1950-1959

“Que sera, sera,” as Doris Day sang in my Fifties youth. But then, as I once heard attributed to a dying Tennessee Williams, “All I remember are the little kindnesses,” which might be also be called acts of conscience and compassion. FROM AN AMERICAN STORY. This video is a link from You Tube. All copyrights […]

The closing scene from the movie “On the Beach.” This video is a link from You Tube. All copyrights remain with the original copyright holders.

By the summer of 1963, between my Freshman and Sophomore years, I was absorbed reading the life of Gandhi. As I was reading there was nothing about me that was radical. In another era I might simply have read it and internally cataloged it as history – like Tippecanoe and Tyler too – and put […]

It seems clear in retrospect that Truman’s internal policy was motivated at least as much by politics as by real concern. In fact he writes to Pennsylvania Governor George Earle, “People are very much wrought up about the Communist ‘bugaboo’ but I am of the opinion that the country is perfectly safe so far as […]

Slowly, a strange thing began to dawn on me: you never heard The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, or any of what would be the royalty of England’s rock on their own on broadcast radio. (Unbeknownst to me this had not always been the case. Pirate Radio had filled that void but had been […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4WmBiSA5XU&feature=youtube_gdata_player Dylan hit a nerve for me, opened a door into a trove of barely distant memories when I was a grade-schooler and would be told to huddle under my desk in case of attack. I had grown up with Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove and had lived through the endless grade-B Japanese horror films where […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfibkHlmeag&t=58&feature=youtube_gdata_player When I consider the history that I, my friends, and cohorts have lived, I find I want something that rings true, a history that is comprehensive and makes sense of the times, which captures the spirit I and many others knew to be there, and which could, perhaps, create a bridge from that time […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbiV2Z1Lf5M&feature=youtube_gdata_player Sitting out on the uneven surface of the runway was a tail-dragging twin-engine DC something-or-other, the best — the only — airplane that a last-minute search was able to locate when someone (who knows?) had overslept, and the normal commercial airlines couldn’t manage to get the Stones to the next city on time. It […]

(Though the text from AMERICAN STORY is about Jimi Hendrix and Little Richard – and this clip is with another band – I still think it illustrates it wonderfully) One evening my sister and I cross the black Thames to the Royal Festival Hall, a modern cultural complex. I am excited for we have tickets […]

This video is a link from You Tube. All copyrights remain with the original copyright holders.