Bruce Jenkins re Gene Sharp.
Interviewer — Metta Spencer

Bruce Jenkins was an assistant to Sharp at the Albert Einstein Institution

JENKINS: Well yes, I guess we had two trips [to the Soviet Union]. The first trip, let me see, I didn’t look at my notes for that one. We went with Gene, we attended two conferences that were organized by two Institutes of the Academy of Sciences.

METTA: There’s one that I was invited to; it was run by an old philosopher with white hair, an old man.

JENKINS: Oh.

METTA: Do you know who I am talking about?

JENKINS: That probably would have been [Abdusalam] Guseinov.

METTA: Yes that’s it.

JENKINS: Guseinov? Yes we attended that same conference. Were you there?

METTA: I didn’t go, I couldn’t go again. It seems to me that I just got back from there.

JENKINS: Uh, uh okay.

METTA: I did have a report, sort of speak from.. who is that guy from London, Ontario?

JENKINS: Let’s see — that was November 89 that we were there.

METTA: Professor of religious studies at Windsor University or in London.

JENKINS: George Crowell.

METTA: yes

JENKINS: yes, he was there, exactly. I suppose you’ve received information about that conference.

METTA: I don’t know if I got any follow up stuff. I got preliminary stuff. I guess I actually go to Moscow rather often, but I’ve actually never gone to see this man. I think its probably because I had the feeling from things that other people have said that this is all kind of an academic interest for him but not a political; he wasn’t an activist by a long shot.

JENKINS: I think that’s true, I would agree with that. He and an assistant of his, Ruben Apresyan, have established what they call a Centre for the Ethics of Nonviolence at the Institute of Philosophy and Academy of Sciences. They have basically promoted various publications and translations of works. They have translated a few pieces of Gene’s but have focused much more on King and Gandhi, and a series of other authors, and I believe they have tried to put together a reader and a collection of materials on violence on Russia. So if that type of work might help?

METTA: I don’t know, it may or may not, I don’t know whether — I just have a feeling that what they do doesn’t feed into anything involving decision-making, and it’s not that I’m necessarily looking just for government decision-making because I’m not. I know quite a few Russians who are fascinated by non-violence, and writing about it, and so on. They were present for example for the August coup out on the street doing things. I’m trying to analyze this for myself — why I haven’t gone to see this man or these people when I should had been interested in them. I suppose because I had them coded as…

JENKINS: Primarily academic?

METTA: Not really.

JENKINS: treatment of the subjects(?)

METTA: Not really having any impact in the world is that..

JENKINS: That could well be, I can’t make that judgment and what it is they all do. What I do know would support that they basically limited themselves to more academic exercises, but I don’t know. It may be worthwhile, if anything, if they’ve produced any materials in Russia that are useful for people and have taken any steps to get the materials into people’s hands rather than to keep them under lock and key in a library and maybe they have served some good purposes there.

METTA: Well, what I’ll do, I have one assistant who works for me in Moscow, and I’ll ask her sometime to sort of check out, see what they have done, and whether what they have done makes any difference.

JENKINS: Could you tell me again what specifically your project is at this point? Gene only mentioned a couple of words to me.

METTA: I used to attend a lot of conferences involving Soviets and had a sense that they were listening even to people like me, you know — paying close attention. I was heard 10 times better there than I was by my own government, and I speak as both as an American and as a Canadian, because I have dual citizenship. So I know that a lot of peace activists had that same experience of going and being given a good hearing and feeling sometimes it made a difference in policy — or at least medium- to high-level people were personally influenced one way or another by dialogues, running everything from Pugwash to Dartmouth meetings, you name it. I had the feeling that the most people including a lot of peace activists believe that by holding firm with its (?) policy. I thought it was important to document the range of contacts and rich relationships that had developed. I can’t really prove that specific treaties were signed as a result of influence by X, Y, or Z.

JENKINS: Sure.

METTA: I can show that there was a lot going on and people themselves, Russians themselves tell me that the peace movement had a big impact. So now the conversation I just had just before I spoke with you, was with a man that’s a good example of a Dutchman [van Eeghen] who became kind of a intermediary between people like Sam Nunn, and (?), and was a friend of Jimmy Carter’s. So he has a lot of contacts that way, and at one point the Dutch government had decided that they would not deploy cruise missiles if the Russians, Soviets did not go above 378 by November. So he went to Moscow and was told to stay in his hotel room while they negotiated. Arbatov told him: well, we think we have it now. So he came home thinking that he had talked them out of deploying any more SS20’s. Actually Gromyko got into the act after he left town and it didn’t work. But that kind of thing, those stories are clearly important.

JENKINS: True, they play a role, certainly.

METTA: I know a number of people in Moscow — I think of 4 that are very (5 or 6 when I think of it) who are very interested in civilian-based defense etc…., or Gandhi and non-violence, one way or another, and are writing about the sort of diffusion of ideas about non-violence and I have one friend, who I think I stimulated him to look into this, but he’s a specialist in the Philippines and Indonesia. I’m pretty clear that the anti-Marcos campaign prompted people in Poland to stick to non-violence when it wasn’t clear that they were going to in the next go-round. For example the Solidarity movement was very influential in Russia, so there were movements of ideas in that way. I can’t prove in any conclusive way but I do collect a lot of good stories of people who had conversations and relationships that may have been meaningful.

JENKINS: Sure, I think it can be very useful to organize those stories, be able to present them. We went back to Moscow in November 1991, Gene and I. It was a combined trip to Moscow and to the three Baltic States. At the same time several other people that we are friends with here and the U.S.. I’m trying to remember everyone who was there. Peter Woodrow.

METTA: Who is he?

JENKINS: Peter Woodrow? He’s a non-violence trainer, an activist here in Cambridge, Mass., he’s worked with various groups. Let’s see. Peter Woodrow, Phil Bogdanoff, who is an associate with the Einstein Institution.

METTA: Yeah, I know him.

JENKINS: And he’s with Non-Violence International down in Washington DC, and David Hartesough.

METTA: I don’t know him.

JENKINS: He’s in San Francisco, he worked for many years with, I believe with, the AFSC doing trainings on nonviolent action and he’s a non-violence trainer living in San Francisco.

METTA: How do you spell his last name?

JENKINS: Hartesough. They were going to Moscow more or less at the same time we were, so we co-ordinated some of our activities. Our first meeting with people in Moscow was with an organization called Living Ring. At this point I can’t quite reconstruct the actual genesis of the meetings. It may be that David Hartesough and folks had initial contact with the representatives of the Living Ring and then we were invited to, Gene was invited to, primarily to make presentations to their organizations while we were in Moscow. Is this an area that you are interested in?

METTA: Yes, I’m very interested in that. I have to say that I’ve made and broken two or three appointments with — I can’t think of the name of the guy who’s the head, I guess of Living Ring. I don’t know what his name is.

JENKINS: We met two people; two names stick out of the people in Living Ring, one is Konstantin Truetsev, and he was like a Vice-Chair of the organization, I believe.

METTA: He’s the one I’ve not managed to see.

JENKINS: Okay, he does speak English. Do you speak Russian as well?

METTA: No. I have some really good friends that translate for me.

JENKINS: I believe Nikolai Testin (?) was the official Chairman of the counsel of the Living Ring.

METTA: I don’t know him.

JENKINS: Okay.

METTA: Well I don’t know of him in fact. What I’ve heard from people with, well I was there about two months ago I guess, yes maybe three by now — in March. I’ve been told by several people that it’s as if the people who did the Living Ring, who did the action at the White House, those people didn’t know what they were doing, they did things by accident that worked right, you know and they never were really committed to non-violence and that in fact they would explicitly disavow non-violence. The organization, if it is an organization, Living Ring, includes a number of Cossacks, and that they are quite militaristic. My time is always short there when I go there. Well this doesn’t look very promising, so I won’t go and see him.

JENKINS: It’s never in many meetings that I’ve had with various people, I was never really sure when someone makes a statement about being fully committed to non-violence or the principles of non-violence action. During our meetings, while we were there in 1991, they made such statements that they were… Though what you just said reminded me of some comments during that time, we were told that there was a split in the organization over the issue of non-violence vs. para-military type of action and means and that there was a militant wing and that there had been some rather sharp disagreements at one of their last organizational meetings. Even though at the time of November ’91, it was unclear to us exactly what type of organization it was. Some people told us that there was a coordination council and a council of representatives and that they met every three weeks or three months, and other people had mentioned to me that they’re basically a phone tree of names that were collected during the August events and they had a long list of up to 10,000 people who had given their names and phone #‘s saying that they would be willing to be contacted in the future about any kinds of events dealing with Coup resistance and such. So it was a little unclear to me.

METTA: My bet is, my guess is that some of the people who would have been particularly effective in that coup situation and were doing things, may not have been represented in the Living Ring.

JENKINS: That could well be.

METTA: I know of, for example a woman named Ruzanna Ilukhina. Do you know who she is?

JENKINS: Let’s see, I think so. Is she with the Russian Peace Alliance?

METTA: Yes, Russian Peace Society.

JENKINS: Yeah, I had a note here, just kind of bumped heads with her, and never really sat down and talked with her.

METTA: … She and a couple of young people, Jana and Yuri Krasnorutsky, who worked with her, went around in somebody’s car, I think they made leaflets by using a fax machine, they didn’t have a photocopier and they distributed some kind of non-violence stuff.

JENKINS: We were told by,. Are you familiar with the group Golubka?

METTA: Yes, actually, I’m not sure what the connection was between them, but I know about them. I interviewed them and frankly I lost the tape. I feel embarrassed to get back to this woman.

JENKINS: They had told us about doing similar things, about posting up various…

METTA: I think she said, what was that woman’s name with Golubka?

JENKINS: With Golubka? Let me see. One was Yuri. I think it was a Georgian name which is Blood and let me see. Hold on one second.

METTA: It was a pretty woman.

JENKINS: Yeah Natasha, was that her name. Let me think here. Yeah Natasha Maranova.

METTA: That’s not the one I’m thinking of.

JENKINS: The second woman Zhenya Alexeeva.

METTA: Okay, I think she said they posted things a lot in women’s washrooms.

JENKINS: Oh, interesting.

METTA: I believe that’s what she said, because they were less likely to be torn down there. You know, men wouldn’t be going in there. Yes, it’s very interesting.

JENKINS: I have here just a little statement by them, it was kind of a letter to the friends of Golubka, it says that in the August Coup days Golubka engaged in organizing non-violent resistance of the White House. Has defenders against the right wing post, through distributing thousands of leaflets and flyers on non-violence including those on principles of civilian based defense, 198 methods of direct non-violent action, historical examples. Several of those leaflets, certainly you know the 198 methods, and historical examples were actually translated — sheets of some more promotional material from the Einstein Institution, they had translated into Russian.

METTA: Were those sent by E-mail to them?

JENKINS: No, we did not have E-mail at that time. I believe I would have to try to reconstruct the times.

METTA: It seems to that somebody sent them to them by E-mail. As I said I had the tape and I lost the tape.

JENKINS: Let me see, this is March ’91. So they had actually already translated those materials before the August coup.

METTA: I see.

JENKINS: I have a reference here that they had put together what they call a non-violence anthology and I received a letter in March and enclosed is the English version of the non-violence anthology. So early in the year they already had the Russian non-violence anthology, including the translations of those sheets, more or less one page listing of the methods, and some historical examples and several other things. I could probably send you copies of those from that anthology.

METTA: Great, that would be super. Do you know Alexander Kalinin?

JENKINS: Yes, yes, I do , he’s actually one of our oldest contacts in Moscow, he became interested in Gene’s…

METTA: Actually I met him about 5 years ago.

JENKINS: Yeah, probably in February 1990, I think he came to that conference.

METTA: And we became friends, now they’re very dear friends of mine, he and his wife have just split up, but his wife is the woman who works for me in Moscow. I know that he was during the coup out in the streets stopping tanks, running around doing things. He made a tape for me describing his activities during the coup.

JENKINS: That’s very good. We met with him during our November ’91 visit, and he told us a bit of his activities. I believe he also had drafted a leaflet of his own that he distributed in his district. I think he is a member of the Moscow City Council.

METTA: That’s right.

JENKINS: Well it sounds like we’ve, since you’ve— I don’t think I can fill you in anymore on the Golubka people or with Alexander Kalinin, those are primarily our other…

METTA: By the way, he also was trying to prevent the violence against the White House this last October.

JENKINS: Was he?

METTA: He’s not in very good shape. When I was there, I had dinner with him, I think because of his marriage breaking up he’s in rocky emotional condition.

JENKINS: I feel he was working very hard.

METTA: Yes he’s very intense and this thing about the White House just totally devastated him. I don’t know how much to trust what he’s doing now. In other words he’s a very dear friend, but you know he’s not in good shape at the moment. He was working very hard to keep that from becoming a violent situation.

JENKINS: I can imagine it being very disheartening, devastating.

METTA: Now I understand you’ve had some relationship with the people in Lithuania?

JENKINS: Yes we have, but before, we did have some other meetings in Moscow I should tell you about. We met with…, We are very uncertain how to evaluate any effects that our meetings and information have had on people. We tend to assume they had very little impact. We were glad to hear about Golubka circulating the leaflets. That was a very tangible type of effect, but beyond that we are very uncertain. On the 22nd of November 1991, Gene and I met with three members of the, actually I have two names of the Commission. The first name I was given is the Commission of the Investigation of the Coup of the Supreme Council of Russia, and then I was told later that same commission was called the Russian Parliamentary Commission in Investigation of the Circumstances of the Coup d‘état. I was told that the commission had 20 members, all deputies of the Supreme Soviet. I guess at that same time, and then it’s broken into different subcommissions. We had met with the Chairman of the commission, Mr. Lev Ponomarov, and the second member is, I don’t have his first name just his first 2 initials are A. and then K. and his last name is Shabad, he’s, if I’m correct, I think I’ve heard references to Mr. Shabad subsequently in various places, and I believe I actually saw him on TV one night, and the context in which I heard about him, he is a very close Yeltsin ally in the Parliament, and was working very strongly aligned with Yeltsin in the Parliament. The third person was Alexander Maximov(?), and we had about a two hour meeting in the afternoon discussing anti-coup resistance through non-violent action and they had a lot of questions about legislation and what can they do on the legislative side to set up some legal parameters for resisting coups. Prior to our trip, I should mention this, we translated 2 versions of a paper Gene had written, one short, one long, on resisting coups. It was more or less a think piece based on his other writings about the role of non-violence in resisting coups. We translated those into Russian, and we distributed, I think we had 600 copies total, and those were distributed in Moscow and in the Baltic States, so I don’t know how many were distributed just in Moscow, probably the bulk of them. So in our meeting with the representatives from this Commissions we gave them copies of those papers and they were then quickly able to see what it is we were saying, and they raised a number of interesting issues about maybe adopting a non-cooperation clause in the Russian Constitution, which would require citizens to refuse co-operation with (?), and is also raised the issue of maybe inserting a clause into the military induction of forbidding co-operation with usurpers. As far as I know neither of those things went anywhere.

METTA: I can check it out. My friend Julia, who works for the newspaper, covers the Parliament (that’s her beat), so I can ask her easily.

JENKINS: That would be interesting.

METTA: If I find out. If anything has happened I’ll let you know.

JENKINS: That would be very interesting for us, if anything happened along those lines. I imagine that…

METTA: It takes a long time sometimes, these things. Sasha was working on an alternative service and conscientious objection clause. It took forever and I don’t think he could claim to have succeeded, but it had been adopted.

JENKINS: Ah, it has been adopted.

METTA: I saw it on E-mail a while ago. I don’t know whether I captured it on E-mail, I couldn’t find it, but anyway I read something called Red USSR on this Peace-Net kind of thing. I’m pretty sure that’s where I saw it.

JENKINS: Well I hope that does boost his spirits a little. Ponomarev was very supportive of this approach, or very interested in it, they obviously had a million and one things to think about. When I look back at my notes, you could clearly see that they’re very worried about the break-up of the structures of the Soviet Union. In a sense they’re fearful of the development of strong ethnic classes and the formation of independent military armies and were very worried about that, and also spoke about international mediation observers, and things.

METTA: I’m pretty sure this can’t be the same guy, but there was a Ponomarov who was very high level, he was the head of the International Department of CPSU.

JENKINS: I’m sure it’s not the same guy, because this guy, lets see — Ponomarov was connected with Democratic Russia, a large and large; I wouldn’t know how to categorize Democratic Russia. It’s kind of a civic movement. He was working with the Democratic Russia movement, I think for several years prior to the August coup, and working for reforms, kind of taking the space that was offered by glasnost to do more civic political action, so I doubt he was in the higher level.

METTA: How much did this group know? When you came at them was it all a totally novel idea, or had somebody already got there and informed them about the whole concept? Or maybe its something that occurs to people anyway?

JENKINS: I think it was a mix. I think Ponomarov had a pretty strong — whether it was an instinctual — sense about non-violent action in political organizing and in political conflict. He kind of clued-in very quickly about what it was we were talking about and he made statements that he always thought popular resistance could play a very important role. On the other hand I think that Shabad had less of an idea and posed much more direct questions about: What is this?, what are you talking about?, do people wear uniforms or not? He was grappling much more with it conceptually with what we were talking about. I do not know about other contact and what other information they may had seen in the past. In that meeting I think Shabad had made a reference to negotiations and made a specific mention to Bill Ury, who co-authored the book with Roger Fisher on Getting to Yes, which was translated into Russian, became fairly widely known there. He referred to a lecture by Bill Ury that was held at some point in Moscow.

METTA: I have seen it on the desks of several, or the bookshelves of several, high people I have gone to visit there. But not in Russian.

JENKINS: Ah, in English. I know the Russian edition came out, but I don’t know if it was well distributed or not. I think that’s all I can say about that meeting.

METTA: You professed some sort of hesitancy, thinking that maybe nothing came of it all.

JENKINS: We don’t know. We had written letters, following letters asking to be kept informed, asking if we could be of any further assistance, if they would like any other materials. We never heard from Ponomarov or Shabad. We did not follow up about trying to independently monitor their work and whether any specific anti-coup type of legislation was then recommended by that commission, but I don’t even have a copy of that report.

METTA: I can probably get it for you from Julia.

JENKINS: That would be very interesting.

METTA: On the other hand, it’s probably in Russian. I’ll ask her to find out what she can and since she spends a good part of her day now at the parliament it shouldn’t be that hard for her to do. Then she can send it to me by e-mail and I’ll pass it in to you whatever I find out.

JENKINS: Thank you, that would be helpful. It occurs to me I’ve always meant to get a copy of that even in Russian so we can have it in case someone who spoke Russian here wanted to explore some of the materials in more depth. We are uncertain about what effect that meeting had; we have no measures of any kind of effect, whether the articles that were translated into Russian were used in anyway. We inquired not with members of this commission, but with other people whether there was interest in getting those articles published and after a number of people initially saying yes, there was still no movement to actually get them published.

METTA: You’re thinking of the article about how to prevent a coup.

JENKINS: Gene’s translated articles into Russian on anti-coup resistance.

METTA: Its interesting that nobody wanted to publish them. It’s surprising. Well, the problem is publishing anything there is terrible now because of the paper shortage. I don’t know if that affected the policy.

JENKINS: It could well have.

METTA: So tell me about Lithuania, unless you have some other Moscow events to tell me.

JENKINS: No Moscow, I think that kind of wraps it up. Let’s see, with Lithuania, we’ve had relationship with people in the Lithuanian government for some time going back to…our first visit was in April 91 to Lithuania, to Vilnius, and that was an invitation by the Defense Minister even though it wasn’t a Ministry at the time. I think it was Director General of National Defense, his name is Audrius Butkevicius. Audrius Butkevicius got hold of some of Gene’s materials, some of his writings. There’s a small booklet called National Security Through Civilian-based Defense. Also we had sent through the page proofs for his not yet published at that time, but we had the page proofs and we sent them to a contact of ours in Lithuania who worked at the Academy of Sciences. She had contacts with Andrius Buthkevicius and then forwarded the materials to him.

He told us subsequently to the events that the materials were very useful in his planning for resistance during the January 1991 events, attack in Vilnius on January 13th by the Soviet military. He had actually had some of the materials translated into Lithuanian and circulated them amongst his staff and people. He was interesting; he also told us he sent contacts in Latvia and Estonia and then in the fall if 1991 after we visited Moscow, we went to Riga and Tallinn as well and people there who were responsible for defense and had told us that the materials were useful, both in January 91 and then also in August 91. We asked them how they were useful and they told us (I’m more or less summarizing here) that the materials have conceptualized non-violent resistance as a technique—I think as Audrius Butkevicius put it, as a method rather than just as a spontaneous thing that happens,. But actually something you could think about and break down in a systematic way into methods and various dynamics of change. I think he was also surprised to read about non-violent action from Gene’s perspective, being separated from pacifist commitment and ethical, religious beliefs in non-violent action, in non-violence. Going back to Lithuania in April 1990, he invited Gene to come and make some presentations to members of parliament and members of the budding security force that more or less originated out of the January 1991 attacks.

We’ve been in contact with government officials in Lithuania ever since and have been pursuing several projects. One is the development of a handbook that would be designed for households, providing basic information on civilian resistance in the event of foreign aggression or a coup d‘état. The Ministry of Defense has consistently expressed its interests in having those materials and distributing them to households, but up to this point that has not taken place. We’re still on the development stage with that work.

Another project that all three Baltic States have indicated interest in is the development of Baltic Regional Co-operation, like a civilian based defense co-operation agreement, looking at ways that, first the three Baltic States could help one another in the event of a security crisis—help one another in non-military ways, providing assistance directly to civilians, providing information, assistance, broadcasting facilities and the like. Then spreading out that type of agreement to include some of the Nordic countries, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, possibly Norway, but Norway’s a little further away. There’s been work trying to sketch out what the base elements of such an agreement would be and ___ are in discussion with people in the Defense Ministry in all three countries, to further develop a network.

METTA: That’s great.

JENKINS: We hope that it goes somewhere. We’re still at the development stage.

METTA: That would be the only country so far to adopt such policy?

JENKINS: Yes as far as we know. In Gene’s book titled “Civilian Based Defense,” at the end of the book there’s a short treatment about earlier investigations into this policy by various governments, and also includes information about Sweden which had actually in 1986 adopted a non-military resistance component in its overall defense policy, since then have conducted a number of studies looking at the role of civilian resistance and other forms of non-military defense that Sweden could employ, should Sweden be attacked. It’s a very small program, but thinking along those lines continues today in Sweden. Also Austria and Switzerland have at times looked at including civilian resistance as part of their defense policies as well.

METTA: Interesting. Well I’m sticking to the Soviet end of things and post-Soviet. I mean, I might be interested in putting in something about Lithuania and the Baltics, but that’s the size of it for this purpose. What I probably should do is, can I send you a cheque for some of these papers that might have, for example: the anti-coup paper and anything else that you think or that you distributed that other people read?

JENKINS: Sure, I can do that. I think we’re able to do that without a cheque.

METTA: That’s very nice of you.

JENKINS: I’ll put together whatever I find that’s relevant to primarily the Moscow activities

METTA: Do you have my address?

JENKINS: Why don’t I write it down.

METTA: I’m one of your members. I think I still am. I hope I am. It’s 155 Marlee Ave., Apt. 201, Toronto, Ontario, M6B 4B5, phone number: (416)789-4508. Terrific, this is very interesting.

JENKINS: Sounds like an interesting project. Are you hoping to write up a paper on this?

METTA: Oh, this is a huge book.

JENKINS: It’s become very voluminous?

METTA: I already have half of it, or two thirds of it written.

JENKINS: Oh wonderful!

METTA: I’ll have contributions by two other people. One is a member of the, what was the Moscow Trust Group, which was a dissident peace organization during those early periods and the other is Tair Tairov, who was a member of the World Peace Council, and blew the whistle on it and quit or fell out with those guys. So he’s a critic from fairly early. So because they occupied very different places in the peace movement, they each have a different set of experiences, but mine is based not only on my own experiences, but you know during the times I was participating in these peace movement activities, but also by now it’s 175 or more interviews.

JENKINS: Oh that’s extensive.

METTA: The fun is in the interviews, the work is in typing it up.

JENKINS: I can imagine. It’s very time consuming, since most of them are taped and reviewing the tapes.

METTA: It’s worth it. Great, thank you very much. It’s been very interesting. Give my good wishes to Gene.

JENKINS: One last word. I imagine that the people at Golubka told you that they had two associates living in the United States — Gail Warner and her husband, David Kreger.

METTA: Do you know that Gail died?

JENKINS: Yes, yes I do. I was going to mention Gail’s book about grassroots organizations.

METTA: I have both of them. Actually she wrote a book with Michael Schuman called Citizen’s Diplomacy. That was the first thing, and then the second thing was Invisible Threads. I’ve read them both. I haven’t interviewed her husband. Do you think I should?

JENKINS: He may actually have some interesting information about the times, since he was keeping close tabs on that. He can certainly fill you in on the activities of the Golubka people and others. I don’t know if that would be a painful experience for him or not after Gail’s death. I don’t know him well enough.

METTA: I’ve never talked to him but he’s answered. I called her once and she said that I would love to talk to you but I’m sick. So I was never able to finish that conversation. I haven’t called him, maybe for that reason, thinking maybe he would soon not think about it.

JENKINS: It could be. I’m not sure quite how things have settled with him. Tragic loss.

METTA: It is.

JENKINS: Well good luck, and I’ll send on whatever I scramble up together here.

METTA: Terrific, I really appreciate that. Thank you. Bye bye.

JENKINS: Bye bye.