CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Transmitting the News From Neptune: Carl Estabrook’s Embrace of the Life Force

Carl Estabrook delivering the News From Neptune from the studio in Urbana, Illinois.

When I think of my friend Carl Estabrook, as I often have in the weeks since he died, I see someone who was fully engaged with life. Almost every aspect of life mattered to Carl, was worthy of being experienced, observed, analyzed, discussed and debated. He had a roving mind and an unchained spirit. There was nothing dour about him. He was witty and charming and empathetic. He also knew who the enemies of life were, the people and institutions who profited from inflicting pain on others and he didn’t hesitate to call them out. In other words, he had the courage of his conscience. He put what he believed into practice.

Carl spoke his mind. He believed everyone should and defended their right to do so, whatever they said. Speaking his mind often got Carl in trouble, as it tends to do when you speak your mind about the things that really matter in life: politics, art, education, war, capitalism and religion. So his stints at the universities where he taught tended to be fractious and abbreviated: Notre Dame, Brown, Rochester, Stonehill and Illinois.  Still, he left his mark at all of them. The best teachers I’ve had challenged both their students and their colleagues and administrators. Carl was one of them. I didn’t take any of his classes, but I learned from his writing, his public speeches, debates, and private chats. He taught me how to see old disputes in new ways. His analysis pierced through the corrupting cant of political speech to the core truths hidden beneath.

Carl saw through both political parties, but he didn’t give up on politics as a means of organizing people to make their lives better. No matter how bleak the circumstances, he didn’t surrender to fatalism. He admired Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson’s campaigns and saw the value, when many progressives couldn’t, in Ron Paul’s anti-war crusades. In 2004, Carl ran for Congress as a Green and garnered a respectable four percent of the vote. Four years later, having seen Obama up close in Illinois, he didn’t fall for the hope and change rhetoric and he soon became one of the........

© CounterPunch