posted on November 10, 2008 11:07:10 PM new
My husband wrote this to our three grown children; it speaks for me as well, and I thought some here would like the perspective of a 71-year-old:
"Hi, kids–
"Add my thanks to Doug for supplying us the Daily Kos video from Election Night. It conjured the feelings (and tears) I recall from that August day in 1963, when I had nothing to do but lie in a hospital bed and live vicariously through the March on Washington.
"That was the era when I came of age politically, caught up in the Kennedy wave, which for all its defects (but in contrast with the Nixonian fearmongering of the day) reinforced what I’d been taught in school about American ideals and patriotism. As the 1960s unfolded, it seemed the USA was at last on the brink of living up to its founding principles. A simultaneous, amazing outburst of creativity in fields as different as the arts and the sciences seemed to validate the hope that humans unleashed could work wonders on this earth.
"Throughout most of my career I had a tiny banner on my office wall that said it’s easier to fight for one’s principles than live up to them. In my view, as a nation we came to the brink in the 1960s, but decided that enacting our ideals would be too inconvenient and costly, so we turned away to protect private interests. The main lesson we seemed to have learned from World War II was that we could solve anything by fighting. Sure enough, we soon had to endure a wave of war, assassination, and riot that has poisoned the nation ever since. (I was reminded of this just last week, listening again to the Smith Brothers conversations, as the family’s two war veterans, uncles Ben and Bruce, decried the insanity of every war the USA has involved itself in since 1945.)
"Another of my most vivid memories is from that infamous summer night, when the world’s eyes last focused on Grant Park in Chicago. Until then, my image of the park had been shaped one euphoric night a decade earlier, when I joined another multitude to attend Van Cliburn’s homecoming concert, after his unexpected victory in the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. But in 1968 I was confined to a Reno motel room at the end of a day’s work and had nothing to do but absorb the disastrous climax of the Democratic Convention. Hope ended that night, so decisively I was driven to vote for Nixon. (Only once, but I still have a hard time believing it!)
"In the spring of 2004, well before his convention speech, I started reading about Barack Obama and sensed something intangible that reminded me of the spirit of the ‘60s. A tiny spark of hope was lit again. But the subsequent campaign seemed interminably frivolous. Spoken words lack the self-corrective discipline provided by the experience of seeing your own silly phrases stare back at you, unblinking, from a printed page. (I was reminded repeatedly of this in the last few days, as I reviewed the proof sheets of my book for the publisher.)
"So I rarely pay attention to TV. But just in passing by the set this fall, I noticed a significant contrast: Almost every clip of a McCain or Palin sound bite evoked a chorus of boos; every Obama sound bite elicited cheers. The election indeed was setting up a defining moment. The country, it seemed, could turn in a positive direction or continue to deteriorate for the rest of my lifetime, and the outcome was frighteningly uncertain. Then, Tuesday night, you who grew up during this post-1968 dark era in American history finally got your chance to experience hope full-blown. For me, the Grant Park scene neutralized the bad memories that had lingered with me, while the USA wandered for 40 years deeper and deeper into a wilderness of its own destructive choosing.
"But as Doug observed (and Obama blessedly emphasized), we’ve now merely regained our footing and can begin to see the next ridge on the horizon. I thought of this Saturday, while taking time out for one of my absurd 20-mile hikes up one side of San Jacinto Peak and down the other. It was a perfect day, warm, calm, and clear, and from the peak I got a glimpse of what Southern California used to be like, all the way to Catalina and San Clemente islands in one direction and Mexico in another. Then yesterday morning I woke up to find myself in pea-soup fog, overtaken by the first serious winter storm of the season.
"Please forgive my carrying on at such length. Perhaps I’m being affected by listening again, while I write, to the Christmas Day 1989 concert in Berlin, where one of Leonard Bernstein’s last acts was to lead a pickup orchestra of East and West German musicians in Beethoven’s 9th – my generation, after all, never imagined we’d live to see the end of the Cold War. Now just maybe we have a chance to take a fresh look at some of the basic incongruities in American life. Why, for example, should access to health care be tied to employment? Why should civil government tie rights of association to an essentially religious ritual like marriage? Why should someone as lucky as I pay essentially no more for publicly subsidized medical care than one less fortunate? And so forth (to echo Kurt Vonnegut).
"This morning the sun rose brightly again, exposing the beauty of snowy crags ringing the valley around us. This time, let’s hope, it truly is Morning in America."
posted on November 10, 2008 11:24:33 PM new
And thank you, Pixi. My husband is a treasure, a really wonderful guy and a good writer. (You can tell I'm proud of him.)
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posted on November 11, 2008 05:32:48 AM new
Thank you Roadsmith, your husband has a gift.
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