The Charlotte News
Saturday, August 15, 1942
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports of an attack by the British Navy on the island and town of Rhodes, over near Troy, just off Turkey. The attack appeared colossal.
The British in India were preparing to put the brakes on further demonstrations by the followers of Gandhi, demonstrating for independence from Britain. Further damage to communications facilities carried with it the prospect of instant death; fines could be imposed on whole communities where sabotage took place.
"Well, old chap, it could have been worse, you know. We might have done what the Nazis did in Lidice. Well, can’t linger. Cheerio. It’s off to the BUF meeting, now. They say Sir Oswald is going to give one boffo lecture tonight. You really should attend."
President Nixon, it would seem, in conjunction with the Governor of Ohio, adopted the tactic in May, 1970.
There is sometimes a penalty to be paid in history for those leaders who have read their history books a little too copiously and assiduously and believe them to be generally establishing precedents for just about anything under the sun which appears expedient of the moment to preserve power in the Chosen One.
Well, his fellows at Duke Law School didn’t dub him "Iron Butt" for nothing.
The Nazis admitted that their report on the Wasp being hit in the Mediterranean was in error, that it was the British carrier Eagle. No doubt, Herr Goebbels sent along a special communique to General Tojo to get his navy cracking to seek out and sink the Wasp to provide perception that Herr Goebbels, and by association, Herr Hitler, were possessed of the faculty of august sooth. They were, after all, in the process of conquering the Caucasian region and thus reaching out for broader appeal to their Japanese and Hindu brothers.
The photo on the front page and its caption tell of the training lesson for the Marines landing the previous weekend on Tulagi and Guadalcanal: a landing from rubber boats onto Solomon’s Island in Chesapeake Bay.
We understand that a reporter on the scene from the Chicago Tribune who threatened to make the maneuver public at the time was promptly larruped, garroted, and then tossed into the Atlantic where he was promptly dispatched by sharks, as a further lesson in learning how to kill the enemy.
Not really. We just made that up.
The editorial page is here. It being a Saturday during the latter portion of the summer vacation months, the editorials for the most part were rehashing that already discussed before and so we feel no need to make comment.
Incidentally, if you have wondered what happened to the Bible quote and whether perhaps we were correct in our assessment that the aberrant fill a few weeks ago, where ordinarily the quote would have been, containing advice to the Rockingham correspondent, was some sort of testing device to see whether readers actually paid heed daily to the Bible quote, and therefore, having been presented thusly without so much as a whimper of question or objection even from the Holy Rolling crowd, decided that their readership must not take much care of the quote of the day, thus eliminated it from the page, it is possible. But, it will return, we assure, having peeked a little ahead, although it appears only sporadically during the next several months.
Perhaps, it will return to daily status after General Patton leads the charge on Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia beginning in early November. Let us hope so.
It may be the case that the editors looked around the world about them and saw it as pitifully incongruous to present daily amid all of the editorials on the war these one or two lines of verse from the Bible.
It being the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and having read the last few days from The New York Times some scattered reminiscences of those who attended the festival, uniformly in those first-hand accounts bemoaning its welter-swelter nature and discounting its spiritually elevating tendencies, instead finding it more or less a bust, an indiscernible morass of people, of existential traffic, of torrential rains, resultant mud, of searches in vain for food, general chaos, interspersed by some little night music that the attendees, dazed in drowsiness and hunger, in wet and tattered raiment, might strain to hear, we thought we would register our own two-cents on the subject, though nowhere near, having only lived it vicariously from 550 miles away a way to the south in North Carolina that summer.
Actually, our vicarious experience, as with most who lived as young people through that era and appreciated the music which was played there, was only lived during the following summer of 1970 when the album and documentary film were released.
And that is the point of our comment. No one, outside perhaps the venue’s local news area, that is the Greater New York City area, probably much heard of Woodstock until the following spring. No one much noted it, we assure you. We did not return to school a few days afterward saying, "Gee, what about that Woodstock up there? Did you catch the buzz? What’s happening?"
In our own case, we were attending particularly gruelling football practices daily and had little energy left--have you ever been forced on a sweltering August afternoon to go on all fours for fifty yards at a clip, turn around and do it again, until you nearly drop from exhaustion, in full football equipment?--to little note the event as its couple of minutes of notoriety on the nightly news passed by our consciousness largely unheeded--as it was for most, young and old alike. We heard no older person say, "Boy, did you see those long-haired hippies in the mud up there? They are all going to hell for sure."
Little there was in print in the local newspaper, maybe a picture of a large group of people, maybe a report on page two or three. But, it was not promoted at the time as some overarching event of consciousness of love and peace and music or some penultimate harbinger bird announcing the imminence of the Millennium. It was just a giant rock festival somewhere on a farm in New York State with a list of performing artists most of whom, though by no means all, were familiar to the younger generation of the time, a short story melding with and meandering among the other, more grave stories of the news of the day. Had it not been for the documentary and the album, no one, we venture, would have long noted it or much cared that it had ever occurred.
But it became a symbol of anti-war protest, not only because of the music and film, but because of the timing of the release of the music and film, immediately after the tragedy at Kent State the following spring prompting nationwide student strikes, including at the University of North Carolina, in general protest not only of the killing of the Kent State students by the National Guard and, hard on its heels, the similar killings of student protesters by the police at Jackson State in Mississippi, but also, more to the point, of the entire secret bombing campaign in Cambodia and of the war itself. Those events heightened and catalyzed to the consciousness of young people draft age or about to become so, as we were, the extent to which our Government would go to quash protest and freedom of speech, freedom of speech exercised on a college campus, generally regarded as the most uniformly convivial of places in the universe of communities, in demonstration against a war which most young people in the country by 1970 believed was not only unjust and without purpose, at least none made clear by the country’s leaders to those who those leaders were charging with the responsibilty to become the new cannon fodder, but one which had become a testament in high relief to the need in humankind to wage war on one’s fellow man, a war with no other discernible purpose.
For by 1970, no one, at least no one not Nixonian in character or who didn't attend "True Grit" with a special sense of awe and sentimental congruence with its lead character actor, believed that the War in Vietnam was a joined contest between Communism and Democracy, that the winner would rule the world, that at stake was the freedom of mankind. It was a passe belief for most, held, if at all, only for a short time, until around early 1967 when the increasing numbers of body bags appearing nightly on the news vividly portrayed to most of us that this was something other than a war of Good versus Evil, that we, the United States, might well be the Evil this time around, following a model outmoded from World War II--even if they were far from the Good.
Woodstock itself was just another large group of people attending a rock concert. But it became a symbol of peace juxtaposed to war. Its music reached out in that direction, as the music chosen to appear on the album was designed so to do, appropriate to its time.
It was the first year of the Nixon Administration which to many of us was in itself a cruel joke on the country, a cruel nightmare resurrected from the past which we thought was moribund after 1962 when Nixon was defeated in the California gubernatorial election and in 1964 when Barry Goldwater and his Conservative movement were so soundly defeated at the polls as to have become a joke, made especially cruel psychologically because the resurrection of Nixon came in the wake of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and then in the spring of 1968, in rapid succession, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.
It was just four weeks after Chappaquiddick, this concert, and the landing of the first man on the moon, each having occurred, fused in our mind, in the same few days between July 17 and 20, 1969.
More tragedy to the Kennedy family, coupled with the nearly obscene notion of President Nixon congratulating Neil Armstrong--for fulfilling a goal set by President Kennedy in the spring of 1961, memorably repeated in the fall of 1962.
The concert came less than a week after particularly brutal murders were reported from the hills above Los Angeles, including that of a well-known actress, wife of a well-known director, at least well-known in each case to young moviegoers.
Something was wrong in the country.
And that something smelled to a lot of us like Richard M. Nixon.
And we were right, of course.
All of that, the pessimism of the time, the passions of the time, the division of the time, the hope of the time for a better world to come, joined to form that spirit which made Woodstock a symbol and causes it to live lastingly in the consciousness of a generation. It wasn’t so much the music. The music, let’s face it, was erratic and, in some cases, downright banal. It wasn’t the pictures of the kids in the mud or the war stories of being there, for being there was not the essence of it.
It was in the aftermath, when most of us of that generation lived Woodstock together the following summer. It was the cultural chafing between the 1960’s and the 1970’s; it was the cultural chafing between the Nixon people and the Kennedy people; it was the cultural chafing between those who were against the war and those who remained solidly in favor of the war; it was the cultural chafing between those who believed in integration of society and those who continued to believe in segregation, who believed that busing was brought on by the Kennedy people, that prayer in schools had been eliminated by the Kennedy people, that the Kennedy people were the "hippies", were rebellious radicals trying to destroy all that was good about America, to turn it into a sea of mud and chaos, that which the Nixon people and Sammy Davis, Jr., and other good ‘uns, were trying to preserve, to turn it into a military concentration camp.
It was all of those things, and, of course, none of those things. Because all of those things, as with any art, are merely projections made by the audience, whether the audience would count itself "Nixon people" or "Kennedy people", or neither, but rather "George Wallace people" or "Gene McCarthy people", or just the apathetic, the cynical, the self-determined dispossessed and disfranchised.
It was a time, and the end of a time. But it was not the beginning of much of anything.
Because it was Nixon’s time. And Nixon, as his worst and most glaring flaw, could never see enough beyond himself to begin. He was constantly getting even with the past.
That was Woodstock and its generation, we suggest.
In any event, in the words of John Belushi in 1973, before anyone knew who John Belushi was, playing various characters, along with some of the other then unknown actors in the musical play out of Chicago, "Lemmings": "The Grateful Dead are dead. And they’re grateful."
Speaking of whom, incidentally, for your information, thirty-something or forty-something, though we knew who the Dead were and had one of their albums, "Workingman’s Dead", we didn’t much like it or listen to their music. And the fact that they were not included on the Woodstock album was no big deal to most rock music fans of the time, an understandable omission, in fact--of the time. Just why you think that the Dead symbolize the 60’s, we still do not understand. They never did. Believe us. Not that they weren’t accomplished musicians and made no good music. They did. But the whole thing got blown way out of proportion somewhere in the early 1980’s and became myth--or meth--beyond control.
But, to understand all that, maybe you had to be there, and understand, too, that it was anything but one big orgy of sex and drugs. It wasn’t. Believe us. It wasn’t.
It was Nixon’s America, for goodness sakes. It is a wonder we survived the ensuing five years, until Congress mercifully put an end to Nixon’s America, at least for all but the most stubbornly persisting, most of whom today are too young to have been more than in diapers in 1969 to 1974, the years in which America nearly became Nazi Germany in fact, apologists and other idiots to the contrary notwithstanding, as they appear on your preferred of the moment cable news channel far too often as "experts" or "thinkers" from "think tanks" trying to make it seem otherwise than it really was--probably because they took too many drugs and went to too many orgies in the eighties, trying to re-create what they perceived was "the Sixties", while having forgotten what Nixon’s America, also a principal, perhaps even overriding, part of the Sixties, was really like, if they ever knew anything about it in the first instance, which is unlikely.
Country Joe McDonald, in our estimate, probably summed it best. But, for the sake of decorum, we shall let you listen to the album. Cheers.
Now, tackle-to-tackle, boys and girls, all fours. We've a war to win.
And, remember:
Difficulties are things that show what men are. Therefore when a difficult crisis meets you, remember that you are as the raw youth with whom God the trainer is wrestling.
'To what end?' the hearer asks.
That you may win at Olympia: and that cannot be done without sweating for it. To my mind no man's difficulties ever gave him a finer trial than yours, if only you will use them for exercise, as the athlete wrestles with the young man. Even now we are sending you to Rome to spy out the land: and no one sends a coward as a spy, for that means that if he but hears a noise or sees a shadow anywhere, he will come running in confusion and saying that the enemy are close at hand. So now if you come and tell us 'The doings in Rome are fearful, death is terrible, exile is terrible, evil-speaking is terrible, poverty is terrible: fly sirs, the enemy is at hand,' we shall say to you, 'Begone, prophesy to yourself, the only mistake we made was in sending a man like you to spy out the land.' Diogenes, who was sent scouting before you, has brought us back a different report: he says, 'Death is not evil, for it is not dishonour'; he says, 'Glory is a vain noise made by madmen.' And what a message this scout brought us about pain and pleasure and poverty! 'To wear no raiment,' he says, 'is better than any robe with purple hem'; 'to sleep on the ground without a bed,' he says, 'is the softest couch.' Moreover he proves each point by showing his own confidence, his tranquillity of mind, his freedom, and withal his body well knit, and in good condition. 'No enemy is near,' he says, 'all is full of peace.'
What do you mean, Diogenes?
'See,' he says, 'have I suffered shot or wound or rout?'
That is the right kind of scouting: but you come back to us and talk at random. Drop your cowardice and go back again, and take a more accurate observation.
What am I to do then?
What do you do, when you disembark from a ship? Do you take the helm and the oars with you? What do you take then? You take what is yours, oil-flask and wallet. So now if you remember what is yours, you will never claim what is another's.
The emperor says to you, 'Lay aside your purple hem.'
See, I wear the narrow one.
'Lay aside this also.'
See, I wear the toga only.
'Lay aside the toga.'
See, I take that off too.
'Ay, but you still rouse my envy.'
Then take my poor body, every bit of it. The man to whom I can throw away my body has no fears for me.
'But he will not leave me as his heir.'
What? Did I forget that none of these things was mine? In what sense do we call them 'mine'? Only as we call 'mine' the pallet in an inn. If then the inn-keeper dies and leaves you the pallets, well and good; if he leaves them to another, that man will have them, and you will look for another. If you do not find one you will sleep on the ground, only do so with a good cheer, snoring the while, and remembering that it is among rich men and kings and emperors that tragedies find room, and that no poor man fills a part in a tragedy except as one of the chorus. But kings begin with a prelude of good things:
Crown high the halls
and then about the third or fourth act come--
O Cithaeron, why didst thou receive me?
Poor slave, where are your crowns, where your diadem? Your guards avail you naught. Therefore when you come near to one of those great men, remember this, that you are meeting a tragic character, no actor, but Oedipus in person.
'Nay, but such a one is blessed, for he has a great company to walk with him.'
I too join the ranks of the multitude and have a large company to walk with.
To sum up: remember that the door is open. Do not be a greater coward than the children, but do as they do. Children, when things do not please them, say, 'I will not play any more'; so, when things seem to you to reach that point, just say, 'I will not play any more,' and so depart, instead of staying to make moan.
--Epictetus, as transcribed by Arrian, 108 A.D.
10-4, 25 or 62.
In other words, as we have made remark before, don't go mistaking paradise for that home across the road.
Anyway, in the summer of 1970, we were busy listening to the music of Woodstock and other music of the time while we constructed the room in which we now set down these words, including the Tudor mantel, replete with two two-dimensional Tudor Roses carved in the clear fir wood opposing each side of the fireplace by ourselves somewhat in bass relief, each eight-petaled Rose recessed slightly into a two-leveled raised round, lots of sawdust and gypsum dust, incandescently reflecting the rain, flying and filling the air and our gradually lengthening hair, and, finally, the laying of the golden magic shag carpet, (the latter long gone). But, for now, since we hear the crickets chirping away in rhythmic response to our tap-tap-tap on the keyboard, indicating either their feeling approval of the sound by which we write, or, alternatively, voicing in unison their displeasure with our disturbance of their due composure, we defer to the latter possibility and so must recess for the nonce. See you Monday. Until then, don't tire yourself unduly playing musical chairs endlessly.
Framed Edition
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