My name is Paul Levinson and I thought it would be refreshing
to mention that I'm NOT a past president of NYSCA.
In fact, I've barely attended NYSCA conferences.
In fact, one of the few conferences that I attended
was back maybe in 1997 or 1998,
when Lance [Strate] talked me into coming up here and presenting a paper about something,
and my daughter Molly, who was then about ten or eleven years old,
thought it would be nice  to come up and see the famous Catskills.
So this was held in Kutsher's.
So I brought her along and, and you know, I'm sure Molly enjoyed my presentation
and enjoyed meeting many people.
But all she talked about on the way home
was the five-minute conversation she'd had with Neil
and that made such an impression on her
that when I told her that Neil had died,
she actually, you know, had tears in her eyes, and said:
"He was one of the nicest people I'd ever talked to."
And that was, you know, over five years ago.
I have lots of memories of Neil.
He was my doctoral teacher at NYU from 1976 to 1979.
I tried during that period of time to teach him the correct way to think about media
- I thought he was far too pessimistic -
but I failed utterly.
Nonetheless I think Neil did teach me how to teach,
and so after the - the celebration in September,
about a week after that, I got the page proofs to my next book CELLPHONE
and I dedicated that book to Neil,
and the dedication reads: "To Neil Postman, who taught me how to teach.
And so, I was glad to hear Lance say the same about how he felt about Neil, you know,
because I think that that was the most extraordinary thing about Neil
among his many extraordinary gifts.
One other thing about Neil, which was extraordinary for me in a personal way
goes back to sometime in the late 1970's,
when I went up to see Neil in his office in Shimkin Hall.
Those of us who were Neil's students know what I'm talking about.
Neil sat behind that desk,
he held court there, talking about all kinds of things.
Usually, he was pretty chipper but on this day, when I went in to see him in his office,
and I can't remember even what I was going to see him about,
Neil was poring over a manuscript, sort of wringing, you know, his hands
"Ah, Paul," he said to me,
"I can't make any sense of this."
So I said: "Well, let me take a look at it."
After all I was - especially in those days - always glad to be the helpful student.
And he gave me the manuscript
and I noticed something right away: on the title page, it said "H. Marshall McLuhan"
and below that it said "The Laws of the Media."
And I said to Neil: "Well, this is a manuscript by Marshall McLuhan"
which obviously he knew,
and he said: "Ah yeah, I know, but I can't make much sense out of it."
Which is not surprising, given Marshall McLuhan,
a lot of people have trouble making sense out of McLuhan's work.
Actually, Neil understood better than most, among the best of all the people I've ever met,
So I was never sure if he really didn't understand Marshall's work
or was just sort of enjoying saying that to me.
But anyway, I leafed through the manuscript and it must have  been a good day for me,
because it seemed pretty clear to me, what the manuscript was talking about.
I won't bore you with McLuhan's Tetrad in "Laws of the Media"
so I said to Neil: "Well,  this makes sense to me."
And Neil said "Well, what does it say?" So I told him.
And Neil said: "I tell you what."
And I won't do the impersonation on this one, because it's too long,
but the gist of it is, Neil said to me,
"Why don't you write up a little explanation of what this manuscript says?"
And I said to Neil, "Well, why do you want to do that?"
And Neil said "Well, it'll help us edit the manuscript."
Neil, at that point was editor of the journal ETC,
the JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR GENERAL SEMANTICS,
So, those of you who know me know  I never turn down any invitation to write,
even if there's no money in it,  it's, you know, so much fun
thinking that someone else is going to read, you know, what I write,
so I went home and I wrote up a little explanation.
I dropped it off in Neil's mailbox the next day,
and then about a week later, when I went in to see Neil, Neil said to me:
"Ah, you know, I heard from Marshall McLuhan about that manuscript."
I said "Good". Neil said: "I sent up that little explanation that you wrote
and I asked McLuhan if he would feel OK about
our publishing your little explanation
as a preface to his article in our journal, because you know, this article makes no sense."
[laughter]
So, you know, as egotistical as I am and was,
I saw my whole future in communications, you know,
disappearing, you know, in a blaze of inglory
because here I was, an upstart graduate student,
and Neil had done me the favor of sending up that little description
that I wrote to Marshall McLuhan,
with the suggestion that it be published as an introduction to his,
Marshall McLuhan's, article.
But on the other hand, as worried as I was,  remember I always like being published,
So I said "Okay sure go ahead and do that."
Well, a couple weeks later, McLuhan was in New York
and he asked me if we could get together for lunch -
that is, a lunch with Neil, Marshall and me.
Marshall was quite a character himself.
The first thing he said to me is:
"You know, Paul, you understand really very little of my work, but
you're - you're too involved with the logic boys."
That, by the way, from Marshall, was an insult, you know:
he didn't want people to be too logical.
But apparently, McLuhan thought that I understood enough of his work
that he consented to have that article published in the journal ETC.
And looking back, you know, on my scholarly life,
that was certainly the most important single thing that happened to me.
Because it's extraordinary, you know, for a young scholar to have someone like McLuhan
recognize your work, not to mention that Neil had faith enough in my work
to create that situation.
But that's the kind of person Neil was:
I think that you know his generosity has affected everyone
who was a student or who had anything to do with him.
And as Tom [Gencarelli] said and Lance [Strate] said, I'm so happy that we at least had the time to Neil in September.
You know, as Chair of the communications department,
you know I'm constantly getting requests, can i do this, fund that.
And so when Lance suggested to me, I think on something like August 28th,
"Paul, would it be possible to have an event on September 4th, at the forum?"
You know, my first response was "Well, you know, it's a little bit last minute, actually, isn't it?"
But you know, Lance is the kind of person who always pushes for these things,
in the face of what more reasonable people would do
and I'm often reminded of, you know, the famous line of George Bernard Shaw,
that reasonable people adapt to their surroundings
but all progress in the world depends upon unreasonable people.
So I think Marshall McLuhan was unreasonable, I think Lance was unreasonable,
Neil was unreasonable.
And because of that, all of these wonderful things have happened.
So thank you very much for coming here.
I'm sure Neil would have been very happy to see all of you.
