excellence was attainable in doing and sharing.”

Proto: “I went to the Soviet Union in 1975, Moscow and Leningrad. It was late January. Snow on every train platform and river. To Czechoslovakia in 1978. Troops and burned out tanks in Prague. China in 1983, when forms of communism — farm communes, uniform clothing, large photographs of Mao and Cho En-Lai — were still evident. I’d studied Marxism in college and graduate school, the ‘Iron Curtain’ still had meaning, ‘loyalty’ to America was still defined in terms of anti-communism, the Vietnam War had been justified on global ideological grounds, the effects of Hitler’s invasion was talked about angrily by officials in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). I could continue serious dialogue about international affairs with my brother and mother and understand change as it was evolving. It wasn’t just travel, it was the purposefulness of the travel.”

Proto: “I’m taken by the courage and range of knowledge of the British explorers, Richard Francis Burton and Ernest Shackleton particularly. Burton plays into ‘The Photograph’ — his visit to America in 1860. It was part of the imperative for my interest in the Royal Geographical Society of London. I’m still learning about Alaska’s Bush Pilots, pre-GPS.”

Proto: “I love being an uncle and great uncle, grilled fish, and Sally’s Apizza.”

SCRAP, Justice Department, Presidential Committee, and Private Practice

Proto: “While I was in graduate school, during the summer, I chaired Young Citizen’s for Kennedy in Connecticut. Roughly from April to June 6th. Then we spent weeks collecting signatures for gun control legislation. Kennedy was an enigmatic person to me with deep passions, Catholic in a way I came only later to understand in terms of the church’s social teaching, and he was a lawyer. He knew how to do what he believed in; how to use the law for the purpose it was intended: justice. There were other influences that still continue – my parents’ civic involvement and their disquiet about discrimination and especially my mother’s irreverence about institutional authority. They moved me in a direction.”

Proto: “SCRAP didn’t seem ‘big’ at the time, not to any of us. It did seem like the right use of our time. Once we actually saw our work in written form — the ‘Petition for Extraordinary Relief, ’ which we made up, and the New York Times article — we began to dwell on the financial and political power and geographic reach of our adversaries and how to out maneuver them. It forced us to understand our strength, how to calculate it. We took risks because of it. And to laugh at it, to make parody of it. I try to capture those moments in ‘High Court.”

Proto: “It was both a difficult and purposeful time to be a student. You had to learn fast, to have informed views. There were no neutral moments or discussions.”

Proto: “At the Justice Department, the appellate process, the emphasis on law and oral argument before three judges, suited me intellectually. The most challenging work was South Dakota’s harsh, ugly efforts to take major portions of Sioux Reservations with the aid of a friendly judge. Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Standing Rock, Cheyenne River. It was 1890, Wounded Knee, being played out again. Only the United States was on the side of the tribes. I supported the trial lawyer in creating the historical record for the appeal, including interviewing the oldest tribal members in remote South and North Dakota with the help of a translator. We finally stopped the harm at Standing Rock and Cheyenne River, winning before the Eight Circuit. There were other cases — Constitutional arguments, traveling with the Mexican Army and DEA agents into the Sierra Madres to control opium poppies, arguments about the fate of the public lands, historic preservation, and civil actions against industrial polluters but the Sioux cases required moral imperative and the full exercise of the United States’ authority.”

Proto: “Counsel to the President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee was unexpected. I wrote a law review article just before leaving Justice. One reader became Director of the Committee and offered me the position. I was in Connecticut at the time and was back in DC in ten days. The accident at Three Mile Island had rattled the nation and for good reason. Rhetorical support by every president since Truman would make no difference. I got inside nuclear power plants including the unharmed reactor at TMI. It was plain quickly, the imperfections of the utility industry and the critical need for community involvement in emergency planning would ensure nuclear power had no prospect of expansion in the United States.”

Proto: “I made an effort to become a United States Court of Appeals judge that didn’t work politically. That was in nineteen ninety-two or three. I was in private practice in DC. The law then took on renewed meaning, to continue to understand it in the broader context of justice and culture that was central to my temperament and my earlier experience. To have the freedom to pursue it in more personal ways. Louis Brandeis as the lawyer settled-in as the model.”

Proto: “The Disney fight and representing Native Hawaiians are threads of that. The writing I did on Catholic Social teaching, serving as counsel to the chair of the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee, being elected a Fellow at the Royal Geographical Society, the Sacco and Vanzetti writings and organizing, the musical drama and my collaborative role in writing the book and lyrics came out of that, the Civil Rights claims contained in a recent highway fight in Virginia, and establishing over time Seattle and the outdoors as a second venue in life. The knowledge I needed, and the experience, to write ‘The Photograph’ — women’s fashion in the thirties, jazz, architecture, the Black Ball ferry, map making in the Civil War — and moving into fiction or at least trying to, is part of it as well.”

Proto: “One other part of the Justice Department experience. I’d order old boxes of famous case files from the archives. Civil Rights, Indian, foreign affairs, war powers cases. Read the White House memos, FBI investigations, the legal arguments not made. The case as history, not merely law.”

Proto: “Getting educated and living professionally in DC was extraordinary: hands on decision-makers, Pentagon-stationed military, hill staffers in your classes or as teachers, accessibility to congress — I interviewed two Senators for my Master’s thesis. You get to see it close — the cynicism, the manipulation, the distortive effect of money, the occasional courage, less common today. DC had opportunities — people came to me for hard and big things. All of my work in private practice was in other parts of the nation. The travel and cultural exposure widened. When I returned to New Haven for a few years — after Justice and again after the Committee — the education continued in local matters. Seeing and working with people who gave civically to improve their community, their lives, their families, and working with the Mayor in governance and political matters to revitalize New Haven. My parents did it. So did I. The two theatre boards I sat on, and the two inaugurations I chaired, were especially valuable in seeing peoples’ contributions.“

Proto: “I like chaos in the law, forcing change in accepted notions. I also like blueberries and roasted almonds, and I can be had by the occasional Hummel’s hot dog and properly done French fries.”

Yale and Georgetown

Proto: “I wanted to be a high school history teacher and couldn’t get into the program at Southern Connecticut. Ninety-percent of the graduating class wanted to be teachers. That seeming failure opened up a larger world and I leapt into it and never left. Liberal arts and student government; teachers with worldly experiences and broad notions in their heads; and students with intense commitments to learning and principled views who were encouraged — the teacher as mentor, as parent — to get more formal education. But the desire to teach never left. Or the importance of being the mentor.”

Proto: “My sister was the educator in our family. Diana, a brilliant teacher, a national Milken award winner, innovative in the classroom, a model for public school education, which I, too, was the product of until I left for graduate school in DC. She was especially helpful when the graduate level course at Georgetown I was teaching got larger and I was searching for new techniques to ensure more intimate, engaging educational experiences beyond rearranging classroom chairs, one-on-one discussions, and having students form team debates. It was a wonderful and demanding teaching experience; rated highly by students as well.”

Proto: “The courses were deliberately interdisciplinary and as real and human as I could make them. Looking, for example, at coal’s use through the harshness of mining, using ‘Harlan County, USA’ and the writings of Harry Caudill and how I wrote about coal and railroads in ‘High Court.’ Visits to nuclear power plants when I taught at Yale and the first time at Georgetown. Or integrating into the urban readings ‘The Beats’, ‘Route 66,’ ‘Blackboard Jungle,’ ‘Rebel Without a Cause,’ and Thorstein Veblen. Provoking the family perspective in policy choices, and delving deeper into the life of Dorothy Day, Jane Jacobs, and Michael Harrington. Using the evolution of jazz, and literary works that described urban settings, like Dreiser’s ‘Sister Carrie,’ as preludes to understanding the evolution of Chicago and how it looks and feels. Student papers had to include interviews, drawings, site visits, and law, a comfort with not deferring to lawyers but being able to engage them.”

Proto: “My brother, Richard. A remarkable mathematician and public servant to the nation, was a serious thinker throughout his life. His death in 2008 was an unexpected loss, especially my anticipation of moments of recollection as we grew older. Fortunately, with my sister Diana, we already had done much of that including three visits to Italy together. Early in my life he encouraged me to think about history differently. He made it alive and current no matter the era. There were, of course, other influences and experiences that affirmed that. I write it and teach it that way, trying to make the reader be there or the students meld public and private realities and values into classroom learning.”

Proto: “In 1976, I gave the commencement address at my college alma mater. In 1994, I was gratified to receive commendation from my grammar school. On my mind in both places was the mentor, the teacher as mentor and friend. I remembered and praised them by name and the difference they made in choices made, ideas explored, and giving reality to possibilities, attainable — sometimes by indirection or non-linearly — with persistence and hard work and recognizing opportunities when they emerged. I did it in inner city summer programs during New Haven’s urban riots, as a dorm director, a teacher, a lawyer in private practice, as chair of Wilton Park, and my early involvement in the Roosevelt Institution, finding it mutual and gratifying, developing friendships over time, learning from it.”

Proto: “I like the landscape and architecture at the University of Washington, the dialogue in Dashiell Hammett’s books, tuna fish sauce, navy blue, and urban running — the peripheral vision required, changing speeds, and moving sideways.”

The ‘Skit,’ Dancing, Music, Dan Lauria, and The New York Film Academy

Proto: “Between the age of two and seven we lived with my maternal grandparents. This was the creative side of our family: artists, tailors, wood craftsmen, dancers, food makers, owners of the first generation of record players, film cameras, and projectors (we still have that clunky, magical projector). They also were keen fans of live television, black and white movies, baseball players, and all the related popular personalities. Most lived and worked in New York and came into New Haven with frequency and informality and with the same ease that family members visited New York. That knowledge and skill got shared in many ways generationally, none more engaging than the ‘skit’ — aunts, uncles, and children mixing together to make up stories in a few moments off in a corner, and act them out before family, always intended to be a bit ribald, parodies of life or movies or movie stars or relatives in the room. No scripts, mostly silent, minutes in duration, with lots of facial expression, body movements, ad hoc props, and playing roles without regard to gender.”

Proto: “My sister, Diana, and I began dancing then. My brother Richard and Diana began learning to play the piano. Our home was quiet when the lesson or practicing was in progress. Whatever classical music they learned, at holiday time the popular music — my dad was the singer — was an essential part of setting the celebratory mood.”

Proto: “The dancing was theatrical. Forming the routine, it’s choreography, practicing, knowing the music, collaborating with each other and our teacher, my mother and uncle designing the clothes, and then performing. Timing, lights, poise, positioning on stage, the occasional mistake and recovery, the audience, and — credit my uncle and father — still having film of some of it.”

Proto: “Publicity was involved and so was dealing with diverse people we often hardly knew, older, seeming to enjoy their experience, a few seeking a career in a way we did not.”

Proto: “There is theatre in the law — the oral argument before three judges, reasoned, persuasive, some portions memorized waiting for a cue or used to set the tone. Positioning behind a podium, facial and hand movement, listening to questions and responding, understanding the dynamics and theatrics among the judges as you do, and the broader societal dynamics in play during the argument, who you’re representing and what that conveys. Using the brief as history and script, your adversary as the antagonist, and the uncertainty, the accidental moment as things unfold to be recognized and exploited if necessary, like recognizing the unpredictable moment retained in a John Ford movie that separates it — like the persuasiveness of your argument — from others.”

Proto: “I met Dan Lauria in 1993, although we had overlapped at Southern Connecticut State University as students. And shared a dear mutual friend in Mike Adanti, then the University’s president. Dan already had done ‘The Wonder Years’ and was a well-known actor, a solid historian intent on bringing historical characters to life, respectful of the past, thoughtfully working with and learning from older actors, Peter Falk, Charlie Durning, Jack Klugman, imaginative in ways that were extraordinary, especially with encouraging new play writers through his Kitchen Ensemble in LA, which my firm organized pro bono. It was through him that I met writers, actors, directors, and producers, visited him in LA to see play readings, plays at a variety of theatre sizes, his rehearsals and interviews, and the bold, confident and respectful way he and others gave new, spirited life to Steve Allen’s ‘Meeting of Minds.’”

Proto: “Attending Dan’s performances on the east coast, like Arthur Miller’s ‘The Price’ and ‘Lombardi’ on Broadway was an incalculable education — seeing the evolution in the writing, the acting, talking to the people doing lighting, sound, handling props, making the process and personalities flow. The choreography and music in ‘A Christmas Story,’ — Dan working with remarkably skilled child actors and complex dancing, acting, and singing arrangements.”

Proto: “Dan guided me through the learning curve of writing a play and movie and has been a thoughtful teacher as I read, with a different intention, play and movie scripts and watched how fiction or historical characters were transformed into theatre and movies. He encouraged me to write a treatment for ‘High Court’ and critiqued it.”

Proto: “When I heard the music from Sacco and Vanzetti I wanted it heard in the United States. Sol Hurok. Okay that’s a little overstated. Though I did go to Belgium, met the composer and writer, and watched a recorded production of the original in Dutch.”

Proto: “I had comfort with music — the lyrics to rock n’ roll, big band sounds, television themes. The generational sharing and era ensured it. When I got to the Sacco and Vanzetti musical drama, ‘The American Dream,’ keeping the music in sequence and rewriting the book and lyrics, I was comfortable doing it in a fairly rushed context, trying collaboratively to give life to a new approach.”

Proto: “The brief course I took at the New York Film Academy in two thousand and seven was part of the education. Wanting to experience the collaborative effort in making a simple movie. Hands on. Conceiving and writing a script, acting and directing it, in this case working with another student, Robert Merisca, and benefiting from the camera skill of another colleague, Jordan. ‘Unblocking Life,’ Robert called it — the screenwriter who couldn’t find an idea and the Roaming Muse — me — intent on giving him one.”

Proto: “I felt like I was in ‘Fame.’ Intense, vivid, me as the relative elder, knowledgeable in my way and disciplined about the schedule, in a setting of dedicated, dream-driven kids with skills I respected and, in their talent, educated me.”

Proto: “I also felt like Bruce Weitz’s Belcher in ‘Hill Street Blues.’”

Proto: “Acting for People over Fifty’ — when I was living on Bainbridge Island. Everyone willingly sharing his or her limitations and talents. Being on stage, maybe with a chair. Usually not. Usually just the raw script or your imagination.”