notanotherbookreview

  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...

REVOLUTIONS WITHIN COUNTRIES, FAMILIES AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT--What's the price and who pays? Intense passions fuel revolutions within countries, families and people. Whether destructive or significant breakthroughs (or both), the costs of such challenges are huge and who pays is significant. 2017's Trumpian  revolution began a spectacle of  "disruption" of government fueled by a populist uprising yet funded by conservative elites. This revolution expanded the privilege of wealthy backers, while targeting the health and financial benefits of poor and working class supporters. Strangely, supporters rallied for fairness and an end to  corruption did not seem to be fazed by this reality.  Was  emotional release, the approval of a powerful figure, satisfaction enough? Personality cults aside, fairness and an end to corruption are eternal cries by revolutionaries seeking to topple the status quo, sometimes with a violence that  destroys civilized life. Does anythi...