They were elbow to elbow with lee harvey oswald. Harmonizing and saying that everyone has the right to be happy, a song that i remember. Not that i came away from new york city to enjoy a chorus line of president ial assassins, but mostly because of the virtue of the man who brought one of them back to life. I was there to visit chester woods, it once belonged to the artist responsible for the Abraham Lincoln sculpture in the Lincoln Memorial. A nonsedating fourhour bus ride from Port Authority to see the room where some chesler came up with the marble statue, for some reason none of my friends wanted to come wife. Because i had to stay overnight, and this being new england, the only place to stay was a bed and breakfast. It was a lovely old country mansion operated by amiable people that said that i am not a bed and breakfast person. I understand why other people would want to stay in them, they are pretty impersonal and queens and that is a polite way of saying no tv. They are romantic, and example every object large enough for a flower printed on it will have a flower printed on it. [laughter] every conceivable flat surface is covered in knickknacks. Except for the one that a woman longs for come a remote control. The real reason that they make me nervous is breakfast. As if its not queasy enough to stay in a strangers home and sleep in a bed with 19 pillows, in the morning, the wheat intolerant guests are served baked goods on flights of fancy any normal person would keep them locked in a china cabinet even if Queen Victoria herself rose from the dead and showed up for tea. The guests are expected to chat with the other strangers staying in strangers home. Im seated at a table with one englishman and an elderly couple from connecticut. They make small talk about golf and the weather and the rooms chandeliers, one of which is apparently venetian. I cannot think of a thing to say to these people. Seated at the head of the table, i am the black hole of breakfast. Sucking the sunshine out of their neighborly new england day. That is not the kind of girl my mother raised me to be. I consider asking the kinetic cutup bowl if they have ever run into jet car, who i heard who had retired and there they lived. And i would have to explain why i like the new England Television and radio, and i didnt want to be that personal. They attended a boston pops concert and they chatted about the conductor. I enjoy being entertained as well. I thought this was my weight into the conversation, anything to say, i said that i went to the berkshire theatre festival last night. Well, did you see peter can . I said no, and assassin. What is that . And to make up for that, i speak too fast it regards potential president ial candidates in what would happen if they were assassinated and the old man said oh, how was it. I said nixon was hilarious. I found myself smitten with John Wilkes Booth every time he looked in my direction i can feel myself blush. Talking about going to the museum of television and radio is too personal. But i seem to have no problem revealing my crush on the man who murdered lincoln. A person with sharper social skills than myself might have noticed the muffins in the teapot collection. They probably didnt want to think about president ial gunshot wounds. But when i am around strangers, i turn into a conversational mount saint helens. I am dormant, quiet, dormant and quiet, people build log cabins on the slopes of my silence, and then boom, its 1980. Once i arrived, they will be wiping my ashes off their windshields as far away as north dakota. But to me it was amazing how romantic assassins the play was. There is a tender moment. Remember he killed mckinley be a 191 . Allah was is that he heard her speak a couple of times. This plate dramatizes the moments that they meet. The guy was wonderful, he had a smoldering and Eastern European accident rate he sounded a lot like dracula, but in a good way, if you know what i mean. [laughter] he said that i am goldman and i am in love with you. She said she didnt have time to be in love with him. It was cute, but my one misgiving. I thought the woman was to ladylike, too much of a wallflower. Emma goldman, loud, rational, gung ho, inspired a guy to kill a president. Maybe i am persuaded by the way the marines stapleton played goldman. Our member stapleton, i remember him playing the character. He laughed too loud and smashed pottery and wears a blood red vest to symbolize that she is alive. Wait, i lost my train of thought, where was i . [laughter] i believe dracula was in love with stapleton. Oh, right, John Hinckley seeing it in best interest, he sings a duet with jodie foster. I really believed him. He says baby, id die for you its adorable. Mr. Connecticut looked at his watch and i realized that i have spent way too much and that means that i might miss my bus at home, and i really want to go home. I yell it was nice to see you and nearly knocked down a teapot collection before i leave. But of course before i leave, i must settle up my bill. Thank you. [applause] this book, assassination vacation, it is about the assassinations of lincoln and garfield and mckinley. So i traveled around to Historic Sites and looked at monuments and read plaques and sit with the statues and talk to tour guides and those kinds of things and park rangers and there is a lot of on type of topic type of conversations. This is a part from the garfield chapter. This is one thing that i found interesting. One winter night in my kitchen as i poured peppermint tea into my friends cut, she said that she liked my teapot and i told her that my happy, yellow teapot had a creepy back story involving a 19th century vegetarian cook in upstate new york whose members lived as selfproclaimed bible communists before incorporating the biggest supplier of dinnerware to the American Food service industry, not to mention harboring residents, and maniac two years after he moved away with paying for assassinating president garfield. It goes without saying that in order for me to find his teapot, the Second Coming of jesus christ had to have taken place in the year 70 a. D. To the Oneida Community, 70 a. D. , the year of the temple in jerusalem, when it was destroyed, it marks the beginning of the new jerusalem, which means that we have all been living in heaven on earth for nearly 2000 years. Everyone knows that there is no marriage in heaven, so one suspects there is no shortage of it in hell. [laughter] so ill night i said we are here and perfect in the eyes of god, lets move up to fate state and sleep around. I am paraphrasing. [laughter] John Humphrey was the founder of the utopian community and he wrote in 1837 that in the Holy Community there is no one reason why sexual intercourse should be restricted by law then my eating and drinking should be in there is a brutal occasion in one case as in the other. Any victorian would know that fondling one neighbors wife is not normal. Many cohorts moved to oneida to pursue what they called Group Marriage, eventually building a threestory brick Mansion House that remains today is a combination museum, apartment building, and hotel. I spent a night there. The next morning, a retired oneida person who taught American History for 36 years gives me a guided tour. As he points to a yellowing photograph of John Humphrey hanging on the wall, he resembled a bearded old fashion everyman. Your greatgrandfather or mine. It seems unthinkable that the head poking out of that starched collar would come up with a dogma about. [laughter] even though it is small, clean, and it is more goofy than all the bedrooms on mtv cribs combined. There is a cabinet in which members of the community dried herbs. The Oneida Community was in upstate tourist attraction right from the start. Second to niagara falls, he tells me. Im taking the same guided tour offered 150 years ago to prim people who came here to keep at sex people. I am wondering how many of my bouquet unshed vacationing forebears came home disappointed. They thought they were taking a train to sodom and gomorrah but instead got to watch herbs dry. He opens the herb cabinet so i can get away. Back in the day when one tourist was shown the cabinets, she would be asked or Community Member died, what is the older . To which the guide replied that perhaps it is the older of crushed selfishness. And he grinned, how about that for a utopian answer. Crushed selfishness smells a lot like toronto. So the portrait hangs at the top of the stairs. He was married, and abolitionists they were. He sent her a proposal letter that made up in candor what it lacked in wooing. Referring to. Not as his sweetheart but as his yoke fellow, as if they were to be oxen strapped together hauling hay, he informed her that his intentions will be not to monopolize and enslave her heart or my own, but to enlarge and establish both in the fellowship of god universal family. In other words, harriet, do not wait up. He married harriet in their native vermont before leading his flock to oneida. While its not one of historys great love letters, i have received more sentimental love letters from my attorney. Their marriage had a profound influence on the future of Sexual Practices at oneida. Specifically what came to be called, [inaudible] here he gave birth five times in six years, but only one tablet. This is what dreck in my studies and kept me studying, he recalled. After the last disappointment i pledged pledge my word to my wife that i would never again expose her to such frivolous suffering. At first he simply vowed not to touch her. Then it occurred to him that genitalia have two functions. The reproductive, which led to the aforementioned catastrophe and the social. [laughter] he concluded that one function has little to do with the other and that he could eliminate the possibility of eggs being fertilized by not ejaculating. He said that his wifes enjoyment was satisfactory as it had never been before, we had escaped the horrors and the fears of involuntary propagation. He broke down this into three parts per at the beginning marked by the simple presence of the male organ in the female, the metal, involving a series of reciprocal motions, and of course, the end, and ejaculatory crisis which expelled the feed. Naturally, akin to canoeing. [laughter] it was described as a day trip to the nearby niagara river. The skilled boatman will learn easy rolling. If not, its over the falls and splat. [laughter] at the Oneida Community, not ejaculating wasnt just a hobby but a whole way of life. The Oneida Community in an important sense owed its existence to the discovery of male continents. And the community was about sharing, sharing love, food, toys, money, time. The only thing the men were supposed to keep to themselves or their sperm. When i asked why was also frowned upon, he replied that that takes you away from the group. [laughter] one of the cornerstones was a taboo against special love and a system of defenses to guard against all kinds of intense passion. Consider the following set of problems in the way in which they were solved. Young people were always getting crushes. And young people only want to sleep with one another and older people would like to enjoy sex, but they are not as attractive as young people. Oneidas men are supposed to practice male continents, but it takes practice and until teenage boys one had to control themselves from their female partners are in danger of impregnation. So heres what they did. Postmenopausal women deflowered young boys. That way conception is avoided and older women enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. Young girls prone to falling in love were ushered into womanhood by an older male. Usually by an experienced boater and if that proposal two. Is any indication, noise had a knack for mushy sentiment by making a girl feel like part of a team. [laughter] the admonition men not only a piano falling in love, but all overthetop passions. Danger of becoming a virtuoso and attached to his instrument, handed it over to oneida authorities and never played again. When a visiting canadian teacher complained that the community did not foster genius or special talent, he was delighted, saying that we never expected or desired to produce a michelangelo or napoleon. We know that even a canadian is alarmed by the lack of individuality, theres a problem. The tour guide ushered me into the grand room. The family hall, a recreated opera house. The group assembled here for family meeting in which they had discussions of business issues. People are sitting in rocking chairs or knitting or both. The four enjoying the secondrate entertainment, they went through the cleansing ritual, mutual criticism. It required a member of the group to stand up in front of everyone and listen to the enumeration of his or her self. It was the rare treat of being the center of attention at oneida. The downside was that everyone knew and loved was allowed even encouraged to listen to your accounts and say, you know what your problem is . [laughter] one thing that stands out is how specific the criticisms were. The only member who was disciplined was the one who had a too frequent mention of vermont. [laughter] then there was conjecture about how the process went for future assassin trials. [inaudible] well, from 1860 until 1865 he was here, then he left and came back. And from what i read, he was pretty annoying. Not happy, yet he stayed here for five years. Considering that the Group Marriage policy theoretically promised constant sexual tryst, unfortunately for him, those tryst had to be consensual. But no one wanted to sleep with him as it is hinted at in his oneida nickname, charles get out. [laughter] here is a distraction. When researching the Oneida Community, i couldnt help but notice that in their letters, Community Members referred to the Oneida Community as the oc. [laughter] coincidentally, the oc is the name of a soap opera on televisions fox network that i am currently obsessed with. Set in Orange County california. Peter gallagher, and peter gallaghers legendary pair of eyebrows are the three main characters. [laughter] a couple of of rocking chairs and a table piled high with every book you ever loved. When i see the Oneida Community being referred to as the oc, i cannot help but picture all the ladies of oneida standing in line to curl up in peter gallaghers eyebrows trying in vain not to feel a special love. On the subject of his eyebrows, i realize that it is a digression away from the Oneida Community. Yet, i do feel compelled and theoretically bound to mention that one of the reasons the Oneida Community broke up and turned itself into a corporate teapot factory is that affection was in the group led by a lawyer named James William towner come he was miffed that the most esteemed elders were bogart in the teenage versions and they left for a house in none other than Orange County, california. A courthouse where it is reasonable to assume that peter gallaghers attorneys might offend his clients. [laughter] joe told me that when he first volunteered as a guide, he spent a lot of time thinking about the men and women who came here to lead such eccentric lives. What was it like when these people were born in that generation of americans, he wondered . At that point i came across this. Do you know this book, in the hands of an angry god . It is described as day going over the mouth of hell. The nation does not slumber. The pit is prepared, the flames raging glow. It wasnt so cute in the yesteryear. [inaudible] thinking about that sermon and the notion that human beings are arachnids that god is about to flip into a fire helps him understand that the ways of the Oneida Community in which heaven is already here is like this incredible shot of oxygen. Because we are not so evil. That is behind us. God doesnt have to be angry. Its interesting because i have this recurring nightmare in which i asked to move back in with my old college roommate. That is what i was expecting to find at oneida. The 19th century equivalent of sharing a house with a friend who brought the thought that the local car dealership was nursing the earth grid i have that kosovo victory mcgann, but i had to move back in with a girl who claimed to enjoy baking, always promising that i would be muffin day. It was about and it maybe once. I wouldve given anything instead of being doomed to a choice between mother superior and husband your parents picked out great how reassuring it mustve been to have this place. I went to oneida and talked to joe and bought my teapot at macys herald square, i might have thought about fornicating utopians, but now when i watch the steam rise from the yellow spell, i like to pretend i am seeing people breathe. [applause] thank you. Thank you. [applause] thanks. [applause] if you have any questions, raise your hand and i will be glad to give it a whirl trying to answer it. Your obvious love with American History, it seems uncommon especially among young people. Im wondering if you have any ideas about what might be more inspiring to take the kind of interest that you do in American History. Well, okay. I am not as young as i used to be. But i think that i was taught American History in a way that everyone was. A series of upstanding guys who made inevitable decisions on the state and not. Of course, this is what happened. Because of course, that was what is going to happen. As an adult, i stumbled into this just a few years ago. I made a documentary about driving through the trail of tears. My ancestors were cherokee and the government forced them to march across the country at gunpoint. You know, i wanted to see where