"Cada uno sabe por qué llora", dijo encendiendo un cigarrillo cerca de la ventana abierta, para no molestar.
No se pudo comprobar la existencia de sus lágrimas hasta la fecha.
Inmortality
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
A brief reflection on a famous day . . .
Yesterday, November 22nd, was the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
I didn't see it mentioned prominently on these boards, and the NPR story I heard about it wasn't on the assassination, but on the fact that it wasn't being commemorated as it had been in the past.
I had just begun college then, and was moving my textbooks at the college bookstore through the long checkout lines with the other students, when the word came.
I remember being afraid for the country ( I was 18 at the time) and for myself and my family. I briefly walked into the gathering called by the college president in the main theater. Many of the girls were crying.
Kennedy had been a handsome, movie-star president on tv, with a movie-star wife who wore tiny, aspirin-shaped. pastel colored hats.
Their little son, John-John, later to grow up and die in a plane crash
http://www.guardian.co.uk/kennedy/story ... 57,00.html
, saluted his father's coffin as it was conveyed into the military jet. And everyone watched and listened to Walter Cronkite's solemn narration for hours. In fact, most people I knew were solemn, respectful, and imbued with regret.
Later, I saw the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination, read Mark Lane's book ( and several others), became convinced ( and I am still) that the Warren Report was bogus in its attempt to account for the killing.
Oliver Stone's film, "JFK" is an interesting piece of fiction, whose fantasy probes at a more complex relationship among the elements involved in the assassination than does the Warren Report. It's also assembled with a good deal more imagination. Some people would find that a deficit. As an artist I find it a step closer to "truth."
Citizens of the US believed, I think, that Kennedy was a little special among the Presidents. They were ready for a youthful change ( and got it in the 1960's and early 70's) after the staid, but safe Eisenhower years.
Ah, but Tricky Dick ( Ike's protege and sometime rival-- read "RN") was waiting in the wings, and the US got another dose of something else they probably had coming to them.
It seemed my childhood and adolescence were filled with assassinations-- JFK and his brother, RFK, Martin Luther King-- and "lone nut assassins", we were encouraged to believe-- Oswald, Sirhan, and James Earl Ray, who somehow is always referred to by his three names.
I read a biography of him, too. What an unlikeable character.
And there was the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs and, of course, Vietnam, then not quite the monster it became later for all Americans, not just the 58,000 who died there, including some personal friends and acquaintances of mine. I was drafted not once but three times, declared 1A and fit for service, and later medically disqualified.
"Camelot", as JFK's "court" was sometimes called, isn't even a pretense today.
We watch the criminals from the Bush administration ( as we watched the Ronald Reagan-eers), march to the scaffold, or get promoted and mustered out with their retirement bonuses.
Ken Lay, CEO and presider over the Enron debacle
http://www.riskglossary.com/link/enron.htm
once used his 10 million dollar personal stock bonus from the company to "pay down debt" rather than invest, since he was personally worth about 400 million dollars. He, along with other top executives, is said to have received a personal retirement bonus package of about 55 million dollars.
All this while his friends in the legislature made sure the minimum wage held at $5.15/ hour, the lowest in the Western developed world.
So perhaps "Camelot" and its legacy were all fantasy. Probably. It was a good time to be 18 years old and believe dreams came true.
I think all of us really did believe "The torch had been passed to a new generation . . ." One person in that ( and my) generation was George W. Bush. Another was Bill Clinton.
And maybe we all promised somewhere in our hearts ( I was 18, George and Bill were 17) that, from that day forward, we would
( at least some of the time) "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country . . ."
--Z
Yesterday, November 22nd, was the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
I didn't see it mentioned prominently on these boards, and the NPR story I heard about it wasn't on the assassination, but on the fact that it wasn't being commemorated as it had been in the past.
I had just begun college then, and was moving my textbooks at the college bookstore through the long checkout lines with the other students, when the word came.
I remember being afraid for the country ( I was 18 at the time) and for myself and my family. I briefly walked into the gathering called by the college president in the main theater. Many of the girls were crying.
Kennedy had been a handsome, movie-star president on tv, with a movie-star wife who wore tiny, aspirin-shaped. pastel colored hats.
Their little son, John-John, later to grow up and die in a plane crash
http://www.guardian.co.uk/kennedy/story ... 57,00.html
, saluted his father's coffin as it was conveyed into the military jet. And everyone watched and listened to Walter Cronkite's solemn narration for hours. In fact, most people I knew were solemn, respectful, and imbued with regret.
Later, I saw the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination, read Mark Lane's book ( and several others), became convinced ( and I am still) that the Warren Report was bogus in its attempt to account for the killing.
Oliver Stone's film, "JFK" is an interesting piece of fiction, whose fantasy probes at a more complex relationship among the elements involved in the assassination than does the Warren Report. It's also assembled with a good deal more imagination. Some people would find that a deficit. As an artist I find it a step closer to "truth."
Citizens of the US believed, I think, that Kennedy was a little special among the Presidents. They were ready for a youthful change ( and got it in the 1960's and early 70's) after the staid, but safe Eisenhower years.
Ah, but Tricky Dick ( Ike's protege and sometime rival-- read "RN") was waiting in the wings, and the US got another dose of something else they probably had coming to them.
It seemed my childhood and adolescence were filled with assassinations-- JFK and his brother, RFK, Martin Luther King-- and "lone nut assassins", we were encouraged to believe-- Oswald, Sirhan, and James Earl Ray, who somehow is always referred to by his three names.
I read a biography of him, too. What an unlikeable character.
And there was the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs and, of course, Vietnam, then not quite the monster it became later for all Americans, not just the 58,000 who died there, including some personal friends and acquaintances of mine. I was drafted not once but three times, declared 1A and fit for service, and later medically disqualified.
"Camelot", as JFK's "court" was sometimes called, isn't even a pretense today.
We watch the criminals from the Bush administration ( as we watched the Ronald Reagan-eers), march to the scaffold, or get promoted and mustered out with their retirement bonuses.
Ken Lay, CEO and presider over the Enron debacle
http://www.riskglossary.com/link/enron.htm
once used his 10 million dollar personal stock bonus from the company to "pay down debt" rather than invest, since he was personally worth about 400 million dollars. He, along with other top executives, is said to have received a personal retirement bonus package of about 55 million dollars.
All this while his friends in the legislature made sure the minimum wage held at $5.15/ hour, the lowest in the Western developed world.
So perhaps "Camelot" and its legacy were all fantasy. Probably. It was a good time to be 18 years old and believe dreams came true.
I think all of us really did believe "The torch had been passed to a new generation . . ." One person in that ( and my) generation was George W. Bush. Another was Bill Clinton.
And maybe we all promised somewhere in our hearts ( I was 18, George and Bill were 17) that, from that day forward, we would
( at least some of the time) "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country . . ."
--Z
-
Doreen Peri
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14598
- Joined: July 10th, 2004, 3:30 pm
- Location: Virginia
- Contact:
Hi Arcadia!
I just put the spanish text into Altavista Babelfish Translations and this is what came back in English. - http://babelfish.altavista.com/
" "Each one knows why it cries", it said igniting a cigarette near the opened window, not to bother. The existence of its tears could not be verified to date."
Is that close?
I just put the spanish text into Altavista Babelfish Translations and this is what came back in English. - http://babelfish.altavista.com/
" "Each one knows why it cries", it said igniting a cigarette near the opened window, not to bother. The existence of its tears could not be verified to date."
Is that close?
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests