Truth be told, I was not born with a skepticism toward government spending. Family archives (“baby’s first words” and the like) indicate that “tak is” (taxes?) was no more than the fifth word out of my cherubic mouth.

Perhaps the most formative period of my life was the year-plus that I spent as a member of Volunteers In Service To America. VISTA was a weapon in President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, declared in 1964. That ongoing war, of course, remains the longest in American history.

Having spent four years at Cornell indulging in beer, football, the intricacies of blank verse, understanding the sources of alienation in middle class America, and sundry other undergraduate essentials, I figured, in 1967, that the time was ripe to do something worthwhile with my life. VISTA offered a perfect opportunity.

I envisioned myself walking the mean streets of NYC (my requested location) improving (in undefined ways) the lives of my fellow citizens mired in the throes of poverty. Mind you, I was far from the stereotypical VISTA candidate. As one of two Cornellians sporting a Goldwater/Miller button during the 1964 election season, I was, by many, stereotyped as, by turns, a bigot, a racist, a fascist, a tool of the wealthy, and an irredeemable Giants fan.

In fact, upon my arrival in the South Bronx, my supervisor/mentor challenged my motivation for being in VISTA. Morris was fashionably “woke” (on day 1, he handed each member of my training group a copy of Franz Fanon’s “The Wretched of The Earth”) well before the word gained its........

© Finger Lakes Times