Never forget.

[kitsap_charles]

Thirty-five years ago, today:

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.

I was just finishing my freshman year in college. Our football team had gone to the Orange Bowl, and the marching band spent a week in Miami Beach. I was discovering the joys of computer programming while aceing Fortran, wasn't married even once, hated Nixon with a passion, hadn't yet smoked my first joint. Jimi, Janis, and Jim were still alive, but the scars of Bobby and Martin's murders remained fresh and raw.

Every night I watched the evening news with a growing fear and dread.

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

I don't recall where I was when I heard the news. It was a Monday, so I was certainly at classes, and had probably stopped at Brady Commons to play bridge with the gang. I was living at a boarding house run by a very conservative family, so never discussed politics with them. Maybe I didn't even find out about it until the next day, in the morning newspaper— the one run by the Journalism School, not the jingoistic city rag.

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are cutting us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.

Once again, our armies are on the march to oblivion. Once again, men and women are dying to no avail in foreign lands, fighting a war that cannot be won. Once again, our so-called leaders impugn the patriotism of anyone who dares to question them. Once again they claim there will be no draft even as recruitment falls and public sentiment turns against this ill-considered venture. Once again, society is ever more polarized; "Love it or leave it" versus "Change it or lose it".

I'm tired.

Why can't I live in a civilized country?

Comments

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Darlin' you're the one we need now. For those of us too young to remember (I was a toddler), you have to be our memory, and remind us this has all gone down before. And what to do since it's come round again.

The thing that amazes me most on the internet is the lack of memory people evince. But then, I stop and realize mine only runs about 30 years, and only on the veriest trivia.

De Toqueville said "America is the only country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

[bigby2k.livejournal.com]

And we yet to have to achieve civilization, and I doubt we ever will.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

Mine is rather longer, and possibly one reason that charlesks and I get on so well is that we share many of the same defining moments. In my case, it's not just a matter of age, but a matter of locus in time as well as place.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Which is why I'm very glad he has you.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm glad I have him, too; he understands.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

it's not just a matter of age

*nods*

I have friends who are older than I, but don't remember a bloody thing.

*sigh*

oh yeah...

[firefly67.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was in school in Albuquerque, having just fled the disastrous dissolution of my first (and best-loved) band and of my life and love in San Francisco...then came this news--and the horrible photograph of the student lying on the ground and another student kneeling beside him, screaming and crying in disbelief... These were our peers--innocent kids--gunned down by those in power... The UNM campus erupted in violence at the news; the National Guard was called in, we barricaded the campus entries to keep the cowboys off campus because they all wanted to come in and kick some "hippie ass"... We had a MASH unit set up in case of injuries--the National Guard came in with bayonets...those boys were no older than we were--one student--a star athlete--did get bayonetted--while he pleaded with them to turn aside... And today nobody seems to remember!!

Just like last night when I sang a new tune of mine for the acoustic collective w/whom I've been meeting these past 3 months... I named this tune 'A Richard Farina Kind of Tune' because the last four lines of it reminded me so much of some of his songs. NOT ONE PERSON THERE KNEW WHO RF WAS,what he'd done in his too-short life; how he had died... THEY'D NEVER HEARD HIS SONGS. DIDN'T KNOW WHO HIS WIFE, MIMI BAEZ FARINA, WAS. HAD NEVER READ 'Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me'.

Well, maybe none of you remember Farina either. But he wrote, among other gems, a tune my high-school boyfriend had introduced me to: Children of Darkness. A couple of lines from it say:

We are the children of darkness and
the prey of a foul command
and now when the light of reason fails
I would offer you my hand...

I'm sitting here with chills all up and down my spine, because I can't ever forget, won't ever forget. I'll be a child of the 60s when I'm 90 years old. I learned very young that the government is not MY friend; doesn not protect MY rights...that America is neither the home of the brave nor the land of the free.

Re: oh yeah...

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe none of you remember Farina either.

I do. I'd bet charlesks does, too, but then, I expect you already knew that.

I was a bit young to be a child of the 60s, but that is nonetheless my era. The place and time in which I grew up ensured that, and made me not only political but politicized. There are things I will never forget. Kent State is one. The Vietnam War protests. March on Washington (I was three, but I was there). People's Park.

Oh, yes, I remember People's Park. I helped plant it.

[bluemoonpnw.livejournal.com]

Why can't I live in a civilized country?


Darlin'? Can you tell me where one IS?

Really. We're kinda stuck here on earth, for the time being anyhow. We all gotta do what we can to make it better where we are. The little stuff does add up.
(still generating the good thoughts towards the little swimmers BTW)
Marti