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Arzi Rachman, Intern

Michael L. Gillette is the current executive director of Humanities Texas, the state humanities council. Before serving as the executive director, he directed the LBJ Library’s Oral History Program from 1976 to 1991, and then became the director of the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives for twelve years after. His new book, Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History, pieces together oral history interviews with former president Lyndon B. Johnson and his team of advisers as they undertook the Great Society’s greatest challenge.

This excerpt is taken from an interview with Robert J. Lampman, a staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 1962 to 1963 who worked in the Kennedy Administration along with Walter Heller, chairman of the CEA. The Saturday Group, called so because of their Saturday “brown bag” lunches, would meet informally (at first) to discuss how they could approach the problem of poverty and solutions that could be brought about with assistance from the government. Their luncheons were the beginnings of a social movement that would become pivotal in giving assistance where it was needed. Their work is still seen today, in the forms of public assistance that we once never had an option of choosing when survival was the only thing that was of importance.

THE SATURDAY GROUP
LAMPMAN: In that period, May to June [1963], somewhere along in there, Heller asked me to take part in writing up the possible meaning of an attack on poverty- lots of different phrases were used-and to meet with a group of people around Washington at the assistant secretary level and pick brains and get suggestions and criticisms of the idea. We dealt with people from the Bureau of the Budget; from HEW [Health, Education, and Welfare Department] (Wilbur Cohen was an assistant secretary, as I recall, at the time); from labor (Pat Moynihan [Daniel Patrick Moynihan] was the assistant secretary [of Labor]); from Agriculture; from Department of Justice.

There were just a few meetings, as I recall. We’d meet for an afternoon once every couple of weeks or something like that. It was all very tentative and very low-key, at least to start with. People were just speaking their minds. It was almost an academic sort of seminar. Indeed, it was interesting how many people there were Ph.D.s or were backed up by a scholar who was associated with the work. And we had represented people from different disciplines. There were people like Moynihan, who was a political scientists; and Cohen, who was an old hand in the income maintenance field but who was especially interested in this as an issue. There were statisticians, and then there were lawyers. People had very different approaches to the whole question.

We would get into discussion about the definition of poverty. What kind of a concept and what kind of a numbers frame would you have in mind? Some people would say poverty obviously means lack of money income. That had the great merit of being something we had some numbers on. We could say how many people there were above and below some line and where they were and so on. But other people said that’s really not what poverty means; poverty is more or sometimes even less than money. It’s a spiritual concept; or it’s a participation-in-government concept; or it’s a lack of some kind of self-esteem, sort of a psychological or im

Have you been reading other bloggers? I have. There are some terrific bloggers out there, lots of fun to read.[Stephen Fry, Fin Kennedy are two] I realize I've been writing as if no one is reading, no one is listening, and surely that isn't the case. No indeed, I have followers! So, just because you're lurking rather than commenting, don't think I don't know you're there ... how's that for double speak? In the midwestern US, we tend to speak with lots of double negatives, until we often don't know what we've just said. I'm pretty sure I just said I know you're there. I'm imagining you lurking around the corner of Blog Street, getting ready to come up to my window just about dusk, find yourself a comfy spot under the lilac bush and listen to me tell my innermost secrets into the telephone. Who am I talking to? Why it's another lurker! Actually, tonight I do have a very specific someone I'm talking to as I do my broadcast of the rest of Chapter Six and probably part of Chapter Seven ... she's a faithful listener and always has been, ever since she was born. Ever since my Mom held her up to the window at the hospital in Waynesville, Missouri in late November when I was not quite six years old, she's had to listen to my stories, and now she does it entirely of her own volition.
Saturday night I had some friends over for wine and chocolates. All three of them are terrific story tellers, so for once I was the listener. Should I tell you about the time Athos went on a blind date? Athos was dressed to the nines in a fabulous blue gabardine suit, gold watch chain and all, out on a double date with a friend and friend's date, and the blind date we'll call Diva. Well, Athos was still up and coming, this was a while back in the big city and Athos was still climbing the career ladder, so most of Athos' money went on the wardrobe. So when Diva ordered a split of champagne as her drink, Athos felt a flat wallet and choked out an order for a ginger ale. Surely Diva wouldn't order a second drink! When she did, poor Athos had to go to the bartender and run a tab (horrors!) and then went back to the table and very politely wished all the "friends" goodnight (and goodbye!). No more blind dates for my friend Athos. Fortunately, Athos met Porthos soon after, and they've been together ever since.
Theresa Rhebeck wrote a play called "Bad Dates." Have you seen or read it? It's fun to see, with about 400 pair of Mahnolo Blaniks or Jimmy Choos to be tried on during the course of the evening. What fun!
Tonight's stories will be about my Mom's fabulous evening wear, my adventures in sewing and bike-riding, a literal bug in my ear, John F. Kennedy and a real bad sunburn.

Daniel Marcou, founder of the Street Fiction book review blog, is looking for a few good reviewers:

Streetfiction. org needs your help.
With too many books and too little time, I am making the call for guest reviewers. Plus what’s one guy’s thoughts compared to wealth of opinions that exist in the blogosphere. You can help to make Streetfiction.org by picking your favorite (or least favorite!) street fiction book and sending a review of it to me to post on this web
site.

Guidelines

1. Pick a title that hasn’t been reviewed yet.
2. Share your thoughts, good or bad, about the book in a few paragraphs.
3. EMAIL
   your review as a Word Document or [paste it] in the body of the email.

I am looking for reviews of adult and teen street fiction as well as urban
erotica books by authors like Zane or Noire.