Forty Years and Counting...

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Day off today and, although I cleaned around the house a small amount, it's another rainy day here in Cincy so I read. Last month's Smithsonian magazine has an article about President Johnson and the events surrounding the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.--"The Unmaking of the President." I love LBJ. Always have. It may not be the most popular choice, but it's not a choice made objectively. He 's the face I remember seeing on our television set while I was growing up and the one we listened to during the turbulant events of the sixties. I think he's fascinating.


And although this season's crop of presidential candidates seem to want to distance themselves from the events of the last forty years those issues remain in the forefront of the problems we face today. An unpopular and no-end-in-sight war, poverty, racial inequities. Some of the speeches could be given today without one change in wording necessary to make it relevant.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/president-lbj.html

So there's a couple of books I'd like to read about LBJ and one about the 82 day presidential campaign of Bobby Kennedy. I remember the late sixties but from the perspective of a thirteen year old breathing in the anger and riots and chaos of the times as part of the air mingling with the smells of high school gymnasiums and English Leather. I may have grown up, I'm not so sure our country has. Maybe I just don't like what we've grown up to be. I had higher hopes for us all.





http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/06/rfk_excerpt200806

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Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

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