The New Yorker Radio Hour - Episode 5: City Slickers and Soul Food

Episode Date: November 20, 2015

George Booth started drawing cartoons when he was three-and-a-half years old. (His first was a race car stuck in the mud.) Now nearly ninety, he’s been contributing to The New Yorker for over forty-five years. He sat down with Matt Diffee, a fellow cartoonist who considers Booth his hero, to discuss the virtues of dogs versus cats, and other big questions of the cartoon world. “We are at war,” the French President, François Hollande, declared this week, after terrorists attacked Paris last Friday. David Remnick talks with staff writer George Packer about the banlieues of Paris, and how the the Iraq War hovers over Obama’s response to Syria. Sylvia’s, the soul food institution in Harlem, has ridden waves of change, from the riots of the 1960s through the gentrification of our time. Family-owned businesses are increasingly a thing of the past in New York, but Sylvia’s keeps coming out on top. Tayshana Murphy was eighteen when she was killed. She was the victim of a feud between two housing projects that has been going on for decades. Her father, Taylonn Murphy, has dedicated his life to ending the cycle of retribution and creating a safe space for young people in Harlem. New York City is believed to have one of the highest concentrations of endangered or ‘dying’ languages of any place in the world, and Daniel Kaufman, a linguist, wants to try to save them. Judith Thurman introduces us to Kaufman and the Endangered Language Alliance. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

in the conversation with someone when they have that revelation. It's making sure. The actor seems to be interested in that. John McKeats brought this up. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us for the New Yorker Radio Hour.

Today we're going to meet a father in Harlem who's trying to end a feud that's been going on for decades. We'll also sit down. with one of the magazine's most beloved cartoonists, George Booth. Now, some people have called George the king of dog cartoons, but I don't think that does justice to what a keen observer of people he is. But this week, I've been thinking above all, as I'm sure you have about the attacks in Paris,

about what they mean for the people of Paris, for the Syrian refugees in Europe, for all of us. George Packer is a staff writer for the New Yorker. He's written about the Iraq War and about domestic politics, in the United States, and he recently wrote a long article for the magazine about the lives of Muslims in France. George, you spent quite a long time in the suburbs of Paris and the Banlieu talking with people, and they must have had a lot to say about what's been happening in the last 10 days or so. I asked the main character, as we say in the business, of that piece, Fuad bin Ahmed,

what it was like this time compared to after the January tax, Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market. And he said, well, the good news is there's no real debate about any justification, as there was for that one. Because for some French Muslims, Charlie Hebdo was a Islamophobic, racist, bigoted publication. And so it's a provocation. It was a provocation. And as for the Jews, there was not an outpouring of sympathy for them either, to be honest. But this time, it was so random. It was just every young person having a good time in Paris on Friday night.

And many of them were Muslim, as it turned out. So, or at least a number. So there's no sense of what does this say about free speech versus Islamophobia versus correct interpret it, blah, blah, blah. There's unity on that front. There's massive fear. And I think Muslims are anticipating a real backlash. People are being rounded up. I don't mean large numbers, but suspects are being rounded up who had not been arrested before.

So it's a different atmosphere. I think it's much harsher. In your article you wrote that 1,500 French citizens have gone to fight for or live in the so-called Islamic State. They are not all poor. They are not all dispossessed. In fact, in their majority, they are middle class. I don't know that they have a real accurate statistical sense of the class of the jihadists, but it's true that all the experts said to me,

we used to think we could profile them. The profile was they're poor, they come from broken families, they get into delinquency, they get into petty crime, they go to jail. In prison, they often get radicalized because that's where the cells begin. And that's not the profile now? It still is of some of these guys, but not all of them. A couple of them came from more middle-class families, so it's very hard. So what is the motivation?

This is, of course, the lasting mystery that we've been all grappling with for years. What is the motivation of a young man or a young woman to at some point embrace what to our ears can only seem like a kind of medieval absolutist version of Islam, be willing to kill an unlimited number of people and blow oneself up? It's pretty damn hard to answer that question. I mean, first of all, I stay away from the word medieval because I think even though they think they are interpreting the Quran according to the period of Muhammad and his companions, this is a modern phenomenon to me. It's pulling in young people from different backgrounds but through an ideology that says to them, you may feel like nothing. Society may offer you nothing but consumption and good times or exclusion and contempt. we will offer you everything, the world, a vision of the world made whole. One of the people I met in France was a British scholar who said it's like the cloud, the computer cloud.

It's always up there. And wherever you are, whether you're a young guy in Tunisia or a young woman in a small town in France, or you can lock onto it in your own way. It can find you and you can find it. In the wake of 9-11, the Bush administration went the way it did. And one of the forces trying to hold back and in its mind speak reason to the United States and the government with French, particularly in the decision to invade Iraq. Now you see France moving to the right. Concerns about security will inevitably start to overwhelm concerns about civil liberties.

What do you think that dialogue will be between the United States and France? Because President Obama was opposed to the war, he's in a good position to be able to say, we are not giving you unsolicited advice. We're not talking down to you. In fact, we're expressing a sense of admiration for your wisdom about Iraq and about falling into the trap that the jihadis always set for us. On Monday, President Francois Hollande got up in front of the French parliament and said, France is at war, which reminds me very much of the days after September 11th. And there's almost inevitable title pull in that direction. The public wants to hear that something is being done.

The public wants their own alarm answered in some way. But it does worry me as I think it seems to worry you that they are going to fall into that trap again. They may start with these roundups and with, you know, they're already rather punitive brand of secularism. They may start alienating large numbers of French Muslims who certainly don't want the jihadi way, but also don't want to have to pledge allegiance in some compelled fashion. So I worry very much that the National Front approach is going to become the French approach. George, clearly the Russians and Putin are a major player in this.

They want to keep a foothold in the Middle East and Syria is their only place. And they want to remain or intensify their position as a world player. Where do you think the Russian diplomacy and military action is going to go now that they've seen an airliner blown up over Sinai? In these talks between Kerry and Lavrov and between Obama and Putin, because they're talking now, how is the U.S. trying to push them away from Assad so that part of this new coalition is based on an understanding that we will pound ISIS and we will begin to create a political transition that has Assad out. Because I don't think the Sunni neighbors or the Sunni Syrians are going to care that we're bombing Raqa if Assad seems to be gaining the upper hand.

In fact, they might be pushed closer. And Assad has gained the upper hand. Yeah, yeah. So that pushes Sunnis closer to the Islamic. All I can tell you is what the administration hopes, because I've been doing some reporting in and around State Department, and not that that tells you everything, to say the least. What they hope is that they can put off the personal question of Assad

and get the Russians on board toward ceasefire and an agreement on political transformation and keep the name out of it for a little while, but for the understanding to be at a certain point of time, maybe six months after, nine months after, however long it takes to develop a successor figure to Assad, who, by the way, is not going to be a sweetheart. And I've even heard that there are any number of people who would have been putative successors to Assad who have come to bad ends in that extremely dangerous court. They have a thin bench.

Yeah. It's an increasingly thin bench. Yeah. So you're watching a political race take shape now. Yeah. And I have to say, so when you're. you watch the Republican debate there, I assume filled with confidence after Ben Carson describes how this will play out. I just think they're holding their cards back, but they've got a plan, and it's a very good one, just as Nixon had a plan for Vietnam.

But does anybody, is there anybody, is there any politician, Hillary Clinton included, who describes a potential outcome and a potential political process that gives you any even a meager sense of confidence? I don't think they have a clue. What I've been disappointed by is this administration's mistaking its own decision not to get deeply involved in this civil war militarily for involvement of any kind. Diplomatically, we've hardly been a factor until just recently. And it seems all to be driven by Kerry more than by the White House that this desire. I think it's driven by what Barack Obama perceives to be his mandate for being. elected. And he has stuck by it in a sense that he's been true to what he campaigned on, but he also arguably created a vacuum by leaving two few troops behind in Iraq, which gave

a space to the creation of ISIL. This is an argument that's made. And now he's correcting that or trying to in Afghanistan. If you look at our experience in the last X years, not going into Rwanda was a moral and political catastrophe. You know where I'm going. Going into Iraq headlong, moral and political catastrophe. Going in a limited way in Libya,

what do we hear in the phrases? Now, we drop the ball. What a horrible moral thing to hear that we quote unquote drop the ball after the intervention in Libya. But we always, you know, we swing wildly.

We're bipolar. We go from, we can do anything. It just takes our might and our goodness. But Obama's under the impression that the right thing to do is to use the phrase that's vexed him from an article that was published in the New Yorker by Ryan Liz, leading from behind, that somehow a much more subtle American style of participation in coalition building and diplomacy, that somehow that will get us to the gates of heaven. There was a quote in the New York Times from a former defense intelligence chief Michael Flynn, who said in 2012 we had an intelligence report that went to the world. White House saying there's going to be a strong push for a caliphate. It's going to be very

powerful. Here's where it's going to happen. And it was completely ignored. I have to say, either his attention wandered for a certain period of time or more likely the intelligence on this was terrible. When I interviewed Obama about a year and a half ago in the White House, and I asked him, you know, I said, you say that you've decimated Al Qaeda. and obviously there were other people running around in this nascent group, ISIL was happening and he said, yeah, you know, some people think if they put on a Lakers jersey, that makes them Kobe Bryant. And it's that clearly signaled and talk about eyes off the ball, a sense of, if not mission accomplished, then at least a sense of forward progress that we hadn't earned yet.

He wanted to pivot to Asia. You know, as you and I speak right now, he's in Manila, that's an Asia-Pacific economic conference, which is probably what he wanted to be doing with the last two years of his presidency. What's he doing? He's answering questions about the Islamic State. George Packer, thank you. Thank you, David. My colleague and friend George Packer, we spoke earlier this week.

You can find his article about the suburbs of Paris and some of his coverage of the presidential election at New YorkerRadio.org. I'm David Remnick. In a minute, another effort to bring peace to a dangerous place, this went a lot closer to home. That's just ahead in the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. The restaurant business, as any of you who are in it know, is impossible, especially in a place like New York where rents are high and tastes are fickle.

So a restaurant like Sylvia's stands out. Silvius has been in Harlem for more than a half a century, and if the menu changes, you'd barely notice. It sticks to the basics of soul food, fried chicken and catfish and oxtails. Silvius is on Malcolm X Boulevard just north of 125th Street, pretty much the heart of Harlem. Gentrification is changing this neighborhood, with a lot of the old businesses being squeezed out by higher rents, not to mention many residents. But Sylvia's, it seems to be booming.

Tour buses regularly pull up and send in dozens of customers from all the same. over the world, and the place is still run by the descendants of the original owner, Sylvia Woods. Oh, good. This is my father, Kenneth Litts. He's our CEO. So this property has gotten so much bigger over the years. The original is where, and then how did it spread? So, Dad, you want to start? A choice had from two lots, and the second lot was where we opened in 62, Johnson's Luncheonette.

That's one of her. Yeah. After the riots in 67, the owners of this property, it was a hardware store and the out-time bar was here. Came to my mom and dad and said, we're out of here. Basically, the block is yours. Yeah, and my brother, Van, who... He's our business development person. Everybody was moving out, and he was saying retain, retain. So in 1967, when there were riots around here, what did the block...

What did the block look like? What kind of businesses were here? Because the change is immense. There was no planet fitness. There was no staples, and there certainly was no Red Rooster. You know, the thing about it is a lot of generation tend to forget. The 50s and the 60s, Holland was still. It was a lot of businesses, you know, all up and down this avenue,

up and down 1, 25th Street, you know. Small businesses, not chains, not box stores. It was a lot of small businesses, a lot of restaurant, bars, cleaners, meat markets, the whole nine yards. The mid-60s came, you know, this upheaval, you know, drugs and things of that nature that kind of changed the whole mechanism. I mean, it wasn't just Harlem that it was happening in. It was the whole city, you know. How did Sylvia's managed to survive the upheaval? because she was such a people person

she loved people and she loved Harlem and matter of fact I have a picture of the day after the riot that restaurant was by the only thing that was not touch all other storefronts because it was such a cherished institution it was only five years old

it was only five years old but she was such a community individual you know so now the talk sometimes the anxiety about Harlem in some corners anyway is about the opposite, about a different kind of possible threat and a boom at the same time, which is to say that the economics and the face of Harlem is changing. There's gentrification going on. Do you own the real estate or do you lease everything? We own all our real estate. Preserves your future, right? Yes. Yes, most definitely. Most definitely.

I mean, we would have been somewhat caught up in the same casualty. So that's how to genderification. On the one hand, it's this new rise, but on the other hand, you lose in all of these fantastic, great institutions. That's the sadness of it. You can look at it positively. I think it has really increased the amount of traffic. So it's a good thing for you.

it's been really positive for Sylvia's. We've been blessed and fortunate enough to, you know, to have our real estate so we can somewhat manage the high cost of leasehold, things of that nature. Come, let's go with. So in 67, this is where the restaurant moved to. So this is what I remember, you know, as a kid, that we had boobs on the side and this massive counter.

and a grill. So this was Sylvia's. This was it. This was it. It's like a typical luncheonette-sized place. And were you raised to do this? Is that a family business in the sense that everybody in the family knows that this is what they're going to be involved in? Well, here's the thing.

We all had to grow up, as we call it, grown-up Sylvia's, in a sense that as soon as we were old enough, to see over the height of the table. We had to be able to clean that table, clear dishes, ask the guests if they wanted more water. Did you learn to cook too? Yeah, yeah, we learned to cook. My dad grew up in the kitchen. And after he finished in the kitchen,

then he went to become our CEO. But my dad can burn. I mean, we can all burn, but he's like legit. Tell me about the neighborhood when you were a kid as opposed to the neighborhood now. What characterizes the change? Oh, my gosh. And what stayed the same?

When I was a small child. And when? You'll forgive me for asking, but when was that? This was in the early 80s. The neighborhood was a bit intimidating. But there was still this energy. People just lined up singing, rapping, drums playing. It was just really, really energetic.

And it was a lot of people that knew our family. So it made you feel safe. You knew that someone was looking out for you and everyone knew, oh, those are Sylvia's grandkids. And that changed? How did 125th Street in the neighborhood change? Oh, my goodness. When 125th Street started to change, it was a heartache.

When Rainbow Records closed, I cried. There was no other place like that. That was really sad. And that was kind of like the beginning of the gentrification, really showing itself. And it was tough. And what are the perils of gentrification for Harlem? Is it the peril of moving people out?

The peril of small businesses? The peril of it becoming more boring in some way? Well, it's definitely a combination of all of the above. I remember thinking that, oh my gosh, you know, we're going to have a Disney store at 120th Street. That should be pretty cool. But it didn't last. just didn't answer to what the community really needed.

And you're like a big, small business. Yeah, yes. We're a big small business. We're a small business, but we have 100 employees. So that's what Sylvia is. So in a way you have competition from other restaurants, but no competition when it comes to being a social, political, and cultural center. Absolutely.

Back in the day, all of the politicians in the neighborhood, Congressman Rangel, Patterson, then Governor Patterson, and Pataki, everyone has had meetings. Like, that's one thing that the restaurant is known for. It's known for a place where if there's issues that are going on in the community, they would come and go behind closed doors. But out in the open here at the big table. Yeah, but with a little discretion.

And biscuits and... And biscuits and fried chicken and collard greens. That's Treness Woods Black at Sylvia's, the restaurant, her grandmother opened in Harlem. We also heard from her father, Kenneth Woods. Now walk about six blocks west from Sylvia's, down 125th Street, and you come to a corner where the one train roars by overhead. To your left is a housing project called Grant Houses.

To your right is another called Manhattanville. Staff writer Jennifer Gonerman spent time there this year for a story that was called A Daughter's Death. Thanks for coming in, Jennifer. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the story? and what was happening in Harlem when you were reporting? Sure. The story is about a young woman named Tashana Murphy. Her friends and family called her chicken.

She was very well known. She was a high school basketball star. She was killed on September 11, 2011. And in the four years since, her father, Teylon Murphy, has become a regular presence in this neighborhood in West Harlem. I think Parleya makes him feel connected to his daughter. He meets and greets all her friends. He knows just about everybody.

He tries to defuse any conflicts. he actually calls himself a street social worker. Okay, right now we're on all Broadway. This is where the fighting used to occur and young people who come from grand and throw bottles at young people from Manhattanville and vice versa. And this is like a place where it kind of all started from 40-some years ago, you know.

Now we're using this place as, you know, a place where we can, can defuse a lot of things that's been going on in the last 40 years. So that's the significance of right here. Where did chicken live in Grant? Well, Tashana and her mother, her brothers, lived on the 15th floor in 3170. This is the building that's facing you right now. They moved him in 2007 from Queens, you know, looking for, I guess, a better life. We didn't actually know at that time that it was an off-and-on rivalry between these two housing developments.

What's up, man? How you? I'm all right. Last time I saw my daughter was actually on this bench right here. So you're wearing a red hood, a blue Yankee hat. I just got word that a scout from the university. Tennessee was going to come and look out of play because she was going into her senior year a high school and I walked by her right here and said to her listen I got to talk to you

I need you to come upstairs and all I remember is me going upstairs going to sleep next thing I know my son ran into the door with a friend of his and said that Tashana had been shot and um she was actually chased into this door right here, this open door, and chased up the stairs. She had a chronic asthma to be such a great athlete. And she was chased right up into this building and chased to the fourth floor, and she couldn't go any further.

She was shot three times of killed. Right now you see over here they still have candles up. Let's go see. Yeah, they still have the candles up. Every year the young men in the neighborhood, a little memorial for, so this is like part of the memorial that they do every year. And every year, I actually go upstairs on the fourth floor. I light a candle here, and then I go upstairs and I light a candle on the fourth floor. Well, I'm impressed that it's been four years and we're

seeing 25, 30 candles lit for her. I mean, four years is a long time in the life of a teenager. Tashana was so well loved, man. I mean, I think about it yesterday would make four years from the wake and you know it's something that you wouldn't even believe it was it was thousands of people that came out from all five boroughs i was striving to get the young people to understand that nothing that they would do would bring tachana back you know you being angry it's not going to bring her back so i mean it was times you had maybe like 10 or 11 guys in the street ready to come over here you know angry about what happened and i had to kind of like stand in the middle of that you know I've been standing in the middle of that for, from then to now.

To listen to this father so calmly, and yet there's something incredibly lost about him, I don't know how to explain it. Does he have any sense of why his daughter was killed? Her death was part of this ongoing rivalry. There's been a lot of tensions between the two projects, between Manhattanville and Grant Houses, that goes back decades. She was killed by two young men who were a philipel. with Manhattanville houses. They're now both in prison doing 25 to life. Her murder actually

inflamed tensions and kept the feud alive. What's the stakes? What is the feud over? You know, nobody really seems to know. It's not about drugs or money. Probably has more to do with turf, status, identity, even boredom. And the craziest part about the whole thing is that these two housing projects are so close to one another. They're just separated by a single block. Oh, where we're going now? I mean, I'm going to take a walk through Manhattanville. I'm welcome over there. Since I've been doing the community work,

I remember when this first happened, I actually walked with a group of men right in front of this building because one of the young men lived in this building 545. And I actually told the young people that I loved them. And people are really drawn back by that. It was like, well, how can you love the people? that actually had something to do with killing your daughter.

I just think that some of these young people are just misguided, and they need that special attention, and they need the attention from people that can connect with them. You know, and I just happen to be somebody that has a connection with them. So right now we're walking down, we're walking across the 125th Street, which is actually like the medium of the battle zone, so to speak, at one time. time. Sounds like the feud was off and on over the decades.

What do you think was fueling it? To outsiders it might make no sense. I think what was fueling it actually is the inability of the adults to actually step in and be adults. When you have this ideology that it's us against them and it's, I'm from Grant and you're from Manhattanville. Instead of saying that we're all people in the same community and you put imaginary barrier, up in your mind and say, well, I can't go over there because they're from Grand, or I can't hang out with him because he's from another place, or they might have been looking at it like, oh, well, this is just kids thing, kid stuff. But in all actuality, is not because in these

neighborhoods, violence is manufactured through poverty. Now, when I say poverty, poverty means a lot of things. It's not just economic, you know, poverty is poor resources, poor outreach, poor parenting, poor mental health, poor services. You can have, you know, because everything has to work hand in hand. You know, I'm going to stick along on connecting the dots. Monica's here? Monica Casaberry. Monica's son.

When was Jamal killed? Saturday. It would be four years. September 19th, 2011. Eight days after, yeah, eight days after, yes. Eight days after, yes. She's actually part of our parent response team. You know, we partners.

We partners because we're carrying the same load. How did you meet Taylon Murphy? I met Taylon. Matter of fact, a few days after, or maybe a week after my son was murdered, we met up at some March. I noticed that, I don't know, his persona, his aura, people are flocked to him, even the children. What do you think it is that Charles was children? Compassion, dedication.

He's a dedicated individual. I remember you telling me once that you would talk to each other late at night on the telephone. How late at night? Two, three, four morning. Didn't matter. And he would pick up his phone, he would speak. And at two, three, four in the morning, what were you guys talking about? How we feel, we were venting, you know, how angry we may be at that time, you know,

what's going on with our cases at that particular time and moment. It's a click of us that does, you know, that does that as far as parents. We go out to maybe a crime scene, God forbid someone's shot. We go to help a parent who has lost. We sit with them at the hospitals. We help them with funeral arrangements. It's just you need that support. And a lot of people are there while the cameras are there.

But after the cameras are gone, you see nobody. We're not like that. We're there from the beginning to the end, and we're going to keep on even after the fact. So that's what we do. I should tell you that actually Monica is not from Harlem, her son, Jamal Singleton, was actually killed in Brooklyn. You know, all the same.

I listened to this, and the normal tones in their voice, his daughter was killed, her son. Are there people like Talon around the city that do this kind of work in any concerted way? Well, in the course of reporting the story, I met a number of his friends, and the four years since his daughter was killed, he's recruited a number of other parents from around the city who have also lost their children,

and they all work together to try to help other parents. And here in West Harlem, they took over an abandoned social club, which is really still a bit of a wreck. I mean, there's no sign, there's holes in the ceiling, there's no windows, no bathroom. It's still got junk inside from the prior tenant. But the hope is that they can renovate the place and transform it into a crisis management center for the community.

I remember the first time I walked in this place. You couldn't step in because the... The smell was overwhelming. The stench was incredible. The smell smelled like caucasus. It was just disgusting in here. And this is the place that you fought for a year or two to get access to. And now you're paying how much rent for this place?

Oh man. We pay $1,400 of rent. What do you think it would take to make this storefront really work? We've got a quote. I think we had one or two contractors come in, but I remember one of the quotes was like $47,000. Well, actually, we've been doing. good because we've been starting to get different donations, tables, chairs, juices for the young people, water, chest, chalk. If I come back and see you in five years and walk into the storefront,

which now is just sort of full of junk and the walls bare and the ceiling sort of caving in, what do you think I'd see if we'd come back in five years? I see a wall full of computers. I've vision about 20 young people being in here, just working on different things, whether it be resumes, getting ready for work or, you know, online classes, whether it be GED or college classes. I can see us having one of these tables outside and actually doing some arts and crafts on a nice day with the younger children or maybe even playing chess. I mean, that's my vision, and I can see it happening here. I think one of the things that I really really, learn from spending time with you was

what it feels like the intense concentration of homicides in the city. So even though the homicide numbers aren't that high, last year they're actually the lowest they've ever been in New York City history, that's not much solace to anybody who lost a kid. And it seems like pretty often, when

somebody is killed in New York City, you've got a connection to them. They're a friend of a friend, somebody knows them. I mean, I think that happens for a couple of reasons. I think, number one, a lot of these murders or, you know, crimes against the community that only happening in certain designated areas. You know, almost 20% of the shootings in the city happen in the projects, which is only about 5% of the city's

population. Tell us about Jahab Marshall. Oh, man, I mean, Jehahab Marshall, I got that phone call. He was a young man that actually grew up with my daughter. He wasn't into anything, any criminal acts. He wanted to be a chef. He used to do hip-hop or rap music. And I got a call saying that there was a shooting in Queensbridge, and a bunch of a young man were shooting at each other or shooting in the courtyard, and he accidentally got shot.

He wasn't the intended target. And jihad's death, like a lot of these young people's death really affected me because he was a young man that he called me Uncle, he called me his uncle. And he was a young man that ever since my daughter died, he always wanted to show me that he wanted to get out. He wanted to get out of the neighborhood. He wanted to do something positive.

And he also wanted to give back. Wasn't he at the picnic in May that you held for chicken? Yeah, he actually was at the picnic. Every year I do a big picnic on Queensbridge, which actually Queensbridge is the biggest housing development in the country. I was actually born there. And Jihad has been to the picnic every year since Chicken had passed. And this is the picnic marking her birthday, right?

So this year was for her 22nd birthday. And it wasn't that long afterwards, right, that you got the phone call? It wasn't that long afterwards. So, I mean, that really, I mean, that struck me. I took that kind of heart. I actually went out to see his mother, consoled his father, actually put together a walk, showing our disapproval. to the violence.

Are you still wearing chickens? A picture around your neck? What do you have on... I wear, I wear, still wear the laminate. Still wear the picture around my neck. I wear these beads. You got chickens' name on, and beads on your necklace and bracelet. And also I wear these laminates.

These are actually from the wake. So you've got two on gold chains around your neck, laminated pictures of chicken. I wear them every day. I look at them as being my yoke. I've been wearing these every day for four years. And when are they going to come off to you? I think they'll come off when we actually get this place fully operating.

I think I'll pull them off and hang them up in the storefront. That's Talon Murphy talking with staff writer Jennifer Gonerman on Old Broadway in Harlem. I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. going to take a short break. I'm David Remnick and welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. We've got something special on next week's show, a conversation with Patty Smith,

recorded live as part of the New Yorker Festival. I thought when we finished horses, then we go back to our job. You know, I took a little hiatus. And they said, no, you tour. And it was like, tour where? And they said, Finland. Whoa, cool.

Going to Finland. I was ready. Yeah. That's next week on the New Yorker Radio Hour. It's not easy to describe a cartoon by George Booth. They're full of visual jokes and strange detail. Here's one. A guy has driven his ancient car up to a rundown service station in the middle of nowhere.

There's a flat tire leaning against the wall. A rotund man and dirty coveralls has come out and he's saying, I'm Leonard, and I'll be your auto mechanic for today. It's classic, weird George Booth, the way he makes old-fashioned people deal with contemporary manners. And it's just the tiniest bit cruel. Booth started publishing in The New Yorker in 1969, which is right around the time cartoonist Matt Diffey was born. The first time I sold a cartoon and got to come to the building, I came up, saw Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor, and came down in the elevator, and I was just grinning ear to ear because I was so happy. and the doors opened in the lobby,

and I was face to face with you, who was my cartooning hero, and I said, Hi, Mr. Booth, my name's Matt Diffey. I just sold my first cartoon. Welcome aboard. That's what you said to me right then. It was the best thing I ever heard.

I remember that in detail. I remember seeing your work when I was a kid, and I think the first one that really made me laugh was the woman outside at the yard sale saying there's more inside. The whole yard is covered with clutter and knick-knacks, and she's saying there's more inside. That was a real scene that I saw. I exaggerated it, but it was reality.

Back in Missouri? No, it was in New Hampshire, I think. Okay, yeah. I believe greatly in drawing in cartoons what I see in life. Yeah. People recognize it, and they love it. They laugh at themselves. Do you still consider yourself a little bit of a country boy?

No, I'm a city slicker. City slicker. They've turned you, huh? Haven't you noticed? Yeah, you're pretty slick, and you're from the city. Your background is country, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. West Texas?

Yeah, rural Texas, north Texas, yeah. There you go. But we have that in common, I think. We both kind of come from the country, and then we've cleaned ourselves up mostly. Absolutely. Yeah, but you still do a lot of country folks in your cartoons, for sure. Oh, I love it. Oh, Mom, Ma, and Papa.

Yeah. I can't help it. I bet you can't. either. Yeah, I like those people, and I know them, yeah. Ma'amaw. Mom. How many cartoons would you say you are secretly drawing your ma-ma in them?

The New Yorker series on Mrs. Ritterhouse. That's based on your mom kind of. That's Ma'am. Yeah, there you go. She was quite a lady, it sounds like. You've told us some stories. Yeah, quite often I'm drawing her on 9-11. New Yorker said, we'll look this week, but we're not printing anything.

Yeah, right after it happened. So I submitted a cartoon about 9-11 because it was a very serious subject. And I drew Mo Moe, sitting in a chair, and she was praying. And then I put out in front, I put a cat in a prayer position because he's flat on the floor covering his eyes with his two front paws. And they printed it. Yeah, it was nice. It was the only cartoon they printed that week. Yeah, that was a nice little response.

So tell me how you work. What's like a normal day for you, cartooning-wise? I think a lot, I read a lot. I never get my mind off of cartooning. Really? If I'm traveling on a train, you're probably the same way. A little bit, maybe not as much as I should be. You're just a tinkerer, sort of.

Well, I started cartooning at three and a half years old. I drew a racer car stuck in the mud, a Model T racer car. and Mama was sitting there with me. And she was impressed with that. Yeah. Now, could she tell what your drawing was? Because I looked at my early drawings, and they were pretty bad. She could tell it was a model team.

Well, I can remember the drawing. There was no question about it because that old car was stuck in the mud, and it was a razor car. She told my dad about this incident. A budding cartoonist here in the family. Yeah, this crazy kid who thinks he's a cartoonist. Yeah. My dad had his memorand graph machine there and reams of paper. And he said, well, let George have all the paper he wants as long as he doesn't waste it.

So I always had something to draw with. And I remember sitting in first and second grade drawing when I should have been doing my lesson. In school, the way the other kids always come into you to say, hey, draw this, draw my dog, draw this so I can give it to my girlfriend. I had some of that, yeah. Yeah, I was always that kid. I think you draw with a ballpoint pen. Is that correct? I have.

I shouldn't have, but I did. I work with a medium permanent ink in the ink thing now. But I wonder if that came from being a kid and having so much paper that you drew quick probably, right? I feel like you're a fast drawer. Fairly fast. I use a copy machine, too. I'll draw a dog and then I'll draw him again because I'm not. quite happy with him, and then I'll rip his head off and put it on the other drawing.

Don't tell the kids you're ripping dogs' heads off. Make a copy. Or I'll draw him facing left to get an expression, and then I'll flop it on the light table and trace him facing right because that's what the need is. Yeah. But I get the feel that I need. There's something, yeah, I think there's something about you draw quick, a bunch of different options, and then you edit yourself and you choose.

And I've seen some of your originals have a lot of cut out pieces that you stick on. Pace them together. Yeah. And just compile the best of several versions. The way I define that is a lot of times the line I get or the drawing that I get or the expression I get is an accident. Yeah. And I believe in accidents in good drawing. Yeah, your work definitely has that spontaneous feel.

And I wish I could draw that way. I get really tight and I tend to overdraw a little bit. I mean, it's my style. It suits my dry sort of cartoon style. When it gets like that, you should scream. Scream. Scream and start over and do draw quicker. I get a kick out of names, too.

Yeah. You've got some great ones in your cartoons. Merch is my favorite. There again is the reality. Those are real people? Names like Arnie. Yeah. Not only a Dittburner was a name.

My grandmother was named Gussie Clyrene Diffey. There you go. That's a good one. Tell us why you draw so many dogs in your cartoons. It's because if you have a man sitting in the living room, a husband who suffers husband things, say he has a dingy housewife who's sticking her head around the corner from the kitchen, and she's complaining about something, and her reasoning is no good. This can go either way because sometimes women have good logic and men don't.

She says something dingy. The man has to tolerate it. But if you put a dog sitting there to look at you, the reader, the dog becomes a Greek audience. And sometimes I do it with cats and could do it with anything, even a cow looking at you. As long as they suffer, some of the shrapnel that's going on. So you draw the animal always looking at the bee? viewer or not? The animal does not have to look at you. If you're looking at the back of his head, you know, he's suffering. Have you owned both dogs and cats personally? I've had kitty cats

and I had a sheep. My brother had chickens that were pets. I had a dog in Pearl Harbor. Okay. So in the Marines, you had a dog. You had a Marine dog. Yeah, I'm trying to think, oh, I was in a transit center waiting to catch that ship or go somewhere. And all these Marines standing real stiff at attention. And my dog would come chasing a mongoose through the ranks one way. And then you wait a little while. They come back. The mongoose is chasing the dog.

I was proud of that. Currently, you have cats. At least one. You have a house cat, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. So I think you kind of like cats better. Cats are awful smart.

I can't understand their intelligence. Yeah, they're almost too smart. I like dogs because they're dumb, I think. Makes them lovable. Dogs are like people. If you work it, work it dumb a little bit. It works for you. It certainly worked for me.

Well, George, I think we're about done, but I just wanted to say while we're here on the radio that you are my favorite cartoonists. Jokes are getting bad. No, no, listen. I'm being sincere now. I'm saying that you're my favorite cartoonist. And I really appreciate what you've done and I've took a lot from it.

I appreciate that. Matt, you're my favorite West Texas. From West Texas. The favorite cartoon from Texas. Yes. Hey, Matt, is this for radio? Sure. You go ahead and get out of the tub and I'll dry off if you want to and I'll use a towel after you do. All right.

Matt Diffey and George Booth. We've got some images of their work at New Yorker. Radio.org. We have one more story for you today. This from Judith Thurman, who's been writing for the New Yorker since 1987. Her story is about a man who's trying to preserve some of the many languages that are gradually disappearing. We are at the intergalactic headquarters of the Endangered Language Alliance here in 3 West 18th Street. I'm Daniel Kaufman, executive director. Dan Kaufman is a linguist. His real passion is supporting and recording. and documenting the endangered languages of New York City,

which turns out to have a greater concentration than any other city in the world. We've estimated that there are 800 languages spoken in New York and that maybe a third of those are endangered. Look, if you're in New York or you take taxis, you will run across in a day speakers of 10 or 12 languages. But I had no idea in recent decades how many different groups representing endangered languages had settled in the five boroughs. Jackson Heights is, according to the census,

the most linguistically diverse neighborhood in America. So walking down Roosevelt Avenue, you could hear Kachua, Kichwa, Kichet, Nahuatl, Amusco. So Dan is a very quiet, studious-looking guy, and he has that kind of quiet intensity that I found with everybody in this field. They choose to listen.

This was somebody who worked in the deli across the street from us. She's from Nepal, and I asked her what language she spoke, and it turned out she spoke a language that was highly endangered and totally undescribed, a language called Gale. Nino means we, Guana means all. Whenever I asked her to translate the words, she would just break down laughing. Here? Here?

Eini. Ene? Oh my God, I don't know. Yeah, Eini. Ene, Ini, Ene, Ene. Ene. Yeah, Oyni, no, no, Iini, Ene. Ene.

She couldn't remember because by the point that we spoke, she had already not spoken her language in so long, even though she's young. She was like 25 or something. But this was a language that she had spoken back in her village. Then she moved to Kathmandu. She stopped speaking it. Then she moved here.

So it was just somewhat foggy remembrances of words passed. This sound clip is from a language called Gurung, which is a language spoken in the Himalayas and Queens, of course. Actually, I was surprised to find out that it is an endangered language. You would think that the numbers of speakers is the dominant. factor, right? Actually, that's not really the case. The most important factor is how the language is transmitted to children. Masteko, we have plenty of Mestecho. Qua.

Qua. Qua. And rojo? Qua. It's not clear how many tones exist in the various dialects. A tone is like in Chinese, you know, you have ma, ma, ma, ma, you know, those kinds of tones. Change the meaning of the word. word. So one of the first things we want to do, if we want to really write down his language

precisely, is we have to figure out how many tones it has. Kunio, Kono, Kouin. Let us go to the country of Gabon. Ikata's a bent to language of Gabon, and the Ikata stories are quite interesting because they're always interspersed with songs. discrimination that he faced as a child, as a Nahuatl speaker. Some of these languages, like I said, are, they give way because people are made to feel ashamed. In the more extreme cases, it's genocide.

So that's Zagawa, one of the three living languages of Darfur. And that area of the dialect was completely wiped out. A linguist can devote their whole lives to understanding one language. So we need a team of 800 people if there's 800 languages here, and even then we're not sure we can do it. So it's a bit not hopeless, but. It's a challenge. It's a rescue mission.

It is digging people out of the rubble. A friend called me to say she had liked the piece on endangered languages, but then she said, very candidly, tell me personally if you deeply feel that this matters. And I had to ask myself for a second, do I? And then the answer was really there and unequivocal. It really does matter. The beauty that is lost, the cosmologies that are lost,

and the sense of difference. One thing I did say also to her was that, these little pieces of the mosaic of what it means to be human, which are encoded in language, those are extremely precious. Judith Thurman is a staff writer for the New Yorker. Her article on dying languages took her from Santiago de Chile to a Mohawk community in New York. You can find it at

New Yorker Radio.org. And that wraps it up for today. Next week, the rock musician and writer Patty Smith joins us. And novelist George Saunders and Jonathan Saffron 4 compare notes. Two highlights from the New Yorker Festival. I'm David Remnick.

Thanks for joining us and see you next week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards. This episode was produced by Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riann and Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnows, Sarah Nix, Paul Schneider, and Stephen Valentino with help from Becky Cooper.