was an anxious place. And indeed I was an anxious child within it. My parents were often poised at the edge of divorce, and I tried to keep distance from whose drinking was at the bottom of their troubles. At ten, I was a half-assed vegetarian (iceberg lettuce, milk, and potato chips) and a lover of revolution (I had heroized Tom Hayden although I knew little about who he was or what he stood for). was a meat-and-potatoes man who voted for . Although I was still an unmade person in many ways, ten may have been the most important year of my life. Earlier that year I had called the police as began to beat my mother. It may have been the first time he ever hit her-- I don't know-- but it was certainly the first time I ever stood between them. My intervention moved me further in the direction of vegetables and Students for a Democratic Society. And so when woke me up one Saturday morning to take me to meet , I was only ten years old but I knew enough about the national ambivalence toward figures like that I wore a peace symbol under my T-shirt, ready to pull it out if the moment called for me to take a stand. The stated reason for taking me to Newport Beach that morning was to see 's boat--The Wild Goose, a World War Two-era Canadian minesweeper which had been converted into a pleasure craft-- but I knew that 's real purpose was to introduce me to himself.