About this time, it must have been just a few months before the Washington march, I met Reuther. I was dating a girl from Boston whose parents were friends (and I think financial supporters) of his, and he dropped by their apartment one evening when I also happened to be there. I was a Harvard senior, studied in nonchalance, and also president of the Harvard Socialist Club, inclined to dismiss a "labor bureaucrat" like Reuther as a mere "liberal." Prematurely jaded though I was, he really impressed me. He was a man who transmitted energy and gave the impression that he was intensely interested in knowing you. (I had a similar impression when I got into a nose-to-nose chat with Hugo Chávez last year. Am I just impressionable? No, I think there is something to the notion of "charisma," and it has to do with that keen, energetic focus.)
Check out the National Writers Union. To find out how I happened to be chatting with Chávez, take a look at a note predating this weblog.
