1968

In human terms a fifty year anniversary is a huge milestone and in this space I spent much of the past year recalling some of the events of that most tumultouous year fifty years ago, 1968. Back then, even as a nine-going-on ten-year-old, I can remember thinking to myself as the year was drawing to a close: "Gosh that was a terrible year."

Here are links to some of my posts about the year that was, fifty year s ago:

• No fewer than three posts were inspired by what in my mind was the most devastating event of 1968, the assassination of Martin Luther King. On April 4th, the fiftieth anniversary of that terrible day, I asked the question (as I did five years before on the 50th anniversary of the death of JFK) how our world would have been different had Dr. King lived. 
• With only two months to live, Robert F. Kennedy delivered the news of the murder of Dr. King at was supposed to be a campaign rally in Indianapolis. It ended up being perhaps his finest moment.
• Later in April I observed how death has made two icons of the American Civil Rights movemennt, Dr. King and Jackie Robinson, convenient cultural heroes to people who would have certainly despised them when they were alive.
• Here is a link to the piece I posted on the anniversary of RFK's assassination.
• What began as a year of tremendous hope in my father's fatherland, ended up in the summer to be the news event of 1968 that touched me the closest, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August.
• I what I consider to be my best post of this year, I wrote about the student protests against gun violence that took place in schools across the country last March. I connected those protests with the actions of young people that helped change the world back in 1968.

The years that followed 1968 saw more of the same. In light of Dr. King's death, his pleas for non-violence began to seem futile even to his closest followers. The riots that immediately followed his murder, further divided aleady divided American cities along the lines of race. In late 1969 on the west side of Chicago, the police raided an aparment where a number of members of the Black Panther party resided. Gunfire ensued and when the smoke cleared, Panther leader Fred Hampton and Mark Clark who was on security detail for the group were dead. The initial police inquiry into the raid claimed that the police and Black Panthers exchanged gunfire and the deaths of the two men were ruled justifiable homicde. Subsequent investigations however showed that all of the shots fired in that apartment with the exception of one, came from the police.

Earlier that year a splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) called the Weathermen, staged several demonstrations in Chicago, some of them violent. "The Days of Rage" as the actions were called by their instigators, were just a small piece of the reaction to  the continuing escalation of the Vietnam War and the tremendous division in this country over it that defined the next several years.

Here are two poplular songs released in 1969, both from artists I admire, that illustrate the opposite sides of the divide:

This from Merle Haggard:



And this obvious one from John Lennon:




Knowing what we know about the VietnamWar, it's easy today to view Lennon's song as noble and Haggard's, reactionary. Pandering to a segment of society more than happy to eat it up, (as the audience reaction proves), Haggard's lyrics to that song sound today just as they did in 1969, as the slogan "America, Love It or Leave It" was the 1969 equivalent of "Make America Great Again".

But nearly fifty years later, with a little insight and perfect 20/20 hidsight, we can see there is more to "Fightn' Side" than pure jingoism. By the time the song was released, the Vietnam War was already extrmely unpopular in America and around the world, While to the best of my knowlege, reports of veterans returning from Vietnam being spat upon are either greatly exaggerated or flat out untrue, the men and women who served in that war, several of whom were not there by choice, were definitely looked upon with disdain by many of their fellow countrymen and women. It goes without saying that grunts throughout history who risk life, limb, and sanity by being sent off to war aren't the people responsible, just the ones who pay much of the price for any war, and the reception American veterans received when they returned home from Vietnam was an injustice. It took a long period of healing after that war for most Americans to recognize and thank the Vietnam Veterans for their service and sacrifice, which was no different from the service and sacrifice of the veterans of more "popular" wars. Merle Haggard, who made a career out of celebrating the common man, even the common criminal, (something he understood first hand), came to that realization I believe, earlier than most.

In 1982 we were still divided when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington DC. Its design was roundly criticized because in addition to honoring US servicemembers  killed during the war, it also in no uncertain terms refused to glorify war in fact, just the opposite. In 1986, Chicago and other cities across the country held "welcome home" parades for surviving Vietnam Veterans, and finally by that time Americans for the most part, came to terms with that bitter part of our history. 

As far as civil rights went, some of us felt that struggle had been resolved when we elected an African American man to be our president in 2008. The election of the subsequent president proved that theory wrong in no uncertain terms.

I point that out as a reminder that old wounds can heal, even though the scars from those wounds may last a lifetime, and can re-open at a moment's notice. My memories are vivid about how deeply this country was divided fifty years ago. We faced what seemed to be unsurmountable problems that we as a nation had never faced before, or at least so we thought. Today we also face problems that we have never faced before, except of course, the division.

In the words of Mark Twain:

It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.

Keeping that in mind, somehow someway, the problems and divisions that we are experiencing today will be if not resolved, then narrowed. In the meantime, like the years after 1968, things will probably get worse before they get better, but they will get better, they always do. Then they get worse again! That in a nutshell is the human condition. Oh well, as the melancholy Christmas song song tells us, we'll have to muddle through somehow. We always do.

In this the last day of 2018, may your joy be bountiful and your muddlings be few. 
Happy New Year!

Old Years Day

Here we are, looking back on our lives and the state of the world at the end of another year. I find it hard to believe that 365 days have passed since I wrote this piece, it seems like only a fleeting moment. That's the way it goes, one inevitable fact of life is that, like the odometer on an accelerating race car (if there ever was such a thing),  2015 will probably fly by faster for me than 2014.

As every year, a lot has happened since December 31, 2013: the Ebola outbreak, unrest in Ukraine, the rise and unspeakable barbarity of Isis, ongoing troubles in the Middle East, Iraq, and Afghanistan, more craziness out of North Korea, the list goes on and on. In this country, the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown at the hands of police officers have polarized this country along racial and ideological lines to an extent we haven't seen in years.

For us at home, we experienced the expected personal triumphs and setbacks of life. One thing I did notice was that for some reason, each little happy moment this year seemed to be tempered by a cloud of one sort or another. Just last week on Christmas Day, we had a lovely celebration at our house. As we sent our guests on their way home, we smelled smoke and heard the sirens of several emergency vehicles. Frantically I searched our building for a fire. After I was satisfied that our home was safe, I went into the alley where a garage a block away was engulfed in flames. The fire had destroyed the power lines cutting off all the power on the block. The view down that dark, smoke-filled alley punctuated by flames shooting twenty feet into the nighttime sky was what I imagine the road to hell would look like. 

By far the most indelible memory of 2014 for us was the quick succession of sudden deaths of four friends and family members, two from automobile accidents, one from a heart attack, and one from an unbelievably aggressive cancer. For their life's contributions, these four individuals all left the world a far better place than they found it.

I'm not big on making New Years resolutions but this year I'm making an exception. I resolve to keep the memories of Peter Hales, Bob Miller, Richard Frye, and Jeremy Pollack alive in my thoughts and deeds. And I resolve to never again take any person or moment for granted as we never know what lies in store for us.

For despite all the crap in the world, it sure is good to be alive. 

I wish you all a joyous, peaceful, and blessed New Year.  

2012

Another year and another opportunity to write the wrong date on my checks. Only three days into the year and I've already taken that opportunity. As a child I could never understand why adults always talked about how quickly time passed, for me it moved at a snail's pace. No longer, now I wish that I could slow time down, if only just a little.

For the first time in a long time, I really celebrated the turn of the year, taking a deep breath and realizing all I have and how lucky I am for my loving family, for a roof over my head, food on the table, and for simply being alive. The older you get, the more you learn not to take those things for granted.

Another good thing about getting older is you learn to not worry so much about what other people think of you. My son is currently at the age where he would as soon die as be embarrassed. I remember those days well and completely sympathize with him. But at some point in life you begin to realize that other people are far more concerned about their own image than yours, and it's a very liberating feeling.

With that in mind, I give you a piece of music entirely appropriate for the New Year, a Central European tradition that for all its schmaltz and un-hipness, sends a chill up the Central European half of my spine. It brings me back to my grandparents and all those Germanic restaurants they took me to in Chicago and Milwaukee. It brings back the place where my parents met, a hole in the wall night club on North Avenue in Chicago called Stadt Wien, and the real Vienna, the charming city on the Danube that I visited with my half sister Eva almost twenty years ago. It does not evoke the dark, post war city Graham Greene and Carol Reed portrayed in their classic film  The Third Man, but rather memories of my father's wiener schnitzel, of sacher torte and the coffee with whipped cream they used to serve at Café Vienna in the old Bismarck Hotel in the Loop.

The only disclaimer is the title of the piece which is a bit misleading. The Danube is neither blue, nor is it particularly beautiful.

Enjoy if you dare:



Happy New Year!