Wednesday, June 06, 2018

And Thereby Hangs A Tale


Robert Kennedy died fifty years ago today. It seems so long ago. 1968 was a tumultuous year in the United States. Two months before Kennedy's death, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Two months after his death, the streets of Chicago erupted in revolution.

At home in Montreal, I listened to Pierre Elliott Trudeau say things like:

Perhaps the rediscovery of our humanity, and the potential of the human spirit which we have read about in legends of older civilizations, or in accounts of solitary mystics, or in tales of science fiction writers - perhaps this will constitute the true revolution of the future. The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.

In the United States, Bobby Kennedy was quoting George Bernard Shaw:

Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?"
I dream things that never were and say, "Why not?"

The revolution fizzled and the counter revolution has taken hold. Donald Trump is president. And, on Friday morning, Doug Ford may be premier of Ontario.

And thereby hangs a tale.

Image: Baby Boomer Stories


6 comments:

The Mound of Sound said...


To borrow a shopworn line from every American school shooting tragedy, Owen, our "thoughts and prayers" are with you. Maybe these are straws we must load onto the camel's back until the corrupt dromedary breaks and we can begin anew.

Or as Eric Idle would put it, "Always look on the bright side of life." https://youtu.be/SJUhlRoBL8M

Owen Gray said...

Idle's song is the song of a man who has faced tragedy and can still laugh at life, Mound. There's something to that.

John B. said...

I always thought the title was appropriate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvtpHdHPeg8&list=PLf8wmOjinoClJfd11UbyrUUw-KGewNwXv

I prefer it to the recent CNN offering. Maybe it's the nostalgia factor.

Owen Gray said...

I'm sorry, John, I can't seem to bring the clip up. Is there an actual title I can use?

John B. said...

It's "1968: A Crack in Time".

Owen Gray said...

Thanks for the reference, John. Yes, it was a crack in time -- one of those years that revealed that life was, indeed, full of sound and fury. But it signified so much more than nothing.