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Mark Schweickart
Joe - Congrats on your book doing well in an actual bookstore (as oppossed to waiting patiently on Amazon's cyber-shelves). That is very encouraging.
Mike - Your Springsteen story reminds me of similar handshake I got from Bob Dylan. Well "shake" might not be right. He gave me one of those here-let-me-hold-out-my-hand-like-a-dead-fish-while-you-move-it-up-and-down handshakes. It happened at an unexpected location.
My son went to a small, (and I mean small--his senior graduating class had 11 students) French-American grade school and high school here in Los Angeles. But by small, I don't mean to imply that it was exclusive, in fact it had a very nice diversity, and was not very expensive. French schools have existed throughout the world going back to more imperialistic times, and were originally set up primarily for the children of diplomats. The idea was that the students would follow the same curriculum as that of public schools in France, and therefore would be eligible to attend French University (for free, hence my motivation) upon graduation. The tuition was kept affordable becaues it was meant to encourage the French diaspora to keep more in touch with their roots, but the schools are open to anyone. As a full immersion school, one had to be prepared for your kid to be taught in French, but since kids pick up languages easily when they are young, this was not a problem.
The school was having a talent show one night, and Derek, my son, wanted to show off what an accomplished Swing Dancer he had become as his talent. None of his classmates were dancers, so he invited a dancer girlfriend of his to be there as his dance partner. While waiting for the show to begin, I was sitting in the audience next to this young teenage girl friend of his, and was craning my neck, looking about the audience, when who should walk in, surrounded by 4 or 5 black women--none other than Mr. Tamborine Man himself. They slid into one of the rows at the back. He was married to one of these women, and they had a daughter who was attending the school, something I had not known prior to that.
Anyway, since the show had not started yet, I couldn't resist making a pest of myself, so I jumped up and made my way back to his aisle. Fortunately he was sitting on the end seat. So I ingratiatingly said to him, "Sorry to bother you, but I have always been a huge fan of yours. Could I shake your hand?" And with that, without saying anything, he proffered the afore-mentioned carp, which I shook, and quickly retreated to my seat. Now I was the one acting like a teenager, and when I sat back down next to Derek's dance partner, I gushed," Did you see that? Do you know who that is sitting back there? That's (and here I leaned in to emphasize, with a not-too-loud, excited whisper) "...that's Bob Dylan! Can you believe it? She turned around to look at him, then turned back to me and said, "I think I've heard of him. What was that song he sang?"
What could I say, the times they had indeed changed.
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