Robert F. Kennedy announces death of Martin Luther King Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated two months later.

That was greatness.  Listen and see if you can feel the compassion in his voice.  Then you may have an inkling of what we lost in 1968.

I went from my home in Connecticut to New York on a pilgrimage to St. Patricks.  We waited and shuffled for hours in line just to have perhaps 60 seconds in his presence.

Those days.  That year, are forever etched in my mind and act as a reference point for life.  There was life before 1968 and life after 1968.  Nothing was the same.  Nothing would ever be the same again.

1968.  The year that changed everything.  

The year innocence was lost.  

HOWL

by Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,

I try to revisit Howl once a year because it has never lost relevance.

Howl was 50 years old in 2006. The reading of Howl in S.F.  helped to launch the Beat generation which in turn led to my generation, in part by turning on us little brothers.

From the World Socialist Website http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr200 7/gins-a05.shtml

Last year(2006 ed.) marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of American poet Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century. Very few poems sell over a million copies and get translated into virtually every language in the world. Where a generation could repeat from memory that two roads "diverged in a yellowed wood" that may at other times be "lovely, dark and deep" though there be miles to go before you sleep, so the laconic opening line of "Howl," "I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness," is widely known.

The poem has been annotated, every episode labeled by Ginsberg scholars, who have also written fat biographies and testify to Ginsberg's greatness in documentaries and the better web sites supporting American education. The tykes at the elementary school near the boarding house where "Howl" was pecked out on a second-hand typewriter in 1955 enter a new century with an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Garden, where annually during National Poetry Month children recite their own compositions. There was a "Transatlantic Howl" employing major universities and the resources of the Web. But undoubtedly, the central event in "Howl's" anniversary year was the widely reviewed collection edited by one of many Ginsberg secretary/editors, Jason Shinder, The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later.

A portion of the great work.

HOWL

by Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,
alcohol and cock and endless balls,

It continues on the flip side.

Welcome
Welcome all to the Clinton Supporters Results Watch Party.

Tonight is a special night here in the Hampster tank.  Tonight we are celebrating the Kentucky Derby and the Filly who gave her all, just to collapse on the home stretch.

Tonight we toast the memory of Eight Belles a courageous horse who ran against the boys and ran hard.  They bumped her and tried to crowd her out but she kept going.  They ganged up on her and she kept going.  She never gave up, until they put her down.

To Eight Belles, a one of a kind horse.  

Today I was a delegate at my New Hampshire Democratic State Convention.  As the Chair of Vice for my town Democratic committee, I am an Automatic Delegate.  Cool huh?

But before I get to my day at the convention, I'd like to wish Ted Kennedy well.  He is a lion of our party and as a fellow Democrat I must say the news of his illness hit me in the gut.  I was reading the news on my Treo while crazy Democrats were trying to tack all kinds of amendments onto the party platform.  Like most of these meetings the hard work is done ahead of time and the schedule is tight.  Dean was due at 1 and Jeanne Shaheen was also coming in to speak.  When I read my Treo I went up front and grabbed Ray Buckley, our chairman.  I told him about Kennedy and that I thought he might want to tell the assembly, knowing that he was looking for a way to stop the useless bickering.  He shut us up, had us all stand and told the news that he thought really was a little more important than our bickering.  The meeting moved along just fine after that.

So, I sat in on a session about using new media.  The Panel was Dean Barker and Laura Clawson of Blue Hampshire and Nate Thames of Act Blue sitting between them. Laura is of course Miss Laura of dKos fame.

http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh146 /NewHampster/Photo_051708_002.jpg

More of Laura and Howie Dean on the flip side.

Welcome all to the home stretch.  A series of primaries the Obama thinks don't matter.  A series of voting days that the Obama is ignoring because he thinks those voters don't count.

Well at this Party we hope to be celebrating another huge win by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.  A win in a swing state the democrat must win in November.

This is my house people.  Please respect the furniture.  Don't step on Kitty our 20 pound cat.  He tends to lash out at strangers.

No crashers allowed.  Ask nicely and we may allow you to stay and have a drink, but seriously this is a party without trolls.  No hides either because we're all just here to have fun.

You can leave the TRs in the den to your left.

KWISATZ HADERACH: "Shortening of the Way." This is the label applied by the Bene Gesserit to the unknown for which they sought a genetic solution: a male Bene Gesserit whose organic mental powers would bridge space and time.

Is Barack Obama the long awaited
Kwisatz Haderach?

I just read how Fergus Cullen, Chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party thought he was being funny and family friendly by putting this in their newsletter.

HUMOR (Send your family-appropriate political jokes to fergus@nhgop.org):

Almost seven years ago I sat, as did millions of other Americans, and watched as our government underwent a peaceful transition of power. At first, I felt a swell of pride and patriotism as I watched George W. Bush take his oath of office. However, all that pride quickly vanished as I later watched the Clintons board Air Force One for the last time. I saw 21 Marines, in full dress uniform with rifles, fire a 21-gun salute to the outgoing President and first lady. It was then that I realized how far America's military had deteriorated under the Clinton administration. Every last one of them missed.

Thanks to Blue Hampshire for the story of Democratic Chair Ray Buckley's outrage over this incredibly stupid, sophomoric humor.
Chairman Buckley's Post