Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/99748
AND EVENTS L ........................... ater, Rep. Randy Hultgren (IL) asked if Ken Burns had a favorite story about the Congress or the Capitol that he could "share with my constituents as I'm walking around." Burns answered: "This is the best one and it's from Illinois. So, the New York Times had the greatest photographer named George Tames, and many of the older Rep. Hultgren asks a question. members here remember George and what a colorful character he was, not only doing his job for the New York Times, but also behind the scenes. And he remembers this wonderful moment when Everett Dirksen was called out of the Senate because a group of women from Illinois had come to see him. And he walked out in that great breathy voice that he has and says, "My dear girls, I was inside the Senate with the armor of a warrior when I heard that you dear girls had come here to see me. I put on the cloak of the poet and immediately came out to see what you want. What is it that we can do for you?" And there was absolute silence, and, finally, one little voice from the back piped up and said, "Nothing, Senator, we just came to hear you talk." I hope that's helpful. Just make sure you attribute it to George Tames; otherwise, I'm in a bunch of trouble and can't run for office. and French New Wave films and it was the first time I ever saw my father cry. He had not cried at my mother's funeral and my brother and I had noted that, but when he cried at a movie, I understood exactly not only how and why he was crying, but I forgave him for the lack of emotion in other places because I understood the . . . medium had that power to release certain emotions into the air. The film we watched is a film probably everyone in this room has seen, and that's It's a Wonderful Life by Frank Capra, starring Jimmy Stewart. It's Jimmy Stewart's favorite film; it was supposedly Frank Capra's favorite film…and it's a very WINTER 2013 unusual one because it's a film that's based on a man attempting to commit suicide and finding out what his life would be like without him in the course of that evening. It's Dickensian that way like "A Christmas Carol," but it's more than that; it's utterly American. And it occurs to me as we struggle today over the meaning of America, as we look at the fact that so many of us think that we can become independent free spirits—I harken back to that moment when I realized I wanted to be a filmmaker, when I realized the power of this medium to not only explicate and to explain, but also to communicate powerful, higher emotions our Founding Fathers would have called them. These are not sentimentality or nostalgia—those are the enemies of good anything. But it isn't a retreat purely to reason where everything always adds up and one and one always equals two. That's the safety of an empirical (continued next page) From left, Ken Burns; Patrick Butler, President and CEO, Association of Public Television Stations; Sen. Tom Harkin (IA); and Bill Shuler THE CAPITOL DOME 49