notanotherbookreview

  ACTIVISM Part 2 This is a personal essay through the imperfect filter of memory. I began this series, when a friend asked what the year was like,  how was activism organized. Here's the second part of my answer. It was late August 1969, when I arrived at Syracuse University, then a hard-partying campus. I remember rescuing a naive roomate through a window, after she unknowingly drank quaaludes at a raging frat party. But the war was to intrude on such campus fun and games. That fall we freshman went about our business often oblivious to teach-ins on campus. They were also held in public schools sponsored by local business. Unlike rallies, the purpose was educational. Speakers, usually teachers, gave slide shows explaining the history of Vietnam and the French involvement, current politics and rationales for U.S. involvement. Financial and human costs were updated. (Our body counts kept rising, despite the napalm, we made and dropped) At the end of a teach-in, there wa...

  Borough Hall  Mid-Century Memoir. "What was it like in 1969 when young people tried to remake the world?"  Answers-PART 1 "Normal".  PART 2 "Activism"  next week. This is a personal essay through the imperfect filter of memory. "What was it like in 1969, when young people tried to remake the world? " I was recently asked this and found it difficult to summarize that time, when "normal" became something else.  2022 is also an era of intense social upheaval.  How the "normal" of 1969 spurred serious generational change is useful to understand, especially with conservative groups lobbying to turn back the cultural "clock."  Life  Magazine  featured Haight-Ashbury's hippie mecca, yet racist conservative George Wallace was elected in my high school's mock elections for the 1968 race against Richard Nixon. "Times were achanging" somewhere else than my Philly borough, twenty minutes away from downtow...