Forty Years and Counting...

-



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

Comments

Post a Comment

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

Popular posts from this blog

10 Things I Love That Start With the Letter E

-
Image
Game imported from Sweet Annie at Blissful Bohemian . Name ten things you love that begin with a specific letter. In my case, the letter E. So here goes: 1. Well, first of all there's elephants . Who doesn't love those cute little faces?? And what's not to love? Elephants are actually a lot like humans. They laugh and cry. They grieve over their dead. They play games with each other and have fantastic memories so they can even remember the rules and not go to bed mad. 2. Then there's Engelbert Humperdinck, who I don't actually love and his singing's just on this side of okay, but I do love his name. 3. I luuuuuuv eggs , deviled. Nothing fancy, just classic. Best Basic Deviled Eggs 6 eggs, hard cooked and peeled 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1 teaspoon yellow mustard 3/4 teaspoon white wine vinegar pinch of salt (optional) fresh ground black pepper (optional) smoked paprika (optional) Cut eggs in half. Arrange egg whites cut side up on a serving plate and put the yolks
Read more

The Poet Goes to Indiana by Mary Oliver

-
Image
I'll tell you a half-dozen things that happened to me in Indiana when I went that far west to teach. You tell me if it was worth it. I lived in the country with my dog— part of the bargain of coming. And there was a pond with fish from, I think, China. I felt them sometimes against my feet. Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges, to eat the grass. I'm not lying. And I saw coyotes, two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly unenclosed fields. And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped into the road just-oh, I mean just, in front of my car— and we both made it home safe. And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses, or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house, and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth, he, too, would have hooves trimmed for the Indiana winter, and apples did it, and a rope over the neck did it, so I won something wonderful; and there was, one morning, an owl flying, oh pale angel, into the hay loft o
Read more

A Year with EB White

-
Image
"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."----- from Charlotte's Web I am a soul always drawn and fascinated by the idea of " A Year of...". A Year of Rumi. A Year of Calvin and Hobbes. A year cooking with Julia Child. A project that provides guidance for the year and a ruler we can measure inward growth in the course of our circle around the sun. One year, after an early marriage and an unsurprising--except to me--early divorce, I came across a book by Sue Hubbell titled A Country Year. I didn't plan for it to take a year to read, but it did. I only read it at night before I went t
Read more