Our Advisory Board meeting to finalize our fall '09 topics the other night was like a spicy Thai dinner, it burns your tongue, but you want it to continue. We develop our season mostly through consensus. I come up with a proposal of four ideas (having whittled them down from many more through earlier discussions and e.mails), send out an explanation of why I choose them and then our advisory board meeting gives thumbs up or thumbs down to them usually after some discussion. I had four topics ready to go...the creation of Levittown (Let me say it now for the fourth of I'm sure 100 times...NO relation!), Hilary's Commission on Health Care, Woody Guthrie's writing of 'This Land is Your Land and the movie 'Network'. Well, quick yes to Hilary and Levittown and a slower 'no', to the other two. Since the theme of our fall's season is 'What Now?', it was thought that Guthrie's writing didn't fit in (I'd still like to make it a topic down the road) and everyone seemed bored with media issues. So, two down and two to go. One of our members suggested the Highlander School, the Appalachian Adult Education institute born in the 30's to help organize workers and later the Civil Rights movement (Rosa Parks went there) that utilized music as part of their education process. This topic interested us since President Obama's political tactics seem closely aligned with those of community organizers...find common denominators to unite seemingly incongruous allies. So, one more... and I suggested the date when the US recognized Israel in 1948, since, of course, the 'Mid-East' is central to US foreign policy.Whoooooo! What a discussion. You'd think we were a negotiating team of Hamas and Likud. I'm using hyperbole of course, but it was a far ranging discussion that had ultimately two sides...One was: we need to take on 'hot-button issues and Two, it is not responsible in a 90 minute program to take on this very explosive topic, one that would quickly degenerate into arguments about very finely nuanced points and even the use of some words over others. It was a great discussion and in the end we decided against taking the topic on. However, it made us all think that another topic in the future might simply be about why this discussion and/or some other discussions (Abortion for instance) are so difficult to have. Any ideas for dates? So still reeling with ideas from the meeting on my 45-minute drive home from Providence to our little house on the swamp in Wakefield, I thought...How about when Nixon went to China? So far, so good.

Marc Levitt