Pandemic, where were adjudicating. Is it more daycare or is it more about setting people up for college and Career Readiness . This expression of getting people prepared for whats ahead. And i always think were the transmitters of culture. We are the the the the kind of the guardians and stewards of like what happened before so that young people are equipped with, you know, who the way in the past. And thats why i think every class is in a way, a history class. And every class is in a way, an english class. So mark twain, right. He shows up as a time capsule. He shows up as this this figure here who everybodys heard about, even if you dont know anything about it. Right. And we conflate huck finn and tom sawyer, the really different stories. I wonder what you think as someone who engages with literature in the context of the history space. Now, you know, what does mark twain offer us the opportunity to do . You know, that allow us to engage in conversations and investigations that could be helpful to us at this time. Its it allows for us to see real americans. And i think thats the piece when were talking about what do history teachers do . Theres theres a tendency to think that we just talk about great men in history and that is the arc of all of history. If you really love history, if you really love social studies, if you love econ, if you love poly sci, you start to ask really difficult questions like what about not the great person . But if were talking about, for example, George Washington, what about the soldiers who had to fight under George Washington . What was it like for them . What was it like thinking about their families . And i think what twain offers is really a huge glimpse of this antebellum period. This this period of time where we what does every intersection. And i think thats the brilliance of the work is that its not just about huck, its not just about jim, but its this interaction of the sort of motley crew of different individuals that represent the snapshot in time. And thats really the difficult aspect of teaching history. And teaching the great man is easy. Teaching the everyman and literally every man. Thats the difficulty. But thats really what history is. And so twain, particularly in huck finn, it offers up that ability to talk about every person and i think thats what really is important, especially today. What do you think . Yeah, i, i just to follow up on exactly what youre saying. The, the phrases is that youre going to find in twain. These are captured. And he was very intentional about this. He wanted to read a book that read like people spoke. And in fact, it was revolutionary. The book was immediately banned. A month later, in a in massachusetts and across other places in the country. You know, so he landed on something even then, talking about the everyman experience. And as we continue to explore, what does it mean to be american and this single voice, this monolith ic notion, it traps us and twain through the the voice of hearken through the voice of jim and through the voice of the many characters you called the motley crew. Right. That we get this wide embroil, you know, quilt of what america look like. And i think its discomforting. I think it makes us uncomfortable. And i guess what i want to ask you is who gives permission now . You know, who who whos the one who can give permission now in this country, when we read anything . Because were still banning books and were banning this book in parts of our country. So what are your thoughts about that . What are your thoughts about whos allowed to read this . Who is not allowed to read this, if possible . Good art is unsettling, and i think thats thats the truth of not just twain, but all good works, is that it has to make a populace. It has to make a population uncomfortable. I think that one of the reasons why this text in particular is so upsetting is because it disrupts so many of the frames by which we evaluate art. So many of the french by which we evaluate good art, it breaks the rules and the conventions of, for example, language thats upsetting and obviously we have to talk about the elephant in the room, but that upsets people. But it also upsets us because its a reflection of who we are. Good art is not just the work or byproduct of the artist. Its a byproduct of the artists ability to speak about us. And i think thats why when we look at book bands in the time of twain or the book bands of today, its not just about twain. Its a reflection of what makes us feel so unsettled. And all this offer this really quickly, like, you know, the elephant in the room is that this tax is often a commentary on race and racial history in this country. As a history teacher. One of the things i try to always tell my kids is avoid the tendency of just thinking about the before and after. Theres something important about the inbetween. Theres something thats really sacred about understanding the history of the inbetween. We like to go from the i have a dream to barack obama in 2008, but we dont like the inbetween. We dont like the assassination. We dont like the mountaintop speech. We dont like, you know, the war on on drugs. We dont like massive castle creation. But thats the reality of the entire story. And much the same way twain is picking out of time, period, where youre starting to see the inbetween scene. But thats unsettling, especially in the narrative structures we celebrate, the ones that just really go from either before or immediately after. You know, you make me think about i had a student a couple of years ago who asked me, what do you think it was like to be a teenager. At one of shakespeares shows watching romeo and juliet, a show that is about teenagers . And i thought it was such a great question. And the reason why i think about it right now is twain gives us a chance to see what we would never see in a history book, which is the interface, the engaging of a poor white boy, son of an abusive alcoholic father from whom he runs. Its the impetus of the book for from hucks point of view, and then he meets a runaway slave, right . And the two of them meet a commiseration on that. And huck calls them in us in a way. And its kind of this revolutionary moment. But we get this poor white boy, and then we get this this enslaved person whos got a family who is doing his level best to get out of his horrible situation. And they meet and they go down the river together and they talk about everything from slavery to religion to the stars, to the taste of food, to what its like to wake up from a dream and be lost. Jim actually has a moment where he he mentors huck on how to be a good man. You know, and huck eats it up because hes never seen in an adult man show how to be a good man. None of the whites, the white men that hes supposed to celebrate, have shown him how to be a good man. Theyre all uniformly repugnant. Theyre violent, theyre abusive. And jim is kind and caring and thoughtful and pays attention to them and it makes me think when you say we dont make room to see the inbetween. And i think its probably because it scares us to imagine we might be in the inbetween right now better. And i wonder. When we look at huck finn today, whats the biggest error we make, emmanuel, or whats one of them . Right. Look, what do we do in wrong when we talk about this . Because clearly were not doing certain things right, you know . Well, i mean, one of the mistakes we make is we focus so much on the language and the language is jarring when we look at, for example, the use of the nword. Its jarring for many of us, but its only symptomatic. Its only evidence of a larger structure. Language is born out of a reality. You know, huck finn is born out of a time, but its not just born. The language isnt born out of itself. Its born out of laws, is born out of economic structures. Its born out of a culture. You know. And i think thats the hard part for many of us to really understand. Its one of those things when were talking about racism and were talking about, you know, Structural Racism. Were talking about the history of racism, even the history of slavery. Those are very difficult things to teach because you have to reconstruct the time. You have to reconstruct what were the laws you have to construct, what were the economic structures you have to construct . What were the customs and attitudes . And those are uncomfortable. So in many respects, the language feels uncomfortable because weve not quite mastered the history of the time and the language becomes an entry point for us to realize, oh, this is difficult, but thats just thats just the tip of the iceberg. And i think thats one of the fundamental mistakes we make when we engage with twain and we engage with huck finn. Is were just at the language. Were not even at the laws. Were not even at the realities of what it meant to be africanamerican at that time. Were not even at the idea of, for example, impoverished whites and their reality because of that, that desire to oversimplified not just the time, but also the progress, and to see what are the other structures, what are the other mountains that have to be dismantled before we get to that point where we can actually truly, fully appreciate and engage in the text . Im glad you brought up the elephant in the room, the nword is a flash point that even at the time, in preparing for this conversation, i found that there were abolitionist who wrote pamphlets about replacing the nword and with a person of color. And this is in 1820. Now 1820. There are framers of the constitution still alive. And here we are six years later at the launch of this book. And now here we are, 130 years, 40 years afterwards. Yeah. And and i ask you and this is a tough question. I dont know what to do with it. How do we now talk about art that uses the nword, that explores certain topics through language, which are uncomfortable . We have a lot of censored words in our culture right now, but weve always had them there. Its not new, this idea that theres some sort of new move to censor language. It is not new at all. Whats our advice as schoolteachers to the world at large . Because we live here, dont we . I mean, none of this is like a new thing to us. So whats our advice to people who are engaging with their teenagers at home . You know what . What does it mean to teach a book with the nword in it . In a world that says there are some places where this is okay and there are places where theres never okay. I think part of the answer to the question and i think this is the question with which, you know, smarter minds and all of us combined, of course, wrestled with. But i think part of it theres has to be a level of transparency when any individual encounters the art. I think thats the first piece. The other piece of it is that the honesty with which you approach this particular text, its obviously married to the issue of race. And i think that any educator who tries to tackle this text, you have to unpack. You have to unpack, not just race as an abstract concept. And i think thats part of the mistake that many of us make, is that, you know, as a as an educator of color, i deal with race in a real way in a tangible thing. For me, its a its a i wake up and i understand what it means to be a black man who teaches in schools. I understand what that means. I think its also its amazing because huck has this experience where he has this one man, man of color, this one enslaved individual who really is this person who allows for him to have a real tangible experience and to really tackle many of his own preconceived notions, many of his beliefs. When we tackle art, thats part of the mission is are you actually tackling not just the piece . Are you tackling who you are with respect to the piece . Its its true of any work. Its true of the constitution. Its true of the declaration of independence, and its true of twain, too. I just think the issue is race has historically always been that that thing that we struggle with. But youre youre a literature. How how would you tackle how do you tackle twain . Its its a terrifying challenge. Im going to be honest with you. And it humbles me like few things do in the room. First of all, i think youre right. It is something that is inherently personal and when i engage with this with students, the first thing i think of as a teacher is im the model student in the room. Right. I think that thats the key to when we try to be good teachers. I think at our best were trying to show them how to be a student and so i try to set the table by saying, first of all, i just want to say that what the space were engaging in right now is fraught and youre going to feel some feelings and you might feel nothing too. And thats all. All of its welcome. But and im an art teacher, right . Im was a theater teacher for many years. And that training really informs me because i say your feelings are actually really important right now, not because they should guide how you think, but because they should inform how you think and you should notice them. Some feelings. You need to notice them and let them go and some feelings you have to go. Where is that coming from . Why am i feeling that . And thats when we have real opportunities to have rich conversations. I mean, as you say, race is a slice of this piece. Its a slice of all pieces. Right. And thats thats been something that ive had to learn. That is a truth. That is undeniable. So that is how we approach things from our gender background, from our cultural background, being in american right, being from the northeast. Right. Were talking from new york right now. But i think the most important thing is to engage in kind of the the moral questions that every art piece asked, because i believe, as i think plato said, that art is inherently and he didnt put it this way. Exactly. But a question about moral structures, where are you . Where do you land when you hear this, see this, when you taste this food, how does it hit you . And i believe that our job as educators and i like to think parents at home when theyre working with their kids, were meant to referee conversations, but largely bless them and just provide guardrails when possible, but give as much of it to the students as possible, like hand as much of it to them as we can, huck says. Often in the text. Theyre trying to civilize me. Yeah, he does. And and he sees that as the great demon in the end, you know, when he when he when we get to the end of the book and its a troubling lesson, a few chapters, right, where we seemed to revert back to jim being compressed into a kind of a cardboard cut out the sleeve right. And then these two white boys who have every bit of agency that we can see in today. Right, who are just feeling very comfortable doing whatever they want to do. Huck says. You know, they tried to send me to my aunt, but she wanted to civilize me and ive already done that, and im not going to do that again. And i think about how twain said at the heart of this text, and im paraphrasing, is a battle between. A deformed conscience and a caring heart. And the caring heart wins. And i wonder, how can we engage people so that they can identify why when our conscience is deformed . Because i think thats twains quarry. If theres anything at all the deformed conscience of of our culture, i think hed be beautifully said. It it goes back to the heart of what is education . Are we in this to just hand out diplomas and to shuffle kids off into colleges and to professions or it is this really more about asking good questions, wrestling with difficult works, wrestling with difficult pieces, because that in itself is the education that the questioning of who you are, what you believe constantly learning how to ask better questions that can only emerge out of things that force us to wrestle with difficult ideas. And i think ultimately thats what thats the reality hart confronts at the end is who is he . How much agency does he have . And, you know, insomuch as he can challenge the structure, Structural Racism and the structure of races, you know, thats thats insurmountable for what amounts to be a poor white kid. But he does have this opportunity to do something for this one individual. And i think thats part of that deformed that deformed consciousness or that deformed heart that you have. You may not be able to bring down the entire system, but we all have this moment of what can i do to that might lead to progress. And i think thats you know, in as much as people criticize you know in hemingway you know does what he does in terms of criticizing the end. But i think thats one of the things were supposed to take away from the end, is even this young boy who seemingly has very little agency, there is something thats possible. I want to follow up on this notion of possibility. So this piece takes place almost entirely on a river. You know, the river, the father of rivers, the mississippi. And this river is a benevolent god, but its also a malevolent god, or at least a capricious god, because we this raft doesnt necessarily go where huck and jim want it to go. Theyre theyre ultimately hoping to get north and they dont make it. And i guess the question i wanted to ask you about that is, what do you you suppose twain may have been trying to surface when he has jim instruct huck on the importance of not being cruel to others in a time the 1880s when reconstruction is being completely dismantled, the promises of 40 acres and a mule have been already dismantled and put away. What do you suppose twain might have been trying to say to us with this complicated ending where jim was free the whole time . But tom sawyer doesnt tell him till the end because tom wanted to have fun. Im wondering from a historical standpoint and maybe some insight on what you think twain was doing, you from a Vantage Point of the historical location of the 1880s . I think especially when you talk about the location and you talk about the importance of the mississippi, its almost as if theres a duality in what hes saying. The idea of there in as much how can you be in control when youre floating in a raft . On a raft, you know, this idea of the river will do what the river will do. And i think thats like the macro view that there are things that will occur that are beyond your control and you just have to accept it. There are realities that are just larger than you and i together, but its the you, its the me, and its that individual accountability, that individual responsibility, this idea that in so much as jim was free, there is still that that a level of accountability that that huck had that tom has in terms of how theyre going to treat him. Now, what does this mean with regards to reconstruction . I think thats part of the reckoning that if you were alive postslavery, if youre alive and you now see the individual will go from being enslaved to being free, the work is not necessarily on the former slave. The work is on you, the work is with you, the work is how . What are you going to do to free yourself from your perception of that person as being an object of that person, being an object of your economic gain, that that person being an object that rises your that raises your social standing. Theres something that thats no longer their responsibility. Its now your work. And i think thats what the work offers in terms of us having insight towards. Its not just the legislation that magically changes a culture. Its not the legislation or the military that changes attitudes. There is a personal work that has to happen on such a microscopic level that then leads to a larger systemic change. And i think thats why we get to see that happen intimately between huck and jim. And i think thats so critically important because thats the piece of the story that no one really likes to talk about. We just get from slave ships to emancipation, but that messy. How do you create a more justice. We never really explore that. Youre making me think about a thing i havent actually even talked about in class and its just coming up for me as youre talking about it. And its this idea that puck is constantly in this conversation with his conscience. Its kind of like a sometimes its like a parallel to kind of jiminy cricket and pinocchio. This takes obviously a much, much higher in huck finn and huck is like he actually believes its morally wrong to help an enslaved person. Like he believes its in his bones. And he believes this from all of the instruction hes gotten. And he fights with himself the whole time. He is quite convinced hes going to go to hell. He says, im going to go to hell for helping this man because its wrong to help a slave and to hear you put it that way. Its it makes me think mark twain was doing, you know, and this is a hot word to say in a public school, antiracist work even then. Yeah, right. Because its exactly what youre saying is that huck was taking on the hard work as a boy. Yes, the hard work of dismantling his own entrapment in the system. The very system that encased millions of people in bondage. It also encased all of those who held them in bondage and all of those who stood by as the bondage happened. And and so. Ive never talked about it as an english teacher. Ive never brought that up. And i have to you know, i have to own my own arc on this. Right. And i think you know, its like were all on our own rivers, you know, witnessing a new day now on this. And and this idea that every one has work to do on this. Its not an assignment. It is the moral challenge. It is the the deformed conscience that we all have inherited, that that this story, when we look at it properly, forces us to reckon with we have to reckon with it. And thats thats how learning happens, isnt it, when we put something forth and we say, what do you think about this . The reckoning happens in the question, yeah, yeah. And thats what makes it is what makes this text so uncomfortable is because its not just about some you know, deaths mock in a moment where okay because of this larger act all of a sudden things have this happy ending there there is a question i think that twain is asking, what are you doing in this time, in this space, in this in this place . What are you doing . Because whether you like to admit it or not and i think this is what makes the text so uncomfortable today. And, you know, in particular, when were talking about large social structures and issues with which we wrestled today, whether sexism, homophobia, racism, any of these issues, any of these isms, these large isms, its easy to just dismiss it as some larger force will address this, and it will no longer be something for which im accountable. It will no longer be something for which i something i have to address. Its no longer something i have to face, but the structure is so large that in some way, shape or form, youve seen it or been shaped by it, whether its done implicitly or explicitly. And i think thats why i like whether were talking from new york or long island, you know, or suburban schools or city schools. The reality is, is that the history of new york is far removed from the world of twain. Its as shaped by that world as the world. And thats the text of twain. And i think thats what really rattles peoples cages. Its like, oh, this one, this one hits differently. It does it. And and i think its also this is the cipher, right . The it becomes a timeless piece because it continues to make us uncomfortable. I want to ask you about satire. Yeah. Lets i want to i want to ask you about what are the challenges that satire brings to history students when theyre trying to approach a complex political situation like the history of slavery in the americas . Yeah, you have to. I think this is i try it as even though im a history teacher, i try to engage the arts in my class. I love doing it. Its a one know you. I know you did. Its its something i love to do. And i think that the best way you can teach a time period is engage the arts and then you have to do it. The challenge is, though, for it to be a meaningful experience is you have to understand what are the what are what are the founding essential aspects that make that time period, that time period. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of scaffolding. You have you have to understand who were the players, what were the system was in place. You know, one of the exercises i do with my students and i encourage all history teachers to do this is you have to kind of rip apart the realities of the present world and say, you know, what was it like . What did not exist in 1885 . What didnt exist . And set 1876. So were stripping away cell phones. What does that mean . Were stripping away the internet. What does that mean . Were stripping away social media. What does that mean . Were stripping away, you know, a television. What does that mean . Lets construct that, because then you can gain a better appreciation for what an artist is trying to say and using the media of that time. So i think that thats part of it, is there has to be that exercise of just removing the layers of what makes what you think is normal to construct the normal of the time period. And that becomes an entry point by which you can start to understand in the tools of the artist, particularly when it comes to satire. Thats beautifully said, you know, and its very similar in the english classroom. You know, conversely, i also talk about art, my english class, but inevitably we talk about Historical Context because you just have to and this idea of challenging what normal means as your kind of moment from jump, thats so key. And its a sensibility. I mean, i think over time, you know, the longer you have with a group of students, the better chance you have of doing it. But we have quite a climb in trying to get students to disabuse themselves of the kind of like on interrogated truths that we all just take for granted. Like its just this way. And you just went through some technologies. But i also think about things like you couldnt marry interracially in a legal way across this country until the seventies. Yeah, right. You know, then you go back voting rights, by the way, not granted, right . Recognized and honored. Right. The ability for people to operate in a world unaccompanied females, people of color and when you look at what does it mean to walk the streets in 1890 of new york city, so much has to be done. First, i think about how satire is a violent attack. It has to be uncomfortable. If its not uncomfortable, then youre not getting it or youre busy laughing at the person whos the target you might not understand. You know where the target is coming from. And it makes me think when we do this as teachers who love art. So much, what do you prefer . I mean, is it is it music . Do you go to youtube . But do you watch videos . Do you do paintings, photographs like you know, whats your what do you love to look at . What do you feel like really hits with the kids when youre doing especially, again, American History late 19th century or early 20th . Because we have a lot of media from that time. We do. We do. And thats even part of it. You can like one of the exercises i love doing, particularly around the civil war, is ill ask students to pull out their cell phones and just go to Google Images and ill say, okay, now google image timeline of us president s. And i ask them, okay, without giving them a hint as to whats happening here, just what are your observations . And at some point a kid will notice, wait, they went from paintings to photography and right around the civil war and that to me is the moment where i think kids start to get like, oh, wow, thats important. Mm. And then youre getting like towards, like the early 20th century and then youre trying to get improvements in photography. And then by the forties youre talking about color photography and thats a conversation. And so even the instruments, you know, the tools, the technology, thats a worthwhile starting point. And then you can start to build and start to talk about, well, okay, so what was the culture of photography you like . I mean, because now instantaneously we pull our cell phone, we know where to stand and what to do, and you can start to reconstruct culture in that way. And we can start to talk about, hey, i wonder what they were listening to and start to build in for the music. And i think thats what starts to excite students because your construct in a time period and one of the things i always tell my kids is, listen, we not only study history, were also making history. And at some point someone will be studying the culture of your time and think about it, we have even more and this is what makes twain really great. The idea of about, you know, someone whos pretty, we would not necessarily have text about at almost at the turn of the century, the 19th or late 19th century, but think about what facebook is. Think about what instagram is. Think about what tiktok is. People who otherwise guys in the 17th century, we would never have content from them. We would never have texted about them. We never have images them. Twain is ahead of his time. Hes creating a tiktok. A way ahead of his time about someone who you would think is not worthy of being preserved. But i think thats how you use the culture to explain the art because thats thats really what someone will be doing in 15, 20 years about the time in which were in right now. Its a brilliant analogy. So much of what we have from the 19th century is encoded in letters. Yeah. And texts that were written by of a very narrow slice of our culture. We have very little from people who, for instance, shoveled coal on a train. We have very little written from what it was to be somebody who cooked in the basement of a factory. Were very little. And so weve got massive, kind of blind spots. And i think youre right. I think twain much like tick tock is done is to borrow a term thats kind of thrown around really easily set in our culture now but kind of democratizes a very important conversation that we would otherwise never have a shot to get. It feels like one of the greatest gifts he gives us in a way, and as you said earlier in this conversation, would distracted by how the language makes us feel uncomfortable. And its not just the nword its all of hucks conversations about is god even real . He says at one point he and jim, they talk and theyre having a metaphysical conversation, looking up the stars on this raft floating down the river. And he says, do you think someone made the stars or do you think they were just place there . And like in the 1880s to draw up a line like that . You know, thats deep. Thats a heavy. And, you know, he wasnt the only year old who said that. And, you know, you know that there were enslaved people who were having the same conversations and and their loss to us. Because the only things that you traveled to us are the are the conversations get encoded in them, become metonymy and flags that then carry the work of simplifying a very complex story, a monolithic story into a single story. The myth that we need to understand what happened. And i guess i wanted to ask you as one of my last questions, what other gifts do you think that this book us . Huck finn as we continue to struggle with it and maybe its about the book, maybe its about the way the conversations we have about the book, the opportunities that we have, you know, especially as a history teacher, you know, i always i often look at history teachers like you guys are very important, like like were all history teachers. But you guys get to be the history teachers. You know. So like what what are some of the gifts we get from huck finn and from mark twain . I think the one of the biggest gifts we get in terms of twain, again, like going back to that idea of the snapshot of what does it mean to be america. Its one of the questions that i love to pose to my students and really dismay and telling this idea of the universality of americanism that its the answer that you have in the northeast versus what you would have in the midwest versus what you would have in the south, the rural south, versus what you would have on the west coast. Is that the same thing . It the same definition that to me speaks to the history of this. It also speaks to what makes teaching history rather difficult. I think theres something to be said about how in this hyper politicized time, we like to pretend as if teaching history is a very easy to have, especially when you understand it. The arc of history is really multiple arcs operating at the same time, and that the person who truly loves history is looking for the stories, not just of the great men of history, but youre looking for all of the stories that comprise the arcs. And unfortunately, because of the way history has been, the way its been passed, many of those stories are missing, but then makes the arcs missing and incomplete. And the gift of this text is that as opposed to just focusing on the gilded age, as opposed to just focusing on northern industria ism, as opposed to just focusing on westward expansion, you have an opportunity, dig a little bit deeper in terms of whats happening in the south and really taking a look. The every man, the every person and having a story that really is on the ground as opposed to what often happens in. 180 days, which is its a quick survey that ends up being superficial and the superficiality becomes inherently dangerous. So i think thats the gift huck finn gives us, is that it gives us a way to create a real or history thats more tangible than anything else. His satirical approach, i think, is just cockeyed enough. To jump through time. You know, the satirists of all time tend to be the best time travelers because they attack the most important, enduring questions. We have. And American History is complex because it also tethers together the histories of a thousand nations of native peoples of enslaved who are taken from africa, of colonists from north america, and the many to the many different cultures that is, is also easy to turn into a monolith. But we know that the dutch and the portuguese were very different, incredibly different, you know. And then we also get the far east at the same time, you know, we have the 1860s, the 1870s, 1880s. And while we dont really get a lot about the immigrants from china who came to work on the railroad, we certainly have that call to the pioneering constant westward expansion that though wed already gotten to the farc, you know, to the pacific, how huck is going to get there is by river and ultimately by rail. And that rail is going to be laid by hands. That are from a continent across a different sea. And it makes me just think that somebody like twain sets the table for all of us and makes it if not safe, at least plows a path into the forest for us to follow behind where were allowed to ask. Really hard questions like what can we learn from an enslaved person who is free . And he doesnt know it and hes being toyed with . What can we learn from a 13 or 14 year old boy who whos running from his drunk father, who he still wants to please . And it makes me think, what can we do now to manage all that complex history in a world that says, as you say, theres only one story when theres so many stories to tell. Well, im really grateful for this time now. This is great. I appreciate and i admire the heck out of you. Same here. I love that we get to work together. I appreciate aboutand i just waa little bit about mark c johnson. Hes the author books and a u. S. Senate history and a frequent commentator on american and political history. Mr. Johnson is also a fellow, the Mansfield Center for the