**LIFE UNFOLDING THROUGH THIS OCTOGENARIAN LENSE**…that is, life as it seems to have happened

When I was studying history in Graduate School in my 20s, long ago…I had no idea how much ‘History’ I would actually be living through my first 8 decades. I can testify that not much was actually happening in those first two decades (of the 1940s & ’50s)…well, except for Rock N Roll, of course. That was game-changing!

As a shy, bespeckled, nerdy teenager I tried to blend into the woodwork generally…but I vividly recall leaving the theater after seeing the movie “Blackboard Jungle” physically ecstatic…as the sounds of “Rock Around the Clock” (by Bill Haley and His Comets) was still throbbing through my bones and blood. 

Something had shifted…forever. A huge part of the old world…with its Big Band sounds and Perry Como…had decomposed and disappeared.

Instead, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddley led the way into a new paradigm. (Yes, Elvis was the most popular…but I did not resonate that much with him.)

Music is but a slice…albeit a joyful one. I grew up in Apartheid America…as has been experienced in various countries at various times around the world.  For me that was Jim Crow Texas in the 1940s & ’50s. Perhaps not as harsh as Mississippi or Alabama. I don’t know…being a White boy looking in from the outside. Regardless, the racism felt pretty solid from my perspective. 

Black & White restrooms and water fountains, segregated movie theaters (Whites on the main floor; Blacks in the balcony.) Restaurants, of course; Blacks had their own. Awareness of bus seating at that time is fairly high, thanks to Rosa Parks. Don’t recall knowing about any integrated churches.

In “Brown v. Board of Education”, the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional. “Separate but equal” could no longer be practiced.  But society was slow to change. I never went to any level of public school with Black students or teachers.

Indeed, I almost never encountered Blacks in my life. In my teens I worked Summers for my dad in housing construction on a small crew doing roofing or applying asbestos shingles [nobody ever mentioned “Don’t breathe the dust in”] to the sides of mushrooming post-War houses.

On the work site I would pass by the Black workers and we would nod at each other. Occasionally a “Hi” would be spoken…but I never actually talked to anyone who was not White, like me.

Separation was real.

My father was the superintendent on large scale housing projects in turning hundreds of acres of farm land into one-story houses. For a number of years, only Blacks would buy those houses. Segregated housing was the defacto law of the land for a long time.


In my third decade being alive, however, ‘Things begin to ‘Take Off’. In the first Big Event of my life (not counting Pearl Harbor being bombed a month before my birth that brought us into World War II…)

1960: First Televised Presidential Debate Airs…between Kennedy and Nixon, on all TV networks (only three networks existed in 1960) and radio. Nixon is visibly pale and badly attired, while Kennedy seems tan and relaxed. Political campaigning is suddenly a new ballgame…in what was a quite close election.

President Jack Kennedy assassinated in suspicious circumstances in Dallas, 1963. 

1964: President Lyndon Johnson is drawn deeper into Vietnam conflict…with lies to the American people steadily being revealed as time goes on. 

1964-65: Civil Rights come to forefront in this country…as Black leadership reflects to us the inequity and injustices of our society. Martin Luther King captures our attention with his speeches and actions.Somehow, he seems to speak to our very souls in his quite short life.
 
1965: Johnson approves ‘Rolling Thunder’ in February, erroneously believing that a program of limited bombing in North Vietnam will deter support for Vietcong. Rolling Thunder continues for three years and eight months, involving 305,380 raids and 634,000 tons of bombs. Results include: 818 pilots killed and hundreds more captured; 182,000 civilians killed in North Vietnam.  [Reminder: the United States started this war. We did not react to aggression or being harmed. We simply had political and military objectives…and, therefore, did whatever we felt like doing.  Close to 3 million Vietnamese were killed. 300,00 Cambodians; perhaps 50,000 Laotians. 58,000 Americans killed.  Many, many more injured and permanently disabled.]

1965: Black leader Malcom X assassinated (age 39)

1965: Anti-Vietnam war “Teach-Ins”  begin at many college campuses around the country. A friend of mine and I organized a couple at North Texas State University, where we questioned the goals and execution of the war.

1965: Medicare begins for people 65 and older. The intention was for the age to drop to 55, then 45, and so forth ever so often. It has never been lowered and the wealthiest portion of the population is now calling for the age to be raised steadily up to 70…apparently, to keep old geezers working.

1968: Martin Luther KIng (age 39) assassinated in suspicious circumstances…after he began speaking against the Vietnam War…and began speaking also for the poor Whites being drafted to be shipped off to that increasingly unpopular war. (He was as progressive a voice in this country as I have heard in my lifetime. Of course, most of his most radical speeches were never heard by ordinary people.)

1968: CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, known as America’s “most-trusted man,” turns against the Vietnam War. That has huge ripple effects. 

1968: Senator Robert Kennedy (age 42) assassinated in suspicious circumstances…after winning the California Presidential Primary. (He was perhaps the second most progressive voice that I am aware of hearing in my lifetime. There was a sense that perhaps uppedity politicians and preachers would not continue to be too bold, nor too loud in critiquing the society going forward. That strategy seems to have paid off for any anti-progressive sentiments.)

1969: A one-day nationwide action, the Peace Moratorium is the largest demonstration in U.S. history…with over two-million participants.  Protestors include many first-time activists. Events include religious services, street rallies, public meetings, school seminars, and marches.

Later that year, a company of US soldiers goes berserk in the Vietnam hamlet of My Lai and massacre hundreds of unarmed civilians, including women, children, and the elderly. 

That wanton killing highlights the massively tragic destruction that occurred not only in Vietnam but also neighboring Cambodia and Laos as unimaginable magnitudes of American bombing continued to destroy the countryside and fabric of their society for many years.


I am still only 27 at this point…and dramatic change is really getting ready to explode. By 1982 or so, personal computers start creeping into the culture. In the 1990s, yes the Internet slowly begins emerging but I recall it often being so slow that I would log off and try again in a few hours…hoping that it would no longer be so constipated.

Political and economic dysfunctionality begins to grow in 1980. There were once only a handful of billionaires. The top income earners paid 91% of their upper-most income in taxes, and we had a vibrant middle class. One wage earner could support an entire family on that one income…buy a house, send children to college, take vacations, etc.

A quite different reality than most of us have experienced.

So, I now look out over these United States and view a largely failed state:
a country doing almost nothing about climate catastrophe,
nor financial inequality
…with a largely non-functioning Congress and
a largely non-functioning Executive system,
a largely non-functioning judicial system as well
as a largely non-functioning press and news media (the so-called Fourth Estate that has historically helped facets of the three branches of government stay balanced over the years)
…back when it was actually, you know, functioning. )

[I sent it to you really for the first part. Do not know if I have ever told my sons about Jim Crow Texas that I grew up in…which is such a surreal recollection. I also had a sense that if people our age never tell the history of what we grew up in…will no-one ever really have a flavor…a scent…of it? Or, will it just all fade away.

[From a “spiritual” perspective, yes…it will. But there is also the axiom that ’those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”…and I would love if my sons (and any grandchildren) do not have to do that!]

But you certainly don’t need to read my perspective of American history! Although I do wind up speculating that the USA seems something like a “failed state” now…I suspect partly because of the immense harm “we” have done to so many other countries over the past 80 years. 

Karma, perhaps, especially when so many Americans ignore the facts of our history. ]