Bob Herbert has an essay today on this being the 40th anniversary of 1968 (http://tinyurl.com/22cexv). We think things are bad today, and they are, but they weren't so rosy back then, either. As Herbert notes, MLK and RFK were assassinated. And then there was the Democratic convention. Paris. And I was arrested and tossed into Cook County Jail, too. Even so, it didn't seem so desperate a time as it now seems to me.
Maybe because there was still innocence and hope then, and revolutionary expectations. There actually was a counterculture. We weren't debating how to afford 42" TVs to keep up with our neighbors. We were thinking of living in self-sustaining communes. The Sound of Music was the most popular musical, compared to today's musical in the movies: the utterly hopeless Sweeney Todd. The self-immolation of Buddhist priests was horrifying then, while today we have become inured to suicide in the news entirely.
I suppose I should start writing a piece about being at the Democratic Convention, but I don't think I could recover my sense of enthusiasm. Maybe I'll just watch Ikiru instead.
Maybe because there was still innocence and hope then, and revolutionary expectations. There actually was a counterculture. We weren't debating how to afford 42" TVs to keep up with our neighbors. We were thinking of living in self-sustaining communes. The Sound of Music was the most popular musical, compared to today's musical in the movies: the utterly hopeless Sweeney Todd. The self-immolation of Buddhist priests was horrifying then, while today we have become inured to suicide in the news entirely.
I suppose I should start writing a piece about being at the Democratic Convention, but I don't think I could recover my sense of enthusiasm. Maybe I'll just watch Ikiru instead.
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