Spring Break
Things I've Learned, with Michael Lind
Issue date: 5/1/08
N-L: Who was the most interesting person you've had a chance to interview and talk to for an article?
ML: Oh, it was interesting when I was in graduate school. I had an opportunity to ask some questions of Helmut Schmidt, who was a former Chancellor of Germany, and he was giving some lectures at Yale at the time. The question was who was the most impressive statesman he'd ever dealt with in his career as statesman.
And his immediate reply was, well, does he have to be good, or can he or she be evil? His answer was, Andrey Gromyko, a former Soviet foreign minister. Schmidt explained that that was because Gromyko was the only Russian in the leadership who did not drink. So when all the others were drunk and spilling their secrets, he was sober and listening to what they said. And as a result he was the only one of Stalin's entourage who lived to a ripe old age.
N-L: You mentioned in class one day that you had a chance to ask Henry Kissinger certain questions. How did you meet him? Did you collaborate on a project?
ML: I don't know Kissinger closely, but several times I attended an annual dinner that he gave at his apartment to discuss foreign policy for the most part, so that was an interesting annual exercise. You had a lot of bright people and it was off the record that he shared his views. This was the late 1980s the early 1990s.
N-L: What many students might not know about you is that you are the author of a children's book, Bluebonnet Girl. What made you move from writing for an adult academic audience to writing for children?
ML: Well it's a children's book in verse, and I've published several books in verse. My latest book in fact is called Parallel Lives, and it's a collection of poems. It's come out from the Etruscan Press. I did a longer verse narrative called The Alamo, which came out in 1997. [Verse narrative] is a genre that has been neglected by the end of the twentieth century, because most of the poetry written was fairly brief, even though narrative poetry was the major form of verse for most of history. [Bluebonnet Girl] is a folktale for children that I had heard earlier versions of growing up in Texas about the origin of the bluebonnet.
ML: Oh, it was interesting when I was in graduate school. I had an opportunity to ask some questions of Helmut Schmidt, who was a former Chancellor of Germany, and he was giving some lectures at Yale at the time. The question was who was the most impressive statesman he'd ever dealt with in his career as statesman.
And his immediate reply was, well, does he have to be good, or can he or she be evil? His answer was, Andrey Gromyko, a former Soviet foreign minister. Schmidt explained that that was because Gromyko was the only Russian in the leadership who did not drink. So when all the others were drunk and spilling their secrets, he was sober and listening to what they said. And as a result he was the only one of Stalin's entourage who lived to a ripe old age.
N-L: You mentioned in class one day that you had a chance to ask Henry Kissinger certain questions. How did you meet him? Did you collaborate on a project?
ML: I don't know Kissinger closely, but several times I attended an annual dinner that he gave at his apartment to discuss foreign policy for the most part, so that was an interesting annual exercise. You had a lot of bright people and it was off the record that he shared his views. This was the late 1980s the early 1990s.
N-L: What many students might not know about you is that you are the author of a children's book, Bluebonnet Girl. What made you move from writing for an adult academic audience to writing for children?
ML: Well it's a children's book in verse, and I've published several books in verse. My latest book in fact is called Parallel Lives, and it's a collection of poems. It's come out from the Etruscan Press. I did a longer verse narrative called The Alamo, which came out in 1997. [Verse narrative] is a genre that has been neglected by the end of the twentieth century, because most of the poetry written was fairly brief, even though narrative poetry was the major form of verse for most of history. [Bluebonnet Girl] is a folktale for children that I had heard earlier versions of growing up in Texas about the origin of the bluebonnet.
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