Elusive, vast problem of memory and usable past. We have been talking about that for nearly two days already, havent we . I dont know if lois is still in the room. She is probably speaking down the hall. What an amazing talk that was for it what a beautifully written talk that was. I have to bring lois to yell in april and to yale in april into this again. I started last night with James Baldwin and i will do it again. Baldwin in his most famous publication, his most famous long essay said to accept ones past, ones history, is not the same thing as drowning in it. It is learning how to use it. An inventive and invented past can never be used. It cracks, crumbles under the pressures of life like play in a season of drought. When in doubt, you have to quote the poets. Learning how to use it. But not drown in it. Is that what we do with the past . Is that how you view the past . That what it means to have a sense of history . Whether that sense of the past and sense of history begins with