“Ladies and Gentlemen, it is now my pleasure to introduce to you. . . myself.”
In this strange year of 2020, we now present to you the 20th posting for “Not My First Rodeo.” Getting in step with this proliferation of “twenties,” this essay consists of twenty tales of my adventures as a public speaker.
When we realized that our inability to hold public programs might give the misleading impression that the Center had gone dormant, we launched this blog as a way to stay in touch with the friends and affiliates of the Center of the American West. If a new posting for “Not My First Rodeo” appeared every Friday, this would register as a healthy institutional heartbeat on the echocardiogram that constitutes public awareness.
But an equally important reason for the existence of “Not My First Rodeo” arises from the fact that the pandemic put a moratorium on my life as a public speaker. For more than three decades, I had been traveling on a speech-making circuit that had unmistakable similarities to a rodeo circuit. Would I be able to adapt to a sudden cessation of an activity that has given me such a steady supply of good times and tales to tell?
It is probably all for the best that no one has stepped forward to create a twelve-step program for public speaking addicts. After all, the meetings for such a program would last for hours, or maybe days. Once we began with our required opening recitations (“My name is Patty and I’m an addict to podiums and lecterns”), the only way to bring our meetings to a close would be to cut off the sound systems and turn off the lights. Even that might not persuade the most addicted among us to yield to silence.
And so the blog “Not My First Rodeo” was called into being as my substitute for and alternative to public speaking, to tide me over through a long, long season of deprivation.
The twenty tales told here will, I hope, make it clear why I saw my enthusiasm for public speaking as a sensible surrender to enchantment and magic. In a variation on the old credit card advertisement, “Never leave home without it,” the Limerick Rule of Travel emerged as “Never leave home without a speaking invitation.” In other words, never leave home without an arrangement by which delightful people will meet you at the airport, transport you hither and thither, take you to breakfast, gather a group of lively people to join you for lunch (sometimes with pizza, which you almost never get to have otherwise), put you in front of an audience carrying equal charges of good nature and good humor, and then take you to dinner, often at a very good restaurant, where local folks will tell you illuminating stories, sometimes amusing and sometimes painful, about the place you are visiting. Yes, you will have to do your best for an hour or two to give a thought-provoking oral presentation. But for the greatest share of the time, your job is to hang out with very likable people and absorb their stories and insights.
Here are twenty tales to convince you that I have been doing my job.
Tale #1: Wallace Stegner Learns More than He Wanted to Know about My Origins
I was attending the California Studies Association conference, speaking at a session honoring Wallace Stegner, who was seated in the front row and who would join the panelists after we had talked about him. The moderator of the panel was providing quick introductions of the speaker. Things took a strange twist when the moderator told the audience—and Mr. Stegner—that “Patty Limerick had been born at San Gorgonio Pass Memorial Hospital, where she had held the birth weight record.” This happened to be factually true, though the moderator omitted the essential historical context: the hospital had just opened, and I was the second baby born there, so the competition was not stiff.
What got into the moderator? It turns out that he had asked Jeff Limerick, who was attending the conference with me, to tell him something about me that rarely figured in introductions.Jeff complied with the request.
Mr. Stegner did look a little surprised, but then so did everyone else in the room. Except Jeff Limerick.
An hour later, Mr. Stegner joined the table of panelists, and it was my assigned duty to put a lapel mike on him. I felt I knew him pretty well, but the notion of reaching into his personal space to perform this task was unexpectedly agitating, and my hands shook. And so “fasten the lapel mike on Wallace Stegner” turned out to bear at least a faint resemblance to “pin the tail on the donkey,” with me not blindfolded but still scoring short of precision.
Tale #2: A Refuge from the Wind, and a Premature Trip to the Peak of Achievement
The wind blows quite a bit in Casper, Wyoming, which is an understatement. On the Casper College campus, there is a very pleasant auditorium, which sits at the core of the building, embedded in a ring of offices next to the exterior walls. This auditorium seems to be the one place in Casper where you do not hear the wind. Speaking at a conference there, you cannot miss the way in which the “insulatedness” of the auditorium serves as a major incentive for the local folks to show up for lectures and almost guarantees that they will be a happy crowd.
Attending a conference in Casper thirty years ago, I was fortunate to land in a seat next to a very congenial, elderly rancher. He and I chatted during the breaks, and then it was my turn to give a speech.
An hour later, when I returned to my seat, the rancher said to me, “You could make it as a stand-up comedian.” I was way too young to think about retirement, but I rightly thought to myself, “I seem to have arrived at the mountaintop, and it might be downhill from here.”
Tale #3: Lasting Gratitude for an Ill-Timed Mardi Gras Celebration
I was visiting Walla Walla, Washington for several days. My itinerary had me speaking in many venues, from Walla Walla High School to Whitman College, from Walla Walla College to a banquet with local civic leaders. Getting enough sleep was crucial, and a very comfortable room in a central campus building at Whitman College, probably once a president’s house but now a guest house and place for receptions, seemed perfect for restful nights. A couple of students lived on the top floor of the building as caretakers, and it was pleasant to have their company.
But then the students were joined by friends for a lively Mardi Gras party. It took place right above my room. The word “woke” had not acquired its contemporary resonance, but its old meaning certainly applied to me. At 2 a.m., I decided I had taken passivity as far as it could go. I packed my suitcase and headed out on the streets of downtown, which I had to myself. It was a joyful prospect to see, only nine or ten blocks away, a sign for a Travelodge. A nice man there checked me in, and I soon had a very, very quiet room for myself.
This story may not seem to register as testimony to explain why I enjoy public speaking so much. And yet the measures for “having a great time” vary considerably. Thirty years later, I vividly remember the peacefulness of the Walla Walla downtown area at 2 a.m., with a particularly appealing memory of the stoplights flashing yellow with no cars anywhere to be seen. And then, a day or two later, my hosts delivered on their promise to take me to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation for a tour of the facility that had produced plutonium, just then entering the era of clean-up. I have never taken a more worthwhile trip, Mardi Gras and all.
Tale #4: Applied History Gets an Early Vote of Confidence from the Skeptical
In one of my first wild ventures into territory where I had never expected to show up, in the mid-1990s, I was invited to speak at a plenary session of the International High-Level Nuclear Waste Management conference in Las Vegas. While I was being introduced (Yale Ph.D. in American Studies, author of Desert Passages and The Legacy of Conquest, etc.), a good number of the engineers, managers, and regulators in the audience entered a state of visible befuddlement. Some of them seemed to be checking their conference programs to see if they had wandered into the wrong conference and landed in the wrong room. But they stayed in their seats, and at the end of the session, twenty or more people asked if they could get copies of my speech. Their unexpected responsiveness and receptivity, persisting even when I spoke about troubling matters of radioactive contamination and weapons testing, added up to early validation that Applied History was far from a lost cause.
Tale #5: Harvard Nostalgia, Symptoms Made Manageable with Three Words
In the mid-1990s, I returned to Harvard to speak at a conference on new developments in the field of American history. It had been a decade since I taught there, and I had anticipated this trip as a counterpart to a college or high school reunion. I would see old friends, and I would walk around a campus where every building and walkway would trigger a flood of memories. I was happy to have been asked to speak about the revitalized state of writing and research in Western American history, with a grateful recognition that my time at Harvard had made it possible for me to participate in promoting that renaissance in regional history.
There I was at the opening reception, all set to float along on a current of warm memory and lasting gratitude.
I was in mid-conversation with a new acquaintance when we were joined by a well-established, very senior Harvard history professor. While this fellow was, in some circles, legendary for his not-exactly-gracious manners and his prickly temperament, I had come to like him during my years in Cambridge.
My new acquaintance had just said to me, “I saw you on TV last night.”
The senior Harvard history professor took up the conversation and said to me, “What were you doing on TV?”
I figured we were probably talking about some on-screen appearance in a PBS documentary, so I said, with a light touch, “I suppose I was talking knowledgeably.”
“You,” said the senior Harvard history professor, in three artfully enunciated words, “talking knowledgeably?”
This may not strike anyone as a story of a person having a good time on a speaking trip, but I would not have wanted to miss this great encounter. I had other memorable experiences on that trip, but this one was the high point, making me laugh for years and helping me to manage the symptoms of my lingering case of Ivy League nostalgia.
Tale #6: A Bitter National Controversy Provides a Foundation for Friendship
In 1991, an extremely controversial exhibit opened at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American Art. Called “The West as America,” this exhibit displayed very familiar and celebrated Western art, accompanied by historical commentary that was neither familiar nor celebrated. This commentary triggered an intense response, with the visitor comment book becoming a sizzling transcript of contention, with some remarks of appreciation, but also plenty of statements of outrage over the exhibit’s critical angle on the invasion and conquest of the West. The day after the exhibit opened, the Museum held a conference where I was a speaker.
On that day, none of us knew that “The West as America” was about to trigger a major cultural fight. Within a few more days, the exhibit was repeatedly pilloried in The Washington Post. At least two Western Senators declared that the Smithsonian should have its budget cut as punishment for a disparaging view of the history of the West.
As the contention mounted, the Museum of American Art organized another public program, inviting the most fervent critics of the exhibit—the angry senators, the librarian of congress, and several reporters and reviewers. The director of the Museum asked me to return to Washington to defend the exhibit. In 1991, I was no better at time management than I am today. So, I said—accurately—that I was over-committed and could not take this trip.
The museum director persisted and said to me what no one had ever said to me before: “Your nation needs you.”
So, I changed my mind.
If my nation needed me, my nation could have me. This has been my policy ever since.
Regrettably, the political figures who had condemned the exhibit—including the senators and the librarian of congress—said they would not attend the forum and offered reasons that sounded oddly similar to the cobbled-together excuses that we sometimes hear from students. And so, when I appeared on the forum to defend the exhibit against its critics, the only critic in sight was The Washington Post’s Ken Ringle. Since he was all I had as a target, I put everything I had into mocking him and his statements of dismay and outrage over the exhibit’s critical angle on Western history.
And then, after a few rounds of high-intensity mockery, I took the chance of looking over at Ken Ringle to see how he was taking my remarks about him.
The result was surprising. Every time I made fun of him, he laughed heartily, robustly, maybe even joyfully and gratefully.
How could I possibly keep from becoming very fond of a person like that?
The legendarily polarizing “West as America” exhibit gave Ken Ringle and me a chance to forge a lasting friendship. And we took that chance, staying in touch for years.
Tale #7 (Prelude to Tale #8): Thank Heavens Hertz Wasn’t Bankrupt Thirty Years Ago
On the way to speak at a plenary session of the Western Literature Association, meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, I made a smart move: I got a rental car. I knew that the wondrous Western writer Ivan Doig would also be speaking at the conference. I had never met him, and I figured my best shot at getting to meet him would be a few moments in the hallway at the conference hotel. I did not have the foresight to see the brilliance of my visit to the rental car desk in the Spokane Airport.
It turned out that Ivan Doig needed a ride to the Spokane Airport when the conference ended.
This very important writer cheerfully took the role of rider in my amateur airport shuttle, and a friendship was born.
Tale #8 (Epilogue to Tale #7): Taking the Bus to the Bars
In 2017, Montana State University held a conference in tribute to Ivan Doig, who had died in 2015. I got to give one of the plenary speeches in his honor, with Ivan’s widow Carol and many of his friends in the audience. The next day, we all got on a bus and traveled around the areas that we had come to know through his writings. In White Sulphur Springs, we visited the bars where he had been a regular, the child making acute observations of the curious habits and habitats of his elders. We had initially visited those bars when we read and reread This House of Sky. I will not say that, on this trip, the world seemed to have turned whole, but it certainly did not seem fragmented or frayed.
Together, Tale #7 and Tale #8 teach an important lesson: When you are a young person aspiring to meet writers you admire, always be sure to include getting a rental car in your conference-attending itinerary.
Tale #9: An Inspired Approach to Ordering Dessert
On a speaking trip to Brigham Young University, I became a convert to a custom of dining out that has repeatedly improved my life and the lives of many others. After my speech, I went to dinner with several BYU professors at a Provo restaurant with a largely Mormon clientele. After we had finished our main courses, the waitress made a spoken presentation on desserts, describing each option in detail. At the conclusion, one of my dining companions said, “Patty, you have now heard ‘the Mormon wine list.’” When a few people said they weren’t sure they would want a whole dessert, the suggestion was made that we order a few desserts and pass them around. That’s what we did, ending up with nine or ten desserts to share among seven or eight people. Opting for communal values had provided each of us with much more than we would have had if we had gone the route of individual self-interest.
At several hundred restaurants over the years, when the question of ordering dessert has come up, I have suggested that we borrow the wisdom of Mormon custom, spare ourselves the burden of choice, and end up with more to enjoy. (Knowledgeable people may wonder if this derived in any way from the olden days of the United Order of Enoch, but that is a historical question I will leave to others.)
Tale #10: “Historical Perspectives on the Southwest”: An Adventure in Adrenaline
I had been invited to speak at a plenary session of the Society of American Foresters meeting at the Albuquerque Convention Center. For reasons we’ll skip over, I had been having a tough time in the preceding weeks, hanging around the Boulder Community Hospital Intensive Care Unit waiting room, and my ability to concentrate had not been great.
Still, I had shown up on time in Albuquerque and I had a speech ready to give. At the registration desk, I got a copy of the conference program book and looked up the entry for the big plenary session.
I had arrived with the wrong speech.
In my distracted state at home, I had conjured up the topic of “Forest Service relationships to communities that adjoined National Forests.”
My actual topic was “Historical Perspectives on the Southwest that Would Be of Interest to Foresters.”
What to do?
The session was about to start. Fortunately, there was a speaker who would lead off the session with a talk on the cultures of New Mexico. So I anxiously took my seat in the front row of a vast conference center meeting room. But I said sternly to myself, “If you cannot come up with five or six historical perspectives on the Southwest that would be of interest to foresters in the next thirty minutes, you should just, here and now, resign your job as a history professor.”
Happily, I had a pad of note paper. As the first speaker started up, I began writing down “historical perspectives,” one per page. This went very well—until the first speaker shifted over to showing slides of colorful cultural scenes in New Mexico. The screen lit up, and the room went dark. I could no longer see the notepad, so I took to writing fifteen or twenty words per “historical perspective,” with each “perspective” on a single page in the hopes of a modest degree of legibility.
And then the lights came back on, and I was introduced.
The speech was fine. I had arrived in Albuquerque with a mind pretty well-stocked with knowledge of the Southwest, and it was not a matter of rocket science to conjure up some “historical perspectives” that connected to the work of foresters. Various stories and amusing remarks came flocking into my memory as I gathered momentum. It didn’t hurt that a big audience seemed fully engaged.
I finished and started to head back to my seat. The moderator said that we had ended up with a few extra minutes in our session, and so she called me back to the stage. Since everyone had so enjoyed my “historical perspectives,” she hoped that I might have a couple more to share.
As it happened, I did.
At the end of the session, quite a number of foresters asked if they could get copies of my entertaining and instructive speech.
By this point, I was entirely exhilarated. I would never write another speech! I would, instead, just sit in the dark for half an hour with a blank notepad and a pen, and everything would turn out fine!
And then the adrenaline dissipated.
After our late afternoon session, I had planned to attend the conference banquet and to visit hospitality suites afterward to hear forester folklore.
Instead, I went to bed, thoroughly exhausted. Bedtime was around 6:30 p.m.
I became a member of the Society of American Foresters, and in the years since, I have spoken several times at their meetings. I don’t believe I have ever told any of my forester friends this story, but now that cat is totally out of the bag.
Tale #11: A Public Performance in Cognitive Disorder, with the Assistance of Grace Slick and Janis Joplin
I was giving a lecture to a sizable audience at Gustavus Adolphus College, and a sudden thought inspired me to make a reference (was I seeing white rabbits as parables?) to Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane. But something went terribly awry with my cognitive functioning, and the name “Janis Joplin” infiltrated a remark that was obviously meant to be about Grace Slick. Blessedly, this improvisation did not last long, and I returned to my prepared remarks. A couple of hours later, at the post-speech dinner, my companions finally told me that I had confused Slick and Joplin. My chagrin—well, my horror—was intense, and it has not died down much over a quarter-century. The moral of this story is not 100% clear to me, but it does seem to be in a speaker’s interests to empower her hosts to shout from the audience, intervening when she is about to slide off a cliff.
Tale #12: A Family Resemblance (To Put it Mildly)
I was giving a speech at a well-attended talk hosted by the Oregon Historical Society in Portland (oh my, Portland!). As we prepared to head to the reception, my host asked me if I had observed the notable presence in the front row.
I hadn’t.
And then we walked into the reception, and there was Richard Nixon!
But, no, it wasn’t Richard Nixon. It was his brother Ed, who looked so much like his big brother that every mental faculty that we use to place ourselves in space and time was temporarily disordered.
And, really, what a nice man Mr. Nixon proved to be, a geologist with a driving interest in renewable energy. The temptation to ask for the right to take a selfie with him was as tempting as it was impolite, and therefore had to be resisted.
Tale #13: A Night at the Inn
For quite a few years, I believed what older historians kept telling me. The invitations to give speeches, they said, would surely peter out, and the public speaking festival that had become a huge component of my life would soon wind down. Accepting that mistaken prediction made me determined to make hay while the sun was still shining. When an invitation came in, I would look at my calendar, and if it turned out that I had no pre-existing obligation on that particular date, then I thought I was obligated to accept the invitation.
One morning long ago, I was waiting at a Boulder pick-up site for an airport shuttle. Some people I knew happened to walk by, and they asked me where I was going. I had every intention of answering, but a swirl of recent trips left me guessing. “I’m not sure I know” was my very peculiar answer.
But I checked my ticket, and it turned out that I was flying to Kennedy Airport. Other documents informed me I would be picked up at the airport by my host. He would drive me to my destination, Jersey City, where I was to tell the very northeastern, urban students what I thought they should know about the American West.
If there were any reasons to think that accepting this invitation might have been an ill-considered move, those reasons came to a focus at my motel. Many trucks were parked or were idling next to the motel. When I went to my room, I was spared the trouble of using a key since the door wasn’t locked. More troubling, the door wouldn’t lock. I was young and enterprising, so I solved this problem by moving a desk in front of the door, which thankfully opened inward. But there was nothing to be done about the feature of décor arranged by a previous guest: a swastika was carved into the ceiling, symmetrically over the bed.
While young and spirited, I was not witless, and regret began to set in. But then two redeeming features of my speaking trip pushed back the regret. My host was a literature professor at Jersey City State College, who was fluent in Portuguese and who had translated works of some of the major Brazilian novelists. Conversing with him at dinner with him was extremely interesting and also had the advantage of getting me out of my benighted motel room. And then, the next day, I realized that Jersey City State College had the diversity—of ethnicity, nationality, and political persuasion—that many other colleges strategize to recruit but fail to secure. The students were generally from humble origins, first in their families to go to college. Returning from the trip, I felt—and still feel—grateful to have had the chance to make the case for the significance of the American West to young people who were at once so distant and so familiar. With experiences of this order, it still took a while before I reached the dazzling insight: You don’t have to say “yes” to everything.
Tale #14: The Devil Fits a Lecture into His Busy Schedule
I was giving a four-part lecture series at the University of New Mexico, a series of talks on influential Western public intellectuals. By no one’s plan or orchestration, my talk on Wallace Stegner fell on Halloween.
As I neared the end of the speech, the Devil appear in the back of the lecture hall. A UNM faculty member or student, or perhaps a community member, evidently combined an interest in Western American public intellectuals with bigger plans for Halloween, and thus appeared in costume. This person’s timing was remarkable: the conclusion I was about to deliver rested on a quotation from a talk Wallace Stegner had given at CU, where he exhorted the audience to “Dream other dreams, and better.” This statement had been attributed to the Devil.
And there stood the Devil, in the back of the lecture hall, as this quotation hung in the air.
When I finished my talk, one of the first questions came from the Devil.
“What is the source,” he asked, “where you found that quotation from me?”
Answering that was a little complicated, since I was quoting Stegner who was quoting Mark Twain who was quoting the Devil.
I do not have many temptations to think that my life is dull and predictable. Were I ever to need to fend off such a temptation, I have a corrective close at hand. “So, you were giving a speech,” I can say to myself, “and the Devil appeared in the lecture hall just a few seconds before you were going to quote him. I wouldn’t worry much about life turning dull and predictable.”
But it does make a person wonder: what forces or figures could I conjure up if I put a little more strategy and forethought into picking closing quotations?
Tale #15: A Providential Blanket on a Chilly Night and My Unending Debt to John McPhee
I was in Moose, Wyoming, teamed up with my spectacular former student Teresa Jordan, where we were co-leading a writers’ workshop. I was very lucky to be teamed up with Teresa, who has a way of bringing out the better angels of the thesaurus who have been lurking in the souls of aspiring writers.
We had spent a wonderful day in the company of aspiring Wyoming writers, and it was time to take a short walk to the cowboy poetry gathering scheduled to cap the day. The brief walk packed in a lot of action. I had the company of a great person, Lois Herbst, a rancher who was the first woman to serve as president of the legendary Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association. I had enjoyed her company enormously, and I said to her, “Lois, how did you learn about this writing workshop?”
“I wanted to fight with you,” she said, “I had heard how you had attacked the heritage of the West, and I wanted to make sure you knew I disagreed with you.”
I hadn’t seen this coming. But I quickly rallied and said, “But you were so congenial in everything you said to me. What happened?”
“You turned out to be better than I expected,” she said.
The evening was already going well, but then it got even better.
We got to the site of the cowboy poetry gathering a little late, and all the hay bales were taken. This was disturbing, because the temperature was dropping, and there were only stone benches left. I sat down on a stone bench, which by that point in the evening met all the specifications for “bone-chilling.” But then an elderly couple asked if they could join me. “We have a blanket,” they said, “and if you don’t mind, we’ll lay it out on the bench.”
It turns out that I didn’t mind.
We had a few minutes to chat before the cowboy poet started in, and we did a quick round of introductions.
When I learned who my companions were, I did not fall off the bench. But I am not sure how I managed to stay on it.
My blanket-deploying companions were geologist David Love and his wife Jane.
If you do not know why I was knocked for a loop by having such companions, then 1) watch the final episode of Ken Burns’ series, “The West”; 2) read John McPhee’s book, Rising from the Plains; or 3) seek out a copy of Life on Muskrat Creek: A Homestead Family in Wyoming, edited by Frances Love Froidevaux and Barbara Love. But fair warning: if you decide to follow up on these suggestions, be braced to come near perishing with envy of me on my blanket-softened stone bench in Moose, Wyoming.
Tale #16: Any Friend of Deep Throat Is a Friend of Mine
In 1974, Washington Post Reporter Bob Woodward, working with his colleague Carl Bernstein, broke news on the Watergate scandal. In 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned.
Forty-five years later, at a session of the New Yorker’s annual festival, I was positioned on a stage in New York City, participating in a panel discussion of another president’s conduct. The session was called “Donald Trump: The Judgment of History.” Seated next to me was Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.
Anticipating the session, I had made the mistaken assumption that I would have to be the panelist who would say that there is a lot of variation among the character traits, principles, virtues, and values of Republicans, and that many conservatives were dismayed by the President Trump’s conduct. But before I could get around to making a statement of tolerance that I figured would not be warmly received by an audience of New York liberals, Bob Woodward said it first. I said I thought he had made a very important point. He said, “So you agree with me?” This provoked me to say, unnecessarily, “I cannot believe this is happening to me: I am having the wild experience of being in public and agreeing with Bob Woodward!”
Afterward, backstage, I said to Mr. Woodward, “I am so grateful to you for stepping forward to defend conservatives. You really took the pressure off me by doing that.” “Taking the pressure off you wasn’t really my intention,” Mr. Woodward responded, a statement which I felt rang true.
Tale #17: The United States Information Agency Came to My Aid, and I Still Hope I Can Reciprocate
I had been invited to speak to the Voice of America staff, then a part of the United States Information Agency. I had been given the opportunity to say what I would like international audiences to know about the American West. This seemed like a wonderful opportunity, and I had prepared my speaking notes carefully. I was introduced, and I started to walk toward the podium.
And then a misfortune occurred: I dropped my folder on the floor, and the pages went in all directions. For all my care in preparation, I had not numbered the pages, and I don’t think I was entirely successful in restoring them to the intended order. But here is the part I remember with pleasure: the front of the room was soon filled with USIA staffers, who are, after all, trained to track and distribute information volunteering to pick up my widely scattered pages.
The Voice of America still exists, though the USIA was replaced with a different organizational structure. Current reports indicate that current Voice of America staff members are facing serious challenges. Given how quickly and earnestly their predecessors pitched into recombobulate me after I cast my speech notes to the wind, I cannot suppress the hope that there might be some way, in these times, that I could come to the aid of a discombobulated organization.
Tale #18: Here Comes the Sun: A New Era Dawns at Pomona College
I did not take to public speaking like a duck to water. On the contrary, I was a duck who stood on the banks. As I watched more acclimated ducks paddle around comfortably. My position remained firmly terrestrial: “On the whole, I’d rather stay out of the water.”
When I entered the world of teaching, I was still certifiably shy. This turned out to be a great advantage for teaching small classes, since I had no inclination to occupy the place at the center of attention. This induced a steady flow of creativity in coming up with classroom activities that activated the students as participants in discussions, debates, role plays, and anything else I could imagine. This worked well. One measure of my success came into play when people teaching classes in adjoining rooms would knock on our door and say, “Could you please be quieter?” When these intruders would say, “We are trying to have a class next door!” I would muster as much good nature as I could and respond, “Well, so are we!”
When I got my job at Harvard, life took a bad turn. I had to teach lecture classes in a university where quite a few professors (not all!) were fabled for their oratorial flair. This scared me, but it was too late to retreat. And so, I soldiered on, with endurance as my aspiration.
Here is the thought that was in my mind when I started each lecture: “In fifty minutes, I can be myself again.” This peculiar form of reassurance left open a big question: Who did I think I was going to be in those next fifty minutes?
Every year, Harvard invited alumni to visit for a day, choose from a list of courses, and attend a lecture or two. To my dismay, my Western American history course ended up on that list. This day, which I christened “Blue Blazer Day,” was really scary.
In 2020, I cannot begin to imagine why I was anything but joyful on Blue Blazer Day. Of all the desirable occasions when one can find oneself placed at a podium, gatherings of alumni are pre-eminent, and I have had many opportunities to recover from my wrongheaded attitude toward Blue Blazer Day. In truth, multiple experiences now qualify me to make this observation: whether the people assembled are graduates of Harvard, Yale, or CU, the quality of questions, comments, and company is very high.
Back in the early 1980s, there was not even a hint that I was ever going to figure out how to enjoy such an opportunity.
And then a visit to Pomona College in Claremont, California, changed everything.
My friend Helena Wall invited me to give a public lecture there. And, in a move that changed my life, she also asked me to talk with three or four Pomona history majors who were thinking of going to graduate school. Conversing with these lively and engaging young people proved to be such fun that I forgot all about the impending ordeal of the speech, looming on my horizon. And then, suddenly, the students pointed out that it was time for my public lecture. Denied the chance to follow my usual custom of setting aside a few minutes to get nervous, this time I walked into the lecture hall as myself. I began speaking to the sizable audience with the same ease with which I had just been speaking with the small group of students. I am almost certain that this was the first time that I referred directly to an audience as “you”—as in, “you may be wondering,” or “you may be thinking.”
It turns out that audiences respond enthusiastically to a speaker who takes pleasure in their company, rather than wishing they would go away. Public speaking had been transfigured into a good time.
Tale #19: Praying for the Speaker
When you are the guest speaker at a college with a religious affiliation, it is not uncommon for your hosts and your audience to pray for you. In their prayer, they are gracious, and they do not ask to be spared the sorrow of finding out that inviting you was a mistake. On the contrary, they present a case for your well-being, but their invocation of empathy and charity extends to a much wider hope for the well-being of human beings everywhere.
As it turned out, I became a convert to this custom, though I follow it only in my own mind. If I am about to give a speech on a subject on which my audience could be divided or despairing, I say to myself, “Whatever you do, do not make it worse for these people.” We could label this the public speaker’s variation on the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.”
Tale #20: Will that Woman with the Rubber Chicken Be There?
When I was Vice President of the American Historical Association, I co-wrote a grant proposal to create a big project called “Tuning” (as in “tuning up an orchestra”). The grant supported gatherings of a great team of historians from all around the country. These folks worked together to define the key skills and abilities majoring in history should acquire, while also engaging businesspeople in the quest to maximize the career opportunities for students.
When I spoke at one of the first meetings of the “Tuning” group, I brought with me a rubber chicken. To maximize audience participation during my talk, I put the chicken to the same work it sometimes performs in my classes. I would ask the group a question and then toss the chicken into their midst, with the expectation that the person with whom the chicken landed would respond to the question.
When this group reconvened the next year, one of the historians said to me that he had told his seven-year-old son that he was going to go meet with the same group he had met with the year before.
And then the historian told me the wonderful question his son had then asked him: “Will that woman with the rubber chicken be there?”
There are a lot worse ways to be remembered.
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Photo credit: Banner image – Patty Limerick speaking on March 9, 2020 at the University of Oklahoma’s conference, The Challenges of Immigration in the 21st Century, her last speaking trip before the pandemic shutdown. Photo courtesy of Travis Caperton (Univ. of Oklahoma).