That’s the moment that has lasted in history, but the most powerful moment for me, being there, happened just afterwards: it was the singing of “We Shall Overcome.”

Are you kidding me?—250,000 people singing ‘We Shall Overcome”—it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

When the program was over, and the March leaders went off to eat with President Kennedy and talk about the Civil Rights bill, I went to the House of Representative offices of William Moorhead, a Pittsburgh congressman, with my priest companions. We washed up and chilled out for awhile before the train ride back.

Some days after we got back, I wrote an article about the March for the local Catholic weekly newspaper. It was printed under the title, “Eyes of Youth,” and it definitely has a young person’s point of view that might still have some resonance in 2008. First, on the public response to the March, before it became a part of history. But there’s an immediate transition to what the March ultimately meant for my generation. Here’s what I wrote then:


The big shock came to us when we returned home. After all the hours of standing, walking, riding, and marching: after seeing huge masses of dedicated and self-sacrificing people; after hearing the songs and speeches crying for freedom, we were vastly surprised to hear the dispassionate estimates of our effectiveness. The consensus seemed to be that we did little, of any, real good.

Most of these opinions were in reference to civil rights legislation, but to the young people this was not the real issue. The legislation will inevitably come, and it is for future generations to make it work, and to promote the true social integration of the races.

Is this impossible? Had there not been a march, there would be grave doubts about the practicality of realizing this American ideal.

But today, after the march, there can be no doubt. When a mass of people roughly equivalent to the population of Syracuse, comprised of different backgrounds, religions, races, and coming from different regions, could converge on Washington with such dedicated and dignified fervor as to make thoughts of violence absurd, then hope for the future is supremely justified.

It all held special meaning to the young people. They had come from many places, and for many reasons. Perhaps their thoughts were best expressed by a favorite folk singing group who sang these lyrics from a popular song at the march:
“How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?”
From the singing on the Freedom Train, to the slow chant of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the young people brought spirit and compassion to a cause in which they deeply felt.

While all the banners for “Freedom Now!” will have to be satisfied by the present generation, the young people of today will also face a great task.

Prejudice is based mainly on ignorance. It was evident to the marchers that once the races begin to live and work together, as we marched together, meaningful integration can be achieved. It will fall upon the shoulders of the young people of today to see it through.

So perhaps this is the legacy of my generation to the younger generation of today. It is the achievement of some level of “social integration” at the level of the heart as well as the mind that has made Barack Obama’s candidacy possible. Despite residual racism, particularly in older generations, his young supporters represent the real possibility that Dr. King’s dream of a time when people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, is finally at hand.

Tonight I won't be at Mile High Stadium. (I'd hoped to be one of the ten Obama contributors invited, but alas...) But I'll be watching, and over my heart I will wear both those buttons, from August 28, 1963, and for the fierce urgency of today.

Postscript: Speaking of the American Promise, here is what Barack Obama said to end his acceptance speech before 84,000 people at Mile High stadium in Denver:

And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln's Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things. They could've heard words of anger and discord. They could've been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred. But what the people heard instead - people of every creed and color, from every walk of life - is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

"We cannot walk alone," the preacher cried. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

JFK to Obama: Tips for a Big Nomination Speech

In a few days, Senator Barack Obama will make his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination to be President. Breaking recent precedent, he will make this speech not in the convention hall itself, but in an outdoor stadium, Denver's Invesco Field.

The last time the Democratic nominee for President gave his nomination acceptance speech in a large outdoor stadium was in 1960, when John F. Kennedy spoke at dusk in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It was another "change" election, and JFK was the youthful "change" candidate, opposed by the "experience" candidate, Richard Nixon.

In the previous two elections, the Democratic nominee had been Adlai Stevenson, whose speeches were intelligent and articulate, and who could make a case for the Democratic Party agenda. But though Stevenson engendered fierce loyalties in the party, he wasn’t exciting. He didn’t move large crowds. JFK knew that he could, and this event was the signal that he would in 1960.

So that’s the meta-lesson from JFK: if you’ve got it, use it. While pundits and the hot air networks counsel Obama to reign in the rhetoric and stick to laundry lists of programs, there will be 80,000 or so people in the stadium ready to rock. They want to hear what 80,000 voices chanting “Yes, We Can!” sounds like. Obama got this far by inspiring people. If he’s going to win, he needs to motivate those who got him this far. They will help him spread the enthusiasm.

We want to hear him talk about change, about hope, about the fierce urgency of now. We want a little “Yes We Can.” Democrats should go home from Denver on fire.

Sure, the context of 2008 is different: the country was uneasy but pretty prosperous in 1960, Eisenhower was still a popular President so Nixon had advantages McCain doesn’t. But JFK was new. He was younger than Obama (though he had been in the House and Senate for 14 years.) After 7 years as VP, Nixon seemed to be a known quantity. Voters were unsure: change, or experience?

The race remained pretty even, even after the debates which historians—in retrospect—often say were decisive for JFK. But in that fall, the most obvious difference was that JFK’s crowds grew and grew, not only in size but in enthusiasm. Doubts were overcome by the contagion of hope. That’s what needs to happen this fall, particularly in October.

Then there are lessons from the speech itself…

Lesson #2: Become the leader of the party. JFK began his speech complimenting the party and the platform, and with a litany of other Democrats.

Lesson #3: Confront the elephant in the room. For JFK it was his Catholic faith. For Obama, it’s race. JFK devoted about 3 paragraphs to reassuring voters that he was independent, with his first allegiance to America. Obama is speaking on the 45h anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. Obama was 2 years old. In large measure, he is a fulfillment of King’s dream, and he should own it. And he can do it within a larger context of America and the American dream.

Lesson #4: Go after the Republicans directly. JFK’s speech is remembered for introducing the “New Frontier.” (More about that coming up.) But he devoted five paragraphs in the middle of his speech to partisan rhetoric aimed at his opponent, Richard Nixon. For instance:

We know it will not be easy to campaign against a man who has spoken and voted on every side of every issue.

JFK then drew the contrast between the parties in terms that ought to be familiar today:

But we're not merely running against Mr. Nixon. Our task is not merely one of itemizing Republican failures. Nor is that wholly necessary. For the families forced from the farm do not need to tell us of their plight. The unemployed miners and textile workers know that the decision is before them in November. The old people without medical care, the families without a decent home, the parents of children without a decent school: They all know that it's time for a change.

Lesson #5: Focus on the future. That was really what distinguished JFK as a candidate, and it’s the natural move for the younger candidate to make (though in fact JFK was only 3 years younger than Nixon, and Nixon was a year younger than Obama is now.) JFK was influenced by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and his contrast of the Republicans as the party of the past and the Democrats as the party of the future. The Republicans practiced the politics of memory, he wrote in a book published a few years later, while the Democrats represent the Politics of Hope.

Here’s what JFK said:

Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.

In this section of his speech, JFK sketched some of the challenges. While today scholars like to see him as a Cold Warrior, and he did talk about the need to engage Soviet expansion, he also emphasized the need for peaceful means.

The world has been close to war before, but now man, who's survived all previous threats to his existence, has taken into his mortal hands the power to exterminate his species seven times over.

He spoke briefly about domestic challenges, including Civil Rights:

A peaceful revolution for human rights, demanding an end to racial discrimination in all parts of our community life, has strained at the leashes imposed by a timid executive leadership.

Then he reiterated the emphasis on change and the future:

It is time, in short for a new generation of leadership. ..The Republican nominee, of course, is a young man. But his approach is as old as McKinley. His party is the party of the past, the party of memory… Their pledge is to the status quo; and today there is no status quo.

Lesson #6: Articulate a vision. This is the point in the speech where JFK begins talking about the New Frontier, and he does it by anchoring it in the moment, the time and place where he is speaking:

For I stand here tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier. From the lands that stretch three thousand miles behind us, the pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build our new West…

Some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won, that there is no longer an American frontier. But I trust that no one in this assemblage would agree with that sentiment; for the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won; and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier -- the frontier of the 1960's, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats.

A little later he adds:

The New Frontier is here whether we seek it or not. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.

Lesson #7: Include the audience, and ask not what you can do for them, but what they can do for their country:

But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises. It is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer to the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride -- It appeals to our pride, not our security. It holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

It would be easier to shrink from that new frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric -- and those who prefer that course should not vote for me or the Democratic Party.
But I believe that the times require imagination and courage and perseverance. I'm asking each of you to be pioneers towards that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age--to the stout in spirit, regardless of Party, to all who respond to the scriptural call: "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be [thou] dismayed."

That is the choice our nation must make -- a choice that lies not merely between two men or two parties, but between the public interest and private comfort, between national greatness and national decline, between the fresh air of progress and the stale, dank atmosphere of "normalcy;" between dedication and mediocrity.

All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world looks to see what we shall do. And we cannot fail that trust. And we cannot fail to try.

Give me your help and your hand and your voice.”

That last phrase would be one JFK repeated many times on the campaign trail—a call to participation in his campaign.

The acceptance speech will be the first and last time of the general election campaign that the candidate has the attention of a large chunk of the electorate at one time for an uninterrupted statement of this length.

But it’s more than speaking to millions of voters, many of whom are just beginning to focus on the election. Obama’s previous big speeches were in the context of a primary campaign, when he had to distinguish himself and his message from several other candidates, and when he had particular limits on what he said about his opponents within the Democratic Party.

Now Obama can do what JFK did, and draw a direct contrast between himself as the Democratic candidate, and McCain as the Republican candidate. He can define the choice voters have in November.

But he is also speaking to Democrats and the people who have been with him so far. He can motivate them to work for him, which is especially important this year, for Obama needs highly motivated voters in several core groups, and enthusiastic volunteers to put the ground game in motion.

JFK managed to do both. Obama can, too. JFK inspired me, at 14 years old, to work for his campaign. His acceptance speech—which I recorded on our reel-to-reel tape recorder, and played for my social studies class—was a big reason why.

Seventh Inning Stretch

It's happened: the first of the 60s generation Baby Boomers are applying for Social Security. Those of us born in 1946, officially the first year of the Boom, turn 62 this year. I did, a couple of weeks ago. (Turned 62, that is. I'm waiting for the big s.s. bucks later on.)

Apart from personal reflections on my birth and that year, I feel an urgency that given my status in life is faintly embarrassing. Although nobody else seems to care one way or another whether I accomplish anything more, or leave anything behind, it matters a great deal to me.

I want to make something of my past, so that it survives for those who may not be all that interested at the moment, and may never be interested, but at least they'll have the evidence, the opportunity.

But also, I want to contribute to the future.

Since no one is expecting anything from me really--any more writing, other than press releases and reviews of other peoples' creations, or anything in any other form I've worked in over the years--it seems quixotic, if not pathetic.

But apparently I'm not alone. Here are a few quotes I've lifted from a recent web column by Patricia Zohn. She writes mostly about women she knows (these are my emphases and edits):

The Boomer women are the most ambitious of my acquaintance. They are working harder than anyone else, desperate, it seems, to claim a place for themselves, aspirational to an unimaginable degree, as if they had spent so much time serving (children, husbands, politics, being the best, ideals of one sort or another) that a new kind of ticking clock has emerged, one about leaving your mark on the world and not just your genetic material in the form of offspring. I see publishing executives, agents, film programmers, producers, writers, consultants, media baronesses, internet queens, and that's just on my turf. Last week in Aspen I met women who are on the ground in Afghanistan saving children, in Africa fighting Aids and in Washington fighting with Congress for dollar..."

Zohn writes that Boomers on the Internet is a natural fit. "We probably have embraced the internet because we have been conditioned to give it all away for free, anyway. (Who knows how much impact Free Love and Free Speech and Free the Panthers ultimately has really had?) We are inclusive, not exclusive."

She concludes: "And by the way, it's not just women: a good friend, male, who used to run publishing companies and is now a best-selling author says it's because we are all finally having our moment. "

Now I've got a lot of caveats about Zohn's point of view, and her social milieu is miles from mine. There is an undeniably personal quality to this urgency, but it can't be dismissed as simply egotistical anxiety. There is something about meaning in all this, as well as about making a big noise before the big sleep.

I saw Lewis Black (comic and author, best known perhaps for appearances on the Daily Show) on some TV program about self-centered Boomers, and while he admitted that the Boomer generation accomplished a lot less than we hoped or thought we would in the 60s, that we still have some time to pull it together. He said it's the seventh inning stretch, and we can still win it in the late innings--but it's going to take concentrated effort.

That's how I feel about it, even as the time goes winging by without my urgency being reflected in my day, and certainly not in the eyes of others. But the urge is there, and this is the defining task.

I'm especially conscious of how quickly my current level of strength can turn into real old age by a serious illness or injury--not to mention the impossibility of paying for it. Still, I suppose I'm fortunate in one respect. It doesn't take much in the way of resources--like money or the belief of others--to write things down. To tell a story or two.

The Cruelty of Hope

In 1968, this was a happy day. There weren't many that year. But the night before, on March 31, President Johnson ended a TV address with the words we thought we would never hear, "I will not seek, and I will not accept" the Democratic nomination for reelection to the presidency.

I watched it on the nearest TV set, which was several doors down First Street in Galesburg, Illinois, at the home of my writing professor (who was married, with two young daughters, and not more than 5 years older than me.) It was literally shocking, the kind of statement that displaces time: you feel you started to hear the words before he said them, and then afterwards you can't believe that you actually heard them.

LBJ was stubbornly expanding and prosecuting the Vietnam War, and the demonstrations that were growing in size and emotion routinely included the chant, "LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" But now, in an instant, he was not going to be there, and the only two declared Democratic candidates were running to end the war: Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. We were really going to end the war!

Of course, I knew that in some ways it wasn't going to be soon enough for me. I'd already had my pre-induction draft physical, and despite total deafness in one ear, and to the complete shock of several sets of draft counsellors I saw in Chicago, I'd passed. (They were already telling me about how to appeal.) I was a senior in college, and in a few months, my student deferment would end, and with draft calls still very high, I'd probably be drafted. I still hadn't decided what to do, except I knew what I wasn't going to do--I wasn't going to kill any Vietnamese. There was a lot of talk about options, but in the end no one else could really understand this decision--not parents or teachers, friends or certainly girlfriends. You were alone on this one.

But that was a couple of months away at least. I was about to direct a play I'd written, with its own statement about all this, and after that I could probably tie up the draft process long enough to somehow work for Robert Kennedy's campaign. And it was April--spring was short but intensely beautiful in Galesburg--and the barrier of LBJ was gone.

There'd been dancing in the streets on campuses across America the night before. There hadn't been anything that public on our small campus, but we'd probably celebrated enough to be seeing the first April morning through a slight fuzz. There was hope now-- the war might end, and that immense burden on every single hour of every day.

April 1--April Fool's Day. Before the month was out, Martin Luther King would be assassinated, and hardly more than a month after that, I would spend my graduation day watching Robert Kennedy's funeral. Then would come the shambles of the Chicago convention, Humphrey, Nixon and more war--much more war. "April is the cruelest month," T.S. Eliot wrote, as we students of literature well knew.

Happy Birthday

This is the 50th birthday of the peace symbol.
It was completed on February 21, 1958 by designer
Gerald Holtom for an anti-nuclear march in London.
This is a living peace symbol, assembled in Budapest
in 2006.

A Boomer for Obama

Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama and Caroline

Kennedy campaigning before the Feb. 5 primaries.

A Boomer for Obama

I posted this at Daily Kos, and got some interesting comments--take a look.

The last week or so—from the Sunday oped in which Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama, to the following endorsements by Ted Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy and Maria Shriver-- was an emotional journey for many members of the generation that usually gets stereotyped and vilified in the media and on the Internet, the Baby Boomers.

Of course we were the ones who marched behind the actual Dr. King at unknown risk to ourselves, who sucked tear gas and faced the rifles of soldiers to stop the Vietnam war, and who had our lives formed and deformed by moral decisions we had to make at a young age, thanks to the draft. And by "we" I mean "me."

According to the accepted demographic definition, Barack Obama is one of us. The Baby Boom extended from 1946 to 1964. But those of us born at its beginning know that he's of a new generation, and I'm here to say why we (meaning me and lots of others) are so happy to see the torch passed to him. [continued after photo]

Caroline Kennedy first endorsed Barack Obama in
a New York Times oped entitled "A President Like
My Father."

There aren't too many Boomers older than me. Born at the end of June 1946, about ten months after World War II offficially ended, I'm six weeks older than Bill Clinton, and several months older than G.W. Bush. I was 14 in 1960, when I participated in my first political campaign, on behalf of John F. Kennedy. That summer and fall were great times for me. I thrilled to the first pennant run in half a century by the Pittsburgh Pirates, who played about 35 miles away. And I thrilled to the first political convention I paid close attention to, and to Kennedy's acceptance speech.

Then my team won the World Series in October, and my candidate became President in November. I even managed to visit Washington during the Inauguration, and by cunning and luck, I was one of the first ordinary Americans to shake hands with President Kennedy. In the same year I shook hands with JFK and Roberto Clemente!

The Kennedy administration was a big part of my education. There are a lot of names I've forgotten over the years, but to this day I can name the starting lineup of the 1960 Pirates, and JFK's entire cabinet, right down to the Postmaster General.

The Kennedy legacy--both JFK and RFK--is very real to me, and I appreciate even more today what it meant. For example, JFK's speech at American University--where Senator Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama --should be remembered as one of the most important in my lifetime, and perhaps in human history. It was so eloquent that it even moved the Soviet Premier to join in the nuclear test ban treaty, the first real step away from unchecked nuclear weapon proliferation. Along with Kennedy's subsequent efforts to get the treaty completed and ratified by the Senate, it may have saved the planet.

And that speech was one day before JFK spoke to the nation about the need to finally make good on the constitutional promise of equal rights, and to start by passing a voting rights act. Both were in 1963, the last year of his presidency and his life.

We won't go into the unspeakable decades that followed, or their effect on my generation. I'll skip to my 60th birthday, to help me explain why Monday was so important to me, and I expect to others my age and older.

The realization that, as Captain Picard put it, there are fewer days ahead than behind, sooner or later focuses your mind. Partly due to other circumstances and insights, I saw that what most people think of as "the present" was over for me. Not the present moment--which actually becomes more important--but the present of accumulating, networking, career, keeping up with the latest whatever, moving up some ladder or another, etc. If you haven't "made it" by 60 (whatever "making it" means to you), it's unlikely anybody's going to let you try anymore. (In fact, that often happens now at 50.)

I still have things I'd like to accomplish (mostly things I intend to write), but even when they're somewhat the same as before, the reasons are different. What becomes important is understanding your past, and communicating it--or what you've learned from it that's pertinent-- to the future. The past becomes much more of the content of your life, and the future--not your future, but THE future-- becomes more important.

I have to say at this point that despite the temptations of stereotypes, not all baby boomers are the same: not even all white males. Some of my friends are retiring, but others like me don't see that possibility, though we're pulling back. Some of us have powerful positions in business, government, media and so on--or we did--but most of us don't and didn't. And if we don't or didn't, most doors are now closed to us--we're too old. The cliche of the wealthy suburban Me Generation boomer eager to soak up Social Security along with our huge stock portfolios describes almost nobody I know. Certainly not me. Some of us not only paid our dues, we paid for them.

All of this is to explain why you don't have to be young to respond to Barack Obama. In fact, the Kennedys showed you exactly why some of us are so enthusiastic. It's partly about what we once had--what we are so happy you can now have: a real leader you can admire, who can create opportunities for you to participate. A leader who can inspire you, not to be a mindless follower, but to think and feel anew, and to grow and learn in positive ways for your lives and your time, and for the future.

It's partly about what we lost, about what JFK used to call "the unfinished business of this country" that has remained unfinished all our lives. We know what our best leaders had, and we see what's needed now.

That's what the Kennedys saw. Ethel Kennedy formally endorsed Obama after Caroline, Ted and his son (Rep.) Patrick, but she may well have been the first of them to see what they came to see in Barack Obama:

It was on a November day in 2005, near the end of Mr. Obama’s first year in the Senate, when he was asked to deliver a keynote address at a ceremony commemorating the 80th birthday of Robert F. Kennedy. The invitation was extended by Ethel Kennedy, who at the time referred to Mr. Obama as “our next president.”

“I think he feels it. He feels it just like Bobby did,” Mrs. Kennedy told me that day, comparing her late husband’s quest for social justice to Mr. Obama’s. “He has the passion in his heart. He’s not selling you. It’s just him.”

But maybe it was best expressed by Harris Wofford, former U.S. Senator from PA who was with JFK from that 1960 campaign on. A Politico piece said:

One of the former advisers, Harris Wofford, said Obama “touches my soul.” "For me, no one has done that since John, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King,” Wofford said in December. “I waited a long time to have that feeling.”

But the connection is not just from the Kennedy legacy to Obama, or from that past to the present. It is about what the past tells us is necessary to meet the particular challenges of the present to create a better future.

I think about the future a lot. If I didn't, I'd have a different screen name. I see the challenges of the Climate Crisis and what meeting those challenges will require. And I see in Barack Obama's approach the hope that those challenges can be met. Because he talks about empathy, cooperation, the common good, and that we're all in this together, as well as because he talks about clean energy, environmental and social justice, government responsive to common needs as well as being responsible to those who need help the most.

Now those of us who lived through the Kennedy years are also going to advise caution and care. We've seen where high emotion can lead, and those ecstatic crowds do give us pause. Without dampening enthusiasm, we want to keep things in perspective and with a center of quiet and consciousness. But I sense that Obama knows this, and he is watchful and careful. Meanwhile, you won't mind if we share in all the youthful exuberance.

I worked(in a small way) for the election of our first Baby Boomer President, Bill Clinton. Election day in 1992 is one of my happier memories of the past several decades. I supported him when he was most beleaguered, and I admire the work he's done in the world since he left office. In a different time, I would happily support Hillary Clinton. But the politics that the Clintons practice, particularly in this campaign, are not going to get it done--not now. I see the future in Barack Obama, and I hope in the people he will attract and energize and lead. I'll be here to have my say. But I'll feel better that the future is in good hands.

Sputnik at 50

On the legacy of Sputnik at Captain
Future's Dreaming Up Daily.

 

Peter, Paul and Mary in more recent years. They continue to perform this song at antiwar rallies and peace events. Photo: Wolf Trap.

When Will We Ever Learn?

Those of us who experienced the 60s, though we may bore younger generations with reminicences, also tend to forget that these generations didn't go through them, especially emotionally. This was brought home to me recently by a diary at Daily Kos called "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"by Whiskey Sam.

I'm going to reproduce much of that diary here, though if you follow the link you'll get the full version as well as video renditions of the song. But of course the diary is only partly about the song--it's about what we learned, and what has not quite been passed on.

There was a comment to the diary I responded to which I'll also include here--on the matter of reviving the draft as a kind of antiwar tactic. It's ironic to me that in a diary about learning one lesson--to smell out an unjust and immoral war--there's added a proposal for something else we should have learned is pernicious: the draft.

Here are large excerpts from the diary itself:

"
I found myself thinking back about this war in Iraq and about how much things have changed. Back in 2002/03, the conventional wisdom was that Saddam had WMD's and he would sell them to the first Tom, Dick, or Harry who wanted them. We heard it all around, and the majority of the country believed it. I didn't, many of us on this forum smelled out the bullshit when it was being presented for us.

This diary is about how right the liberal community was on this issue, and how damn disgusting it is that we were. But it's also about how right, how MUCH MORE right, the older Vietnam generation was about this war and how some of the Gen X / Y liberals failed to realize the gravity of their warning.

In early 2003, when war became the obvious conclusion to Bush's 6 months of rhetoric, I was sitting at my UU Church in Raleigh North Carolina. The minister at the church was simply a hero in leading her congregation against the coming war. Every single sermon included talk about the distruction and the needlessness of the actions that would be taken in our names.
I remember it well. I remember also thinking it was a bit over dramatic. I found myself feeling that way often about the "Vietnam era" anti-war people. After all, it couldn't be nearly as bad as those old timers were making sound like it would be.

I was wrong, they were very much right.
One Sunday our minister began by passing out lyrics to an old Pete Seeger song, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone". Being young and dumb, I hadn't ever heard of the song. The "Vietnam People" in the room all instantly teared up. God this was all so overly draamtic!!! Even if Bush gets his war, I thought, there's NO WAY it'll last for years. How could it?
Still, I mumbled through the lyrics

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

OK OK, I get the point... Vietnam was bad, and your friends got drafted and died, but that's not what's going to happen here. JESUS people, if we overplay our hand, if we over dramatize this situation then we look like a bunch of kooks!!!! Pass the tin foil!

Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

nice song, by this point the "Vietnam people" were flat out crying. This is before a single American was wounded in Iraq. Come ON folks, less than 200 American soldiers died in the first Gulf War -- we're going to hit our targets and the country will roll over!!!

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone? Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

Almost five years later I know now why the "Vietnam people" were so moved by this song. I know now what I need to know for the next time a group of warmongers deceive our country into a war that destroys generations of our finest men and women. I know now what the "Vietnam people" knew when they used to sing this song.

They were right. My god they were right. They weren't being overly dramatic, they saw what was going to happen and they were doing everything in their power to warn people like me about the gathering storm. "

The comments included this one:

"with the hippies (4+ / 0-)
this time things are gloomy, the right has won by depressing us all. The old peace movement was filled with college kids who were against not just war but the lottery that could make them fight in one. That touched everyone, and it's why we need the draft back, so that everyone will be watching, if not for everyone's kids, for their own. If we as a nation claim the right to 'protect' ourselves with soldiers, we need to shoulder the responsibility. Our nation is so powerful that citizens need to be involved personally in the decisions our leaders make in our name. "

This is my reply to the comment:

two evils don't make a right (2+ / 0-)
unless they make it a rabid right--because the draft is as evil as the war. I am one of those "Vietnam people" who knew how bad this was going to be, and I can tell you from experience that a draft will not help, it will only ruin the lives of even more young people. First of all, the highest draft calls of the war were before the lottery was instituted, so when you turned 18 or lost your college deferement, you were facing being drafted, and basically, you were on your own. Nobody but you understood what it meant. Parents, family, women, friends were all conflicted, because the choice was to go and possibly die and/or kill, or bring shame to your family, ruin your life, flee to Canada, go to jail, etc. to resist it. Unless your family had the money and connections to buy you out of it with pull or doctors, and that believe me would not change if the draft began again. Trying to force people to go kill other people or die trying is immoral. Even slaves weren't forced to do that, and slavery is unconstitutional as well as immoral.

I'm sure you, like many others making this proposal, are well-meaning, but that's what's most upsetting to me. At least some of the people who got us into this war were well-meaning. Just wrong. They didn't see the Bushite lies and how they were going to use this war for their own ends. Those are exactly the same people who would be running the draft. If there's a war that has to be fought, Americans will fight it, without being forced. "

And another poster added:

"No draft--ever
I absolutely agree about the draft. We will institute a new draft over the dead bodies of many of the Vietnam generation who experienced it. Since I'm female, I didn't have to worry, but my brother did. So we all worried. I hate to tell you what happened to the kids I knew who were drafted. They were scarred for life though some were killed and some are still MIA. One is insane and has been since he was in Vietnam. All of them were forced to serve in the military. I will never support a draft. I agree that if we really need to fight a war, people will volunteer. We didn't really need to fight in Iraq or Vietnam. War is horrible beyond description. We should avoid war if possible and never be the aggressors."

Choose Your Cell

The main reason companies don't market to the huge Baby Boom generation is that we're basically immune to the compulsions of fashion and conformity. They may satirize us for returning to the brand names of our past, but besides "nostalgia"-- the ripples of memory and connection to the past we get from them-- often enough it has more to do with sticking with what works, and seeing the wearying pitfalls of the new and needless.

Take cell phones. Younger folk who are still competing to be the coolest of the conformists, rushed and rushing not only to early adopt, but to keep getting the newest, fastest, fanciest and inevitably most complex of the cellular toys. Besides adding immensely to the toxic waste overflow--literally hundreds of millions of thrown away cell phones--they've been part of changing everyday exterior life for nearly everybody, and in mostly dubious ways.

I've never owned a cell phone, so the ten reasons not to own one in this Wired Magazine commentary today were already known to me. Still, I recognize this as a reasonably brave statement, especially in the place it appeared (though it didn't stop the page from being advertised by a cell phone brand.) I recognize the few advantages--mainly having to do with emergencies--and I did experience a nice moment when one of my oldest and best friends who was visiting handed me his cell phone as we walked back from a dinner celebrating our 60th birthdays, and our third friend was on the other end. It was as if he were walking with us for awhile. That was nice.

But technology is always a prison as well as a liberation. In this case, the cost, the fact that I use telephones of any kind as little as possible, and the expectation that I would be accessible to everyone 24/7, and so with no privacy whatsoever, etc. means I haven't even been tempted, except when traveling. On the other hand, I am likely to buy an Ipod type device soon--though it's going to be a lot of trouble and require a lot of time, it's either that or another portable CD player, and they have their own increasingly frustrating problems. (The best portable device I have actually is a small, sturdy tape recorder, which I use to do interviews and also to listen to audiobooks.) And I certainly was early to adopt blogging, since it suited my purposes.

Then there's the ergonomic questions (part of that top ten list), which I've raised here before: screens and buttons with no learnable logic especially if you can't see them. I've been certain that this alone was a market opportunity that sooner or later somebody was going to fill, and apparently it's begun. I saw an ad in a magazine for a cell phone that's marketed for Boomers as being simple and with large, easy to understand buttons. The Jitterbug phone is unfortunately ugly, and the First Street ("For Boomers and Beyond") catalog is currently pretty thin and junky, but it's a start.

RFK

The anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's death comes at a dark moment of intense political polarization, in a nation roiled by an unpopular war characterized by official deceit. Many of Robert Kennedy's words on Vietnam could be dropped into the newspaper today and they would be just as relevant.

It is a time of violence in word and deed. It is a time mortal peril for this country and its institutions, the country and the institutions of which he had a deep knowledge, for which he had a deep commitment. It is a time of mortal peril for the world and its life. His son and namesake knows this--Robert Kennedy, Jr. has been and remains one of our greatest champions of our environment.

1968 was a time of political upheaval as well. In this election year it is well to remember that the revered RFK, if he were a politican today, would be criticized and castigated from one end of the political spectrum to the other, and all over the Internet. He would be charged today, as he was charged then,with opportunism, cynical and self-centered politics, and trading on his name and wealthy family.

Kennedy was himself a polarizing figure, although his words were of reconcilation. That in part was what made him polarizing. His positions on various issues did not satisfy the templates of the left or right. Yet he was the only white politician who had the passionate support and love of many blacks. He was the only political leader who spent time on Indian reservations and tiny Inuit villages as well as southern rural and white West Virgina mountain shanty towns.

He inspired passions for and passions against. People wanted to touch him, and he needed to touch others--he seemed to learn through touch. He learned through children, extending the feelings of a father to compassion for all children.

He grew up in privilege, and his early meetings with black leaders were not warm. Yet by 1968, when Martin Luther King was shot and killed, his widow asked Robert Kennedy to arrange to have his body moved from Memphis to Atlanta. His impromptu speech, passing on the news of King's assassination in a black neighborhood where he happened to be, is one of his most famous.

If we took Robert Kennedy out of time, and dropped him into our own, he would find a different country in many ways. There are nearly twice as many people in the United States. The racial and ethnic composition has changed. In 1968, one parent usually did the earning for the family, the man in most white families, and increasingly the woman in single parent poor black families. Two paycheck families, let alone two parents with five or six jobs between them, were rare.

Politically, the parties were stronger. Democrats had deep organizations in the cities, and industrial unions were strong. But the Democratic party was also coming apart. JFK knew that by leading on civil rights, the Democrats would lose their hold on the solid South. 1968 would see Richard Nixon exploit this. Vietnam was itself tearing younger people like me away from the party. Eugene McCarthy ran within the party, but he was not really of it. Robert Kennedy was, and his candidacy may have kept many young people in the party.

Kennedy's first major speech was just after King's death, and after the violent riots that torched and destroyed significant parts of many cities. In some cities, like Washington, it would be more than a decade before those areas recovered.

I could quote his Vietnam speeches, emphasizing the horror for the victims of war. But Robert Kennedy's life, and a great deal of the promise of America, was ended by an act of violence in June 1968. I remember those hours and days. The primary emotion I felt I later understood as this: loneliness. Robert Kennedy's death made this a very lonely country for me.

Robert Kennedy took on that last political fight, knowing the odds were against him, knowing that violence was in the air. He was a warrior for peace. It is important to remember even as we stand up against the cynical and cowardly violence of the rabid right, that Robert Kennedy's last crusade was this: as he said to a largely black audience in that unwritten speech on the night of Martin Luther King's assassination, "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."

In his next major speech, in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 4, he said this:

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, this poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family , then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies---to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look on our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear--only a common desire to retreat from each other--only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers. Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what program to enact. The question is whether we can find in our midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be enobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. "

late 60s poster construction by Bonnie MacLean in
Whitney Museum exhibt on Psychedelic Era. NY Times.

Free Your Mind: Late 1960s on Display

For me and many people I knew when we were students, there was no real conflict between the politics and culture of the late '60s. They seemed to spring from the same sources, and we reconciled them in our lives as well as our approach to the world. But there was a certain distance--and sometimes tensions-- between political activists and "cultural" activists (otherwise known as hippies) at various times in the '60s, probably more extreme in cities and bigger universities than on our small and relatively isolated campus.

I still see a continuum, and certainly a common dynamic in the worldview that accompanied antiwar and pro-Civil Rights and liberation politics, and the psychedelic "mind expanding" culture of rebellious ideas, electric music and desperate yearnings for new relationships to nature, human and otherwise. "Free Your Mind" (as I recall being shouted at the beginning of a Beatles song) is total. But even in retrospect, the politics vs. culture controversies continue.

I draw that conclusion from Holland Carter's terrific New York Times essay concerning the Whitney Museum's exhibition, "Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era." It's in many ways an authentic summary of the era. And it does fault the exhibit for ignoring the political context:

Tear gas, pot and patchouli were the scents of the 1960s. You can almost detect the last two, spicy and pungent, wafting through “Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era” at the Whitney Museum of American Art. But tear gas, with its weird-sweet burn, is missing in a show that remembers a lot, but forgets much more, about what was happening 40 years ago, when America was losing its mind to save, some would say, its soul.

Carter admits that "for anyone who wasn’t around then, the period is all but impossible to know," but in a few eloquent paragraphs he suggests it, in ways that resonate with me. Yet his judgment also reflects his belief that for "anyone who was around, it’s hard to describe without sounding either nostalgic or bitter." Like many literary boomers, he tends towards the bitter. In that, I think he goes a bit far. I don't think the counterculture was, as he says, originally just a commercial venture, though he's right that it rather quickly became one, at first for promoters and record companies, and then in the larger commercial culture of the 70s.

And he's also right that as young people we were hopelessly self-centered, but contrary to his view, I believe there was altruism and "love" in the larger sense, as well as concern for the future, and even some interest in the past (just not the one packaged for us by the larger culture.) It was in fact that larger culture that considered the past irrelevant and the future not worth considering. That the larger culture continues to feel that way I don't believe is itself a byproduct of that era.

Anyway, anyone who lived through the decade will find this a stimulating piece, and those who didn't will find it informative beyond the usual iconic images and simplistic distortions. And armed with this essay, the Whitney exhibit sounds like a trip worth taking if you're in New York.

Boomer Evangelicals: Expanding Soul

An intriguing article in the NY Times Magazine suggests that the American Evangelical movement is changing--moving away from obsession with gay marriage and God's Own Party to different and in some ways more traditional concerns. Though the issue of abortion continues to unite conservative Christians, some of the newer Evangelical leaders are also talking about poverty, health issues such as AIDS, and the chief illness of the earth: the climate crisis:

Members of the baby boomer generation are taking over the reins, said D. G. Hart, a historian of religion. The boomers, he said, are markedly different in style and temperament from their predecessors and much more animated by social justice and humanitarianism.

One example was the call to see the climate crisis as a moral issue which brought together some "mainstream conservative Christian leaders with prominent liberal evangelicals, such as the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners and the Rev. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, who have long championed progressive causes."

Though some observers caution that this is only the beginning of a shift (and one Evangelical leader was forced to step down because of his climate crisis advocacy) and that it may take a generation to become dominant, it does suggest there is less enthusiasm for automatic party line GOP politics, which includes climate crisis denial and contempt for "bleeding heart" efforts to address poverty, disease and injustice. Within the Evangelicals (roughly a quarter of the U.S. population), this new "centrist group" is roughly equal in numbers to the far right group (according to Pew Research) and it is the centrist group that is growing.

R. I. P.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

He survived Pall Malls for 84 years, and it was a fall resulting in brain injury that led to his death. Kurt Vonnegut has been part of my life and close to my soul since the 1960s, when my fiction writing teacher who'd been his student at the Iowa Workshop got us reading his early novels, just a few months before the world discovered him big time with Slaughterhouse Five.
Of contemporary writers, I felt closest in ways I can't explain to two: Vonnegut and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

His New York Times obit is here.

Vonnegut was one of the voices we clung to in those bitter years of the late 60s. His voice was so distinctive that it was something that writers attached to rhythmic mimickry had to get loose of. No sooner had you broken the habit of writing like J.D. Salinger, Hemingway and Joseph Heller, along came Vonnegut. So it goes.

He was a countercultural voice who came by it honestly; he earned it. His use of science fiction motifs was part of it, especially for me. In later years he took on the appearance as well as the mantle of our 20th/21st century Mark Twain.

I've known so many people who knew him, and I've seen him on various screens and of course read him, so I feel I did know him, in that peculiar way in which he didn't know me from Adam. I encountered him in person at least three times I can recall. He spoke in Pittsburgh, where the U.S. Army had once sent him to study engineering. His speeches, especially at colleges, are legendary--even the ones he didn't actually deliver. They were full of wit and practical wisdom, and lots of provocation of thought and feeling, worth any 20 political or academic talks.

Before that, he passed through my mind as I was walking in Boston one afternoon, idly thinking I might run into him. Late that night, while sitting in an unprestiguous, noisy, overlit restaurant with members of a rock band I was supposed to be writing about (the drummer lamenting the absense of the groupies he had been promised), I glanced across the room and saw Kurt Vonnegut looking at us, and not real kindly. Such a coincidence is common in Vonnegut's fictional universe, where there are "leaks" between worlds and time is permeable. It actually happened to me twice within a short time; the other time I was in O'Hare airport thinking about Paul Simon, and a minute later there he was. It was weird enough to be a little scary, and so it's never happened again.

The last time I remember was in Manhattan. It was on the street and I saw him walking towards me, wearing just a comfortable indoor sweater on a cold coat-and-scarf day. I recognized him and smiled; he looked at me the way I was often looked at in New York--that ' are you somebody I should know?' look--and when he'd concluded I wasn't, he looked away. But I have that picture of him, walking the midtown streets as if from one room of his house to another.

I was talking about a short story of his just the other day. Someone, I forget who, has recently written a satire in which the suggested solution to social security and medical care shortfalls because of aging baby boomers is to kill them--humanely, I assume. Apparently this idea is striking a chord, which doesn't surprise me. Vonnegut wrote about it in the 1950s, in a story called "Welcome to the Monkey House" (also the title of his first story collection.) Because of overpopulation, old people were encouraged to visit their government sponsored Ethical Suicide Parlors. It was a wicked idea, but what makes writers cherish Vonnegut is his imagination, his detail. These Parlors were housed next to Howard Johnsons, their purple roof next to the orange roof of HoJos. They all had Hostesses, stewardess-like young women who humor the old folks but efficiently hurry them along to take their injection and die peacefully in the Barcolounger. You absolutely know that when these places are established, this is what they will be like.

I've only quoted him here once, from a 2006 speech in which he said: “The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.” That's Vonnegut in a nutshell: vivid, combative, funny, outrageous, passionate, pushing at the edge but with wit and meaning.

Vonnegut often wrote about Kilgore Trout, his alter ego--a version of who he might well have been if it hadn't been for the sudden success of Slaughterhouse Five, a poor and obscure science fiction writer. In Vonnegut's last novel, Timequake, Kilgore Trout dies. He was 84.

The Boomers Are All Right

We've been criticized and put down since we were kids, but especially in the 60s. We were too loud, too bold, too earnest, too political, too romantic, too sexy, too idealistic, too cynical, too crazed by sex, drugs and rock & roll. We protested too much, our music was disgusting, we wanted to change the world but we didn't know how. And so on.

These days (when our awful music is everywhere, forty years later, and we're in the middle of another obscene war that if this country had accepted what we learned from Vietnam never would have happened) we're criticized again, this time by some of our own. Boomers are the self-absorbed, self-indulgent generation that talked big and instead just soaked up big money. We stay in the workforce too long and hog up all the good jobs. And now we're selfish enough to still be alive, so we're going to bankrupt the country and younger generations paying for our Social Security and health care.

Most of this is politicized crap, but the worst part of it is that Boomers themselves are joining in. Self-examination is a good thing. Self-loathing is pointless and in some ways the opposite of self-examination: it's an excuse not to bother. I think most of us understand that a lot of the anger against Boomers is right wing anger about the 1960s. Which is anger against those aspects of society that show more tolerance, more open-mindedness, compassion and idealism.

There are differences between generations, and there are different pluses and minuses between and within them. But this Boomer trashing is preposterous. We're neither the best nor the worst, if there could even be such a thing. It's fashionable to bow to the Greatest Generation but we know them as our parents generation, and they were hardly perfect.

Nor were we or are we perfect--or any other image-- as should be obvious. Here in this space will appear critiques of who we were and who we are, what we did and what we didn't do, what we went through and what we're facing now. But the baseline is this: we're all right. Some of our generation are arrogant, mindless, cruel, clueless, terminally cynical or perenially deluded. Some of our generation has been very quietly courageous, self-sacrificing, dedicated, compassionate, relentlessly true to their ideals. Most of us have sampled from both bins. Welcome to the human race.

Let's recall that the cultural phenomenon called "the 60s" never involved more than a minority of our age group in a major way. Most of us weren't protestors or hippies. (I mean I was, which is how I know we were a decided minority.) We were just such a huge generation, even a minority of us turned out to be a lot. Most of our generation were always going to have a more or less conventional life, according to the conventions of our time.

Many of us embrace the 60s now, and we should. At the same time, that many of us got a life, raised children and can help our grandchildren, not exactly cause of shame there. (I didn't manage to do any of that, but I admire my contemporaries who did. ) Sure, we all have regrets--or we should--- about overconsumption, about getting sucked in, etc. And some good things turned bad or at least awry. But Boomer self-bashing is more pathetic than any other excess we're supposed to peculiarly own.

Come around here if you want to. I hope I can break through my own barriers to discuss the aging issues that confront those of us at the head of the Boom, the first-thirders of 1946 to 1950. But don't expect either cheery nostalgia and self-congratulation all the time, or a fashionable attitude of clever but ultimately cynical self-immolation either. The Boomers are all right.