Tag Archives: assassination of John F. Kennedy

The East Wing

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Education, Historical, Personal Values, Social, Striving

November 22, 2020-

On this day, fifty-seven years ago, the trigger was pulled on hope and change in America, as fleeting as it seemed to be under John F. Kennedy. Too many who flew the banner of progress, in the 1960s and ’70s, had their lives cut short by those who had much invested in the status quo.

On that day, I remember sitting in a middle-of-the room seat, in a Study Hall, in the East Wing of Saugus High School. We were attending afternoon sessions, as eighth graders, as our Junior High School had been torched by a disturbed individual, several weeks before. Thus, the high school was the site of double sessions, with the upper level students taking classes in the morning, so as to be able to go their jobs, in the afternoon.

A classmate, who was sitting behind me, asked “Why did you kill the President?” I turned around and looked at him curiously, then noted he was listening to his transistor radio (the predecessor to a cell phone, for the disaffected of our adolescence), through ear buds. All the same, I went back to my reading material.

Several minutes later, the School Counselor came on the Intercom and informed us that President Kennedy had been shot and that classes were being dismissed for the day. I walked home, somberly, and found my sobbing mother, saying he had died in hospital.

The East Wing was itself torched, by the same individual, who was eventually caught by a vigilant school custodian, at our third venue of that year. 1963-64 was, for me, the 2020 of virulent mayhem. There was no microbial pandemic, but I began to wonder who, and what, were next. Five years later, we had our answer.

I will always be fond, though, of the East Wing. All the schools we used that year are now gone, replaced by consolidated school buildings, which the present administration of Saugus Public Schools regards as more efficient. For the sake of the children and youth who depend on that school system, I trust it works out well.

Poisoned By These Fairy Tales

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Posted by on in Community, distraction issues, Historical, impediments, Striving

December 11, 2016, Prescott-

Don Henley included that phrase, in his song, “The End of the Innocence”, in 1989.  It was partly a reaction to what he regarded as the excesses of the Reagan-Bush the Elder years.

I think of it, instantly, whenever an outlandish conspiracy theory surfaces.  I have my own take on such theories, which are always based on fear-gone-wild.  They are a natural outgrowth of the complex levels of secrecy, employed by so many in the power structure.  Nature, and the human mind, abhor vacuums.  Where there is no explanation, a person will provide one of his/her own.  When no credible explanation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy was offered, in which all questions were suitably explained to the public, all manner of explanations began to surface.  It was not long, before every unusual or unsettling event, from the Apollo 13 landing, to the airplane crashing into the Pentagon, was questioned, as to it’s ever having even happened.  Even the wanton slaughter of 26 people, in Newtown, CT, was denied by people with a fair audience- as if 20 children and six adults could actually be alive, and visible, one day- and have never even EXISTED, the next.

Yes, this nation is poisoned by fairy tales- both those invented from whole cloth and those made up by people working for God-knows-who, the end result of which is total, rampant confusion.  Now, we will have four years, during which a man with little political experience has the primary job of leading us out of a wilderness, to which many of his own supporters, and a goodly number of his foes, helped to guide us, in the first place.

May he succeed, even if, especially if, he is not initially so inclined.