{"id":199704,"date":"2021-11-22T12:01:13","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T12:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=199704"},"modified":"2021-11-20T09:07:31","modified_gmt":"2021-11-20T09:07:31","slug":"looking-back-and-looking-forward-with-john-f-kennedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/11\/looking-back-and-looking-forward-with-john-f-kennedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back and \u2018Looking Forward\u2019 with John F. Kennedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

22 Nov 2021 – <\/em>\u201cThe President\u2019s been shot!\u201d he shouted, clamoring his way down the stairs in the dorm.\u00a0 The upper-classman!<\/p>\n

I was making my way to the third floor, and he was rushing down, letting our small world know\u2014startled, young faces peeping from behind closed doors, aghast and in wonder.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I got to my room, and my 2 freshman roommates were staring at the radio, dribbling out news.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2026?\u201d I said, and couldn\u2019t finish my thought.\u00a0 \u201cHow\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n

And the world changed in an instant\u2014the clattering, rumor-mongering mills churned in our dreams. \u00a0It would never be the same again\u2026.\u00a0 November 22, 1963\u2026.<\/p>\n

In about an hour, the deep-throated bells in the watchtower were gonging, gonging<\/em>, gonging<\/em>, signaling mourning, mourning, mourning<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2026?\u201d I wondered now\u2026.\u00a0 And, more wonderingly, \u201cWhy\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a place I like to wander to, and wonder about, these past 5 years: the Kennedy Center, posed majestically on a \u201cgrassy knoll,\u201d overlooking the Potomac River; the fa\u00e7ade of the building inscribed with the words of that doomed soul.<\/p>\n

Is it not a wonder to think that we once had a President who could speak wisely, eloquently, about culture and Art?<\/p>\n

58 years after that nefarious day in Dallas, how our language, purpose and goals have changed!\u00a0 What president, what politician, what commentator, what \u201ceducator,\u201d what \u201cartist\u201d probes the meaning of our lives and \u201ccivilization\u201d now?<\/p>\n

I was not old enough to vote for him\u2014one had to be 21\u2014and my parents were not politically inclined.\u00a0 But I maintained my 1950\u2019s childhood curiosity\u2026.<\/p>\n

Not yet a teen, I had stared at the word \u201cHUAC\u201d in the \u201cDaily News.\u201d\u00a0 HUAC\u2014for \u201cHouse Un-American Activities Committee.\u201d\u00a0 The \u201cHouse\u201d was investigating American actors, playwrights, \u201cartists\u201d who might be involved in \u201cUn-American\u201d (Communist) activities! \u00a0\u201cBut, how can an American be un-American?\u201d I wondered.\u00a0 \u201cIsn\u2019t that a contradiction?\u201d
\nMy father, the 8th<\/sup>, last child of immigrants, a veteran of the Great Depression and World War II, forced a sad, knowing smile.\u00a0 \u201cLife is full of contradictions,\u201d he said softly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And he said it again here: \u201cI look forward\u2026\u201d!<\/p>\n

Like another hero of mine from those terrible decades, like Martin Luther King, Kennedy dared to imagine<\/em>–a better world where men and women could be judged, \u201cnot by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.\u201d\u00a0 A world in which \u201cAmerica\u201d\u2014the incarnation of the highest ideals of the \u201cFounding Fathers\u201d and brave, pioneer women\u2014would not \u201cbe afraid of grace and beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

And still, this visionary, prods us: after the dust of centuries, we will be remembered\u2014not for battles won or lost, but \u201cfor our contribution to the human spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

High talk, inspiring talk\u2014as we almost never hear in these forlorn times\u2026.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhere have all the flowers gone?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Pete Seeger sang\u2026.<\/p>\n

What is our \u201cNew Frontier\u201d now?\u00a0 Sending the masses into space so they can see with their own eyes \u201cthe craters of the moon!\u201d\u2014as one gushing actress-politician giggled to her audience of child actors?<\/p>\n

As a child, I remember a crowd of people standing in front of a window downtown, Queens, New York.\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d my father asked while driving.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s television,\u201d my mother said.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re watching a set in the store.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s tell-a-bizh-on?\u201d <\/em>my younger brother asked, and we laughed.<\/p>\n

Who could imagine the coarsening to come?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe medium is the message,\u201d McLuhan averred.\u00a0 And we tried to find ourselves among the dancing dots on the screen.\u00a0 And, understandably, without proper guides, we got lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy esteemed colleague on the other side of the aisle,\u201d Senator Dirksen said of Senator Ford.\u00a0 And, \u201cMy esteemed colleague\u2026\u201d said Senator Ford of Senator Dirksen.\u00a0 No politician or commentator then alive would dare to condemn half the US population as \u201ca basket of deplorables!\u201d<\/p>\n

Not just what is said, but how the package is wrapped and presented shapes our perceptions, molds the generations.<\/p>\n

Words can soothe.\u00a0 Words can inspire: thoughtfulness; consideration; higher goals\u2026. \u00a0Words can inflame: Mr. Hyde, lurking in our souls.<\/p>\n

Have we lost civility and common decency?<\/p>\n

Before we inundate our children with \u201ccritical\u201d \u201ctheories,\u201d had we not better teach them how to be friends, how to play, good sportsmanship, respect for \u201cthe Other\u201d and for oneself?<\/p>\n

Critically, what role have our \u201cartists\u201d played in our negligence?\u00a0 \u201cAim high,\u201d Thoreau advised; for in the end, we \u201chit only what we aim at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Witnessing the follies of the HUAC hearings, our greatest playwright of that era wrote \u201cThe Crucible.\u201d \u00a0We watched as Arthur Miller catapulted the public back to the horrors of the Salem witch-trials; back to the malignancies of gossip and false accusations.\u00a0 Aiming higher, our artists, educators, commentators, informed and inspired; even elevated some to make their \u201ccontributions\u201d to \u201cthe human spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

One wonders if humankind can ever achieve the balance that the best philosophers in the East and West, and shamans Down Under and here and there, have always praised?\u00a0 Can we balance the understandable desire to advance oneself in this fleeting world with the need to assist humankind to develop its best side?\u00a0 Can we balance the eternal beauty of Nature with the fluctuations of science and enterprise; can we grasp our New Frontier?\u00a0 Or, will we mourn with Yeats:<\/p>\n

\u201cThings fall apart; the center cannot hold;<\/p>\n

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world\u2026<\/p>\n

The best lack all conviction, while the worst<\/p>\n

Are full of passionate intensity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the years that I taught\u2014in an upper-middle class \u201cwhite\u201d high-school in Massachusetts; in a middle-class junior high in San Francisco; in a \u201cblack\u201d junior college in Atlanta; at two prisons in Florida, and in four universities in Florida and \u00a0Japan\u2014at some point I\u2019d write the word, \u201ceducation\u201d on the board and ask my students what it meant.\u00a0 They stared at my chalk marks on the blackboard (an ancient way of teaching then!)\u2014as though they\u2019d never seen such a word before!<\/p>\n

I took an etymological approach and wrote the Latin root, \u201cducere\u201d<\/em> on the board: i.e., \u201cto lead.\u201d\u00a0 And then the prefix, \u201cex\u201d<\/em>: “out,\u201d or \u201cout of.\u201d<\/p>\n

To lead out of what<\/em>?\u00a0 Darkness\u2026 Confusion\u2026 Misunderstanding\u2026 Mistrust. The Labyrinth of ideas and ideals, impressions–twisting and turning–imprinted in our minds and hearts from childhood onward\u2026.<\/p>\n

We are in that Labyrinth now, in this \u201cNew Age\u201d that is always old and always new.\u00a0 And they walk with us now\u2014Kennedy and King and the artists and savants–Miller, Richard Wright, Orwell, Huxley, Margaret Mead, Millay, Loraine Hansberry, Maya Angelou, Helen Keller and all those who have cast light on dark, churning waters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a connection,\u201d Kennedy said, \u201chard to explain\u2026but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the Arts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Have we progressed in the Arts?\u00a0 Where are the great plays now; where are<\/p>\n

our music, novels and Art to capture the angst of this Age?\u00a0 Have we replaced the catharsis of a Sophoclean play, an O\u2019Neil drama, with a cartoon meme?\u00a0 Does the work of a scion of a benighted politician merit the attention of Picasso\u2019s \u201cGuernica\u201d because he has mastered the trick of blowing bubbles of paint through a straw?<\/p>\n

\u201cConnection<\/em>,\u201d Kennedy grappled, \u201chard to explain\u2026but easy to feel<\/em>\u2026between achievement \u2026and progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

One can\u2019t help but wonder: Can we still \u201cfeel\u201d our way to a New Frontier?<\/p>\n

The Internet has accelerated our \u201cconnections,\u201d while corroding our feelings!\u00a0 We need no longer waste our time, arguing with Socrates in the agora<\/em>!\u00a0 The meaning of Life?\u00a0 What is Truth?\u00a0 What is Virtue?\u00a0 What makes a good citizen?<\/p>\n

We can Google an answer, unload a carton of memes, shoot a meme at our Inquisitor, turn on our TV sets and watch faux \u201ccommentators\u201d and mis-communicators hyperbolize the others\u2019 honest doubts, and dehumanize themselves in the process.<\/p>\n

Kennedy was inspired by History, heard the great bells swinging back and forth.\u00a0 \u201cHitch your wagon to a star,\u201d Emerson wrote.\u00a0 And, with similar ebullience, J.F.K. inspired the masses to move forward, to \u201cdream the impossible dream,\u201d to\u2026 to\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026 to\u2026 and dreams were shattered from a \u201cgrassy knoll\u201d in Dallas, from a schoolbook depository, from a mail-order rifle!\u00a0 And the lies and the myths and all bedlam have been exploding ever since.<\/p>\n

We have replaced \u201ceducation\u201d with \u201cindoctrination.\u201d\u00a0 Not leading out of darkness, but imprinting one idea or set of values on the mind\u2014not to be examined, not to be questioned.<\/p>\n

The Age of Pericles was also the age of Socrates who staked his life and reputation on a sunbeam\u2019s, on a candle\u2019s, light: \u201cThe unexamined life is not worth living.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t a \u201ctheory\u201d something to be proven?\u00a0 The word \u201ccritical\u201d can mean \u201cessential,\u201d and it can mean \u201cdangerous\u201d when one is in a \u201ccritical condition.\u201d\u00a0 It can mean open to criticism and review.\u00a0 \u201cCritical race theory\u201d is neither \u201ccritical\u201d nor a \u201ctheory.\u201d\u00a0 It is a replacement of one set of prejudices with another.\u00a0 The inquisitive bias of a Socrates replaced with the inquisitional biases of \u201ceducators,\u201d \u201cjournalists\u201d and\u00a0 \u201cartists\u201d who blow smoke in our eyes and bubbles of paint through straws!<\/p>\n

A real examination of \u201chistory\u201d entails the varying factors that define an age, era or epoch.\u00a0 A simplistic approach is faux <\/em>history, faux <\/em>science, faux <\/em>life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These are a few of the awful and profound challenges we face in our inner and outer worlds!<\/p>\n

In the confounding Industrial Age of Empires and Wars, the poet, O\u2019Shaughnessy wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 each age is a dream that is dying<\/p>\n

Or one that is coming to birth.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a more hopeful time, in the blossoming of the \u201cRomantic\u201d era, Coleridge defined poetry as \u201cthe reconcilement of opposites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can we reconcile the opposites?\u00a0 Reconcile an individual\u2019s striving for the best and highest goals for oneself, one\u2019s family, one\u2019s group with a nation\u2019s, a region\u2019s, a world\u2019s need for peace and order to survive and thrive?<\/p>\n

More recently, but really only yesterday, Robert Frost, a poet who read at Kennedy\u2019s inauguration, reminded us:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019Men work together,\u2019 I told him from the heart<\/p>\n

\u2018Whether they work together, or apart.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Gary Corseri\u00a0is a member of the\u00a0<\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 He is the grandson of Ukrainian-Jewish and Sicilian-Catholic immigrants.\u00a0 Gary has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and his dramas have been produced on\u00a0<\/em>PBS-Atlanta and in universities, high schools and Little Theaters.\u00a0 He has published 2 novels, 1 full collection and 1 prize-winning chapbook of poems.\u00a0 His poems, articles, fiction and dramas have appeared in hundreds of global publications & websites, including:\u00a0 <\/em>Countercurrents, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine, The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times,\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Transcend Media Service<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 He has taught at universities in the U.S. and Japan, and in US prisons and public schools.\u00a0 He has worked as a grape-picker in Australia, a gas-station attendant, and an editor. Contact:\u00a0<\/em>garyscorseri@gmail.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

(A<\/em>ll photos are by Gary Corseri)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22 Nov 2021 – \u201cThe President\u2019s been shot!\u201d he shouted, clamoring his way down the stairs in the dorm. The upper-classman! I was making my way to the third floor, and he was rushing down, letting our small world know\u2014startled, young faces peeping from behind closed doors, aghast and in wonder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":171062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[867,260,2343,1759,70],"class_list":["post-199704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-anglo-america","tag-history","tag-john-f-kennedy","tag-targeted-assassination","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}