My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.
It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
Every conceivable cruel method of blackmail was used against me to obtain by force and at all costs confessions and statements both about comrades who had been arrested, and about political activities.
The whole force of the respectable circles to which I belonged, that respectable circle which knew as I did not the value of security won, the slender chance of replacing it if lost or abandoned, was against me.
In such an environment, I was able to study things that could be of immediate usefulness to the world. That learning experience undoubtedly served me well when I eventually entered the work force.
But the Air Force was sort of a bastard child of the Army, much like the Marines with the Navy. Everything had to be done over by the Army after it had already been done by the Air Corps, a mess.
Hardly had I left when we ran into the Korean war, doubled what I had asked for and doubled it again. I had told him I would stay in Government, be honored to, but not with the Air Force.
I can say unequivocally that the boycott does not work. It's never complete enough to have impact unless it's backed by force, and I don't think anybody in America seriously proposes that.
