I was drafted to go to Vietnam. Before the induction I went to the doctors and they decided I was crazy. My parents had something to do with that. I had very intelligent parents. I was just a kid. In those days there was no real news coming out of Vietnam. It was all whitewashed. When I look back I see that I was lucky. I look back and I think: “thank god! I wouldn’t have made it!”

This was before the movie Apocalypse Now. A lot of people went and never came back. Before I was a hippie I was hanging out with civil rights people. Now I’m starting to do work that reflects. I did a piece on the first Chinese-Irish wedding that took place in Santa Cruz in 1882. I did a piece on the strawberry workers and their civil rights struggle. I did a piece called “Snake Oil” about the cover-up in Iraq. It had snakes and oil dripping out of it.

During the Vietnam War I was mostly trying to learn how to make pots. Now this war is going on and people don’t want to talk about it.