Morganville, Kansas
June

Dear Mr. Hedges,

No, I have no quarrel whatsoever with State Unesco about Morganville. Certainly not in terms of pride or publicity. If attention and approbation were what we have been seeking, I should say we have had more than our little help for Feves warrants. Operation Democracy has used our news value most fully.

Anything I have had to say, I have said directly to persons in a position to help influence our general program. If in any discussion, I have given the impression that I am hunting anything different from a personal or Chamber of Commerce promotion view point, I have failed to communicate and will try again. I talked to Mr. Tjerandson first because in the natural course of human events, he was the one I saw. I stopped in Manhattan's Unesco office to try to bum a ride to Wichita for your Orlean's celebration. Even on the campus, only a few really believe that the defenses of peace can be constructed. The handful who do, need more time and help and money. I appreciate their concern.

I was leaving on a trip when I received your letter, and I spent my train time trying to think of how I could state our case, if any, without seeming churlish or trivial.

�Is everything going as well as it could on the local level,� I kept asking myself, �or isn�t it?�

I am self-appointed probably, but I feel that I am a representative of the people at the non-official, bulk side of this wonderfully conceived idea of Unesco. I am living very closely with neighbors of three generations. I think I know their possibilities, limitations and other qualities as well as it is possible for one human being to know another. I am certain that we are capable of great behavior. I believe that we are not a unique town (except as we are surrounded by good income-producing land). Morganville is one indistinguishable cell in the American body.

In my mind, I split this village atom and examined every family for potentiality in the force of peace and civilization. Did I imagine the blinding white light and the terrible roar of absolute power in their knowledge and good will? If not, why do only two or three dozen people, and half of them more or less unbelieving and indifferent, show up at a county Unesco meeting? What is the formula for using this energy?

I don't know. But this I do believe. Culture is never - never, this side of the millennium or Hell, going to hit town via a Unesco leaflet. And that�s about the worst thing I�ve said to anybody. As a matter of fact, I am a pamphlets best friend. I use, read aloud, and pass along all I can get.

�Culture� is a word I have used sparingly in Morganville because everyone knows it does not belong to me and it might have a tinny ring. But I mean to be amenable and elastic. After Mr. Tjerandson and I eased our respective social tensions the other day, I suggested, against my better judgement at the close of a Morganville Young Adults meeting, where we had discussed race relations rather thoroughly, that "they" thought we were leaning too much on powdered milk and tolerance and not enough on pure education and culture.

It was an experiment I shall not repeat. A quiet, stubborn resentment spread through the room. Someone suggested presently that we have an Art Exhibit. And they will, do or die.

But if we leave it at that, it will be a bloodless affair, sounding well in a Council report, but attended only by a few initiates who have seen better in their travels.

It would have slighted �Art,� but it would have pushed back the horizons (a little) if instead I had burbled enthusiastically, �Wouldn't it be wonderful, next winter, when we are not so busy, to gather up all the lovely things the boys have brought back from over the world and show them all at once? Along with the heirlooms that came earlier, like Pearl's Swiss clock and Mrs. Miller's Norwegian chest and Cynthia's Spanish lace and the things Ann picked up in Italy ... Maybe write and get some really good examples of Oriental or European or even Kansas paintings and then ask somebody interesting to make a talk about it all and serve old family dishes and ask Per Stensland to bring his lute ... and invite everybody born elsewhere to take a bow ... and end up with a Unesco movie or dance or something?�

But what if I had not the wit to stop there, but would go on to call it a �Folk Festival� and get all the folk too bashful to move?

I mean, I think it would be better if we could learn to understand friendly informality in this solemn invasion of the minds of men, to let a brash rayon Japanese kimono get into the art exhibit, hoping that the little sister who comes to bring it, may, with her pride rising, receive from something else there, the bettering experience, the new thought, the higher value, I firmly believe that little girl and her folks live in our last margin of safety and that we must know them, win them, or perish.

I think that only if Unesco becomes a World Club, as well as an International Intelligentsia is it as important as it could be. And therefore, the intelligentsia must, and be quick about it, educate itself, expose its standards to the majority; and use the aggravating mediums of a honky tonk age to exchange ideas.

The culture of some recent visitors here was never mentioned, but it was not unobserved. We will be an older, more thoughtful, gentler town for having heard Miss de Wendel tell of war in Lorraine. When Mr. Todd remembered to bring an envelope of foreign [stamps] to our Mayor who collects them, he helped educate us all. In giving the Swedes their romantic Christmas, Mr. Stensland made them lenient with the French etc.

Which comes vaguely to what I have been fretting about. Until we know where it is coming from (two graduates of Kansas colleges who train our young, chew gum with their mouths open.) I have a yokel's distrust of too much talk about culture. Though I have the secret craving.

That is why I wish the leaders would fill in the interim with this natural, all-inclusive, warm-hearted, understandable town adoption program where we exchange what we have. If there is any culture present, on either side, it is almost bound to ride along. And I mean really co-operate, with more than watchful, neutral politeness. I want them to risk some enthusiasm, be happy and be present; join in the polka; sing! as it were; and to think of people as they could be, but deal with them as they are. Keeping right on with those leaflets and other long-time projects.

Funny thing happened. I thought about local efforts all the way to Kansas City, hard, (with my eyes on peoples fields) pro and con, heart and mind. I decided to tell you I may be too unconstructively ignorantly critical.

But while I was having coffee in Union Station, a slightly older woman I have met very casually - at a Federated Clubs convention, an Alumni Dinner, the Topeka Unesco Conference, (name and address if necessary) came up to speak to me. She�s the conservative, dowager type from a larger town. A few strangers� greetings, and suddenly, as completely as if she had heard my morning�s searching, she answered.

She was on her way to a funeral - but impulsively, hastily and confidentially, she poured forth an uneasy story of what is amiss in her unit with their leaders.

Somebody in Unesco has to cross boundary lines. Here! within the democracy - within the organization itself. I don't know whether it is us or them! I know I still have not said anything. I do not know how to put it.

Thank you, Mr. Hedges, for your speech at Topeka, for sharing your guests so generously, for teaching my Wichita friends to say �we,� and for your letter giving me a chance to try to explain.

Cordially,