Nadir Is to Nader as Lowest Is to . . .

It was the third summer of the age of Charles Reich. My seatmate from Denver to D.C. was a young man named Ross, Roth, Russ, or Rust —his name is lost now but let’s call him Rust. He was headed home from one of those august symposia of intellectuals, bureaucrats, and tycoons at the Aspen Institute which are pursued so sybaritically but with only the vaguest intentions of fostering the cross-fertilization of ideas. To be accepted as authentic, conferences in those days were obliged to “green” themselves with habitués of the respectable, fringes of the counterculture: males with hair touching the collar; blacks or browns; occasionally the utterly impecunious (eventually dropped on account of bad table manners); and someone young enough so he could be counted on to wear chinos. The latter role was usually assigned to my seat-mate Rust, a sprig of parsley to color the main course.

Rust confessed to having felt conspicuous and uncomfortable. I asked him if he felt it was the price his people (the young, the oppressed, the Economy Class) had to pay for breaking down barriers; the question seemed to ease his recollection of suffering. Rust recounted an amusing episode from the first day of the conference. Herman Kahn (the Great Kahn, founder and dynamo of the Hudson Institute, futurist and consultant to generals, and indefatigable symposiast) was characteristically late; but taking his place opposite Rust at the huge rectangular arrangement of tables that hoteliers call “conference style,” he must soon have sized up the situation and Rust’s appointed role. Kahn appraised the scene for 15 minutes; then, while a speaker held forth on nothing in particular, rose, walked around the room, and, leaning, whispered in the ear of the young, nervous stranger: “The low rumbling sound you will hear from across the room each time you open your mouth to speak for the next five days will be the sound of me booing you.” Rust relaxed immediately in the knowledge that someone understood.

GG

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Gene V. Glass

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It was the third summer of the age of Charles Reich. My seatmate from Denver to D.C. was a young man named Ross, Roth, Russ, or Rust —his name is lost now but let’s call him Rust. He was headed home from one of those august symposia of intellectuals, bureaucrats, and tycoons at the Aspen Institute which are pursued so sybaritically but with only the vaguest intentions of fostering the cross-fertilization of ideas. To be accepted as authentic, conferences in those days were obliged to “green” themselves with habitués of the respectable, fringes of the counterculture: males with hair touching the collar; blacks or browns; occasionally the utterly impecunious (eventually dropped on account of bad table manners); and someone young enough so he could be counted on to wear chinos. The latter role was usually assigned to my seat-mate Rust, a sprig of parsley to color the main course.

Rust confessed to having felt conspicuous and uncomfortable. I asked him if he felt it was the price his people (the young, the oppressed, the Economy Class) had to pay for breaking down barriers; the question seemed to ease his recollection of suffering. Rust recounted an amusing episode from the first day of the conference. Herman Kahn (the Great Kahn, founder and dynamo of the Hudson Institute, futurist and consultant to generals, and indefatigable symposiast) was characteristically late; but taking his place opposite Rust at the huge rectangular arrangement of tables that hoteliers call “conference style,” he must soon have sized up the situation and Rust’s appointed role. Kahn appraised the scene for 15 minutes; then, while a speaker held forth on nothing in particular, rose, walked around the room, and, leaning, whispered in the ear of the young, nervous stranger: “The low rumbling sound you will hear from across the room each time you open your mouth to speak for the next five days will be the sound of me booing you.” Rust relaxed immediately in the knowledge that someone understood.