Episode 6/Takin A Walk at the Boston Common and Public Garden with Doris Kearns Goodwin

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Taking a Walk, an excursion to converse, connect, and catch up at a cool location with some of the most interesting people you can find. Here’s Buzz Knight.

Buzz Knight:

I love taking a walk with a friend at a location that holds a special place in my heart. It’s especially joyous when the friend is someone you haven’t connected with for quite some time. Today, I hit the jackpot on this episode of Taking a Walk. The location is Boston, Massachusetts, and the spectacular Boston Common and the Public Garden.

Buzz Knight:

The Common is a central public park in downtown Boston. The oldest city park in the United States, with tremendous historical significance. And the Public Garden is the first public botanical garden in America and is 24 acres of landscape beauty. It also happens to be one of my favorite places to take a walk.

Buzz Knight:

My guest is a presidential historian, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, political commentator, and dear friend. The one and only Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Buzz Knight:

Well, hello Doris.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Hello Buzz

Buzz Knight:

I miss you so much. It’s been so long and I’m here to report the whole gang back in Concord, in Carlisle at all points misses you so much as well.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Oh, I miss Concord so much. I mean, more than 40 years of my life, the most beautiful town I think in this state, but it’s good to be in this city. It’s good to be around people, to not be using a car, to be walking everywhere. My son lives in my building, Michael comes in from Concord a lot, so I don’t feel too far distant, but I do miss you guys and our nightly dinners. So it seemed at one of the restaurants in Concord.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah, it would be so awesome. We would see Doris come back from one of her many sojourns and Doris would come back from her trip and she’d be excited and energized and we’d say, well, where were you? And she’d say, just drop these little things like, well, I was with president Obama at the White House and she’d just drop it casually.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

No, it was a wonderful thing. It was sort of a gang of us who could meet there and you’d know it’s almost like family, you could just catch up. You just had seen them three days or four days before. So it really was a part of what Dick and I loved about Concord. And knowing those last years of his life, we’d be driving from our house down monument street, to the colonial end or to Fiorella’s. And he would just say over and over again, how he loved that town. He always had wanted to live more in the country and I always wanted to live in the city, so our compromise was Concord.He would’ve gone even further out, or he would’ve lived up in Maine. And I don’t know that I would’ve been able to not be near a city.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

So after he died, it just made sense to not be in that big house alone and to come to a condo here in Boston and what’s turned out wonderfully is that I really do love cities and I really can walk everywhere, which I hardly ever did in Concord. I mean, even I used to think, well, I’ll walk into town, but somehow I wasn’t doing as much walking there and that’s my main exercise here. I don’t go to the gym, but I argue that I can walk because where I live, you can walk everywhere and the park is right here.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah, so we’ve decided to take a walk first here on the Boston common, fairly notorious place, I would say, right?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Lots of history in this place. Wow.

Buzz Knight:

Thank God. So, I mean, one thing, as I was thinking about it is Martin Luther king giving a speech here in front of 22,000 people. Were you in DC when that was happening?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

No, I think maybe what you’re talking about is the speech he gave the anti-war speech. He gave an anti-war speech in Boston that I do know about. And just because I live in different layers of history and you pass by all these statues of people there’s Charles Sumner and there’s somebody else. It’s just amazing, we have it in Concord to too. But, but you do feel like there used to be snowball fights right here on the common between the Irish and the Protestants. And I know about that and about the one days when the cows were here, so it’s great. It makes you feel like you’re not just living in our time. That’s what’s so great about Boston to have preserved its past so well.

Buzz Knight:

Do you think people rediscovered the outdoors differently during the whole pandemic situation?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

It’s a really interesting question, I absolutely do. I really think that’s true. And it’s a wonderful thing.

Buzz Knight:

And I think also with some of these places such as the north bridge and even Walden, people rediscovered those places as well. I know I did. I mean, I was usually never home on during the week I was traveling. I would see the places on the weekend, but I rediscovered places as well with the two dog walks a day that I was required to take. And it was beautiful to find these places are rediscover places.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

No, there’s no question. I mean, it’s wonderful to walk amid beautiful scenery, no matter where you are. But to also add onto that as you can and Concord, and as you can in Boston, the history that’s there. So you’re not just going to see the river, when you see the north bridge, you’re remembering what it was like when the first shot was fired there. And you hear the sounds of it and you imagine what took place. So I think that’s what’s great about any kind of place that preserves its past. It’s got the outdoors, and the natural beauty, and the history and the memories all tied together.

Buzz Knight:

And you’ve been back on the road once again?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Yeah, things have opened up again. I mean, for better or ill, I think many places that our event planners decided we better do it now and we need to get together and you can feel that hunger. And just the mere fact of being together produces such joy. You realize what you missed when those human connections were taken away from us.

Buzz Knight:

And I was thinking about this, just how musicians are so desirous to get back on the road and play in front of their fans. You being the rock star that you are missed that contact as well out there, right? So you’re back out and you’re connecting in a different way. I’m sure virtual was spectacular in its own regard, but now you’re back connecting with the fans.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Yeah, there’s no question. I mean, obviously writing is a solitary occupation and that’s been my major occupation, but for all the years that I was writing, Dick would be writing in another part of the house, so that we could get together at lunch and we’d go out to dinner. So when I came here right before the COVID started, I was really in the condo for a long period of time. And luckily my son being two floors away meant that I could see him as a pod. And I saw my little grandson grow from one and a half to three things I wouldn’t have seen had I lived in Concord, had I had my regular life, but I really missed seeing the people.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

What’s wonderful about lecturing for me has been, it’s all different kinds of people. I mean, I spoke just recently to emergency physicians and then to real estate people and then to the Cincinnati library and each time you’re in a different place, you’re with a different group of people and I get energy from that. I love it. And I forgot really how much, same thing about eating outside and coming finally now going inside restaurants, you forget how much that matters to be surrounded by people and the kind of force that it gives you and the energy it provides back. So it feels really good.

Buzz Knight:

Do you still get butterflies before you get up there?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Oh, of course. I mean, I think you should never, as a professional ever feel relaxed and sometimes more than others. In fact, the interesting thing about what’s happened to me since COVID is that because I was doing virtual lectures where there’s no audience there, they’re just in boxes. I had to do it off and on a teleprompter, because it would look bad to be standing at a podium looking down, which is okay when they’re right there, but not when you’re on the screen.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

So for the first time I used a teleprompter during virtual and then I got used to it. So now when I’ve gone places, I get scared because I’m using a teleprompter in a big event for the first time, but now I’ve done it a couple times and it really is cool. I mean, it’s one of those presidential teleprompters. So you can’t see it from the outside. I never paid attention what it is and you can move your head a little bit and then you don’t have to worry about ever looking down, you’re looking straight at the audience. So, and then people will sometimes say, I can’t believe you memorized that whole 45 minute speech. And I said, didn’t you see that teleprompter there? No, so it’s been fun. It’s one of the things I’ve learned from the virtual world.

Buzz Knight:

Well you make things look easy.

Buzz Knight:

Well, now we’re walking in the luxurious public garden here, which is one of the most spectacular places to take a walk, I think anywhere isn’t it Doris?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Oh, it’s so beautiful. I mean, you’ve got the water, you’ve got the trees, you’ve got the grass. And again, you’ve got the memories here we come along the path that we’re walking and here’s Wendell Phillips. One of the abolitionists in his glory. Profit of Liberty and champion of the slave.

Buzz Knight:

So Doris, how do you recollect from your friends, some of the presidents that they utilize taking a walk to their advantage? Is there anything you could speak of on how they did it maybe to sort of get a handle on things that de-stress in any way?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

I think there’s probably no question that Teddy Roosevelt was the one who used exercise of all manners to relax and replenish his energies. He needed to exercise from the time he was little to grow his lungs and so walking and hiking were a real part of his life affirming activities and then because part of his ability to relax and let his mind go in a different direction. That’s so important, I think for any leader, for any of us to just do something where you’re not thinking about the very thing you may be worrying about and somehow some creative solution might come to it because you’re out and not in the same place, sitting in your chair, trying to work through a problem.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah. They do feel like when you’re sitting in that chair, you’re literally glued to the chair these days.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Right.

Buzz Knight:

It’s time to get moving, right? And get up and get the juices flowing. So I think Teddy had it right.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Yeah, I do too. Just look at what we’re looking at by now. I mean, between the trees turning and the bridge over there and the water and the benches and the squirrels, it’s pretty wonderful.

Buzz Knight:

Doris, when you think of the many, many days and nights you spent in the white house over your life. You were there for many incredible moments in time. Any particular moments stick out for your memory while you were in the White House?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

I think the most important thing is that when I realized that I first came there as a White House fellow, when I was 24 years old and I ended up working for Lyndon Johnson, having an office right there in the west wing. And yet every time I’ve been back since… And then I went every day there, for a year and a half, maybe, but every time I’ve been back since it’s still a sense of wonder at that place. It’s so simple and so beautiful, so filled with so many memories of presidents that have been there.

Buzz Knight:

Such a buzz activity, right?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Yeah. And it’s 24 hours a day, you feel like it’s never stopping. And I love that feeling. That’s why I like the city too. The city seems alive for all hours of the night. And that’s true of a place like the White House.

Buzz Knight:

So are you working on some particular projects now?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Yeah, I’ve got a series of films that I’m working on for the history channel, Beth Laski and me formed a partnership called Pastimes Productions. So now we’re doing one for Lincoln and one for Teddy Roosevelt. And so they’re real, half of them are drama and half of them are, docudrama and they got filmed in South Africa during the COVID period actually. And which they have a great place there, a lot of companies go to film there cause you have all different scenery that you can get from, for Teddy, from the badlands to the tenements of New York. And then you go over all the scripts and you go over all the cuts and you see the dailies at night, but it’s really been fun.

Buzz Knight:

And that process you and Beth and your whole team, you’ve managed to make it a really efficient process, even though you’re not together, right?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Yeah. Somehow, I mean, Beth lives 3000 miles, but I’ve probably talked to her seven times a day and we’ve seen each other a few times, but yes, we’ve been to do it through zooms with the people that we’re working with. Because you’re working with a team when you’re creating a film. So it’s made that possible, yeah.

Buzz Knight:

So any time table on this release.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Well, the Lincoln one will be coming out Presidents’ Day and then Teddy probably will Memorial Day. And then hopefully we’re working on some others as well. It’s really been… I think I just learned that the pleasure of working with a team when I was able to be involved with the Lincoln movie with Spielberg and again, just rather than slowing down, I feel like I’m fasting up. If that makes for a word.

Buzz Knight:

Well, you don’t slow down, that’s for sure. You keep rolling. And I so appreciate you taking a walk here at the Boston common at the public garden and looking forward to now a great lunch. But before I let you go, I made this observation. I was awaiting at your apartment for you, when I saw all the many dog walkers that were coming in to take dogs for a walk and decided here’s my calling. I’ll come down here, I’ll take some dogs for a walk and I’ll get to see you more frequently. And what do you think?

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

Sounds like a good combination. Look at all the paths you can do, look at all the people doing it right here, exactly. So it’s a deal.

Buzz Knight:

We got a deal.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

We got a deal.

Buzz Knight:

Thanks Doris, love you.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

You are so welcome, I love you too.

Speaker 1:

Taking a walk with buzz night available on Spotify, iTunes and wherever podcasts are available.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.