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Pete Hamill's letter urging Bob Kennedy to run for President

2008-06-12T18:22:00Z

Dear Bob:

I had wanted to write you a long letter explaining my reasons for why I thought you should make a run for the Presidency this year. But that’s too late. I read in the Irish Times this a.m. that you had made a hard announcement, and that small hope is gone, along with others that have vanished in the last four years.

I suspect that all nations have their historical moment, some moment when it all seems to have been put together as an idea: our moment was 1960–63. I don’t think it’s nostalgia working or romanticism. I think most Americans feel that way now.

The moment is gone now, and we have grown accustomed to living in a country where nobody would protest very much if Jack Valenti replaced John Gardner.

I wanted to say that the fight you might make would be the fight of honor … I wanted to say that you should run because if you won, the country might be saved … If we have LBJ for another four years, there won’t be much of a country left. I’ve heard the arguments about the practical politics which are involved. You will destroy the Democratic Party, you will destroy yourself. I say that if you don’t run, you might destroy the Democratic Party; it will end up nationally, the way it has in New York, a party filled with decrepit old bastards like Abe Beame, and young hustlers, with blue hair, trying to get their hands on highway contracts, It will be a party that says to millions and millions of people that they don’t count, that the decision of 2,000 hack pols does. They will say that idealism is a cynical joke; that hard-headed pragmatism is the rule, even if the pragmatists rule in the style of Bonnie and Clyde.

I wanted to remind you that in Watts I didn’t see pictures of Malcolm X or Ron Karenga on the walls. I saw pictures of JFK. That is your capital in the most cynical sense; it is your obligation in another, the obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on those walls. I don’t think we can afford five summers of blood. I do know this: if a 15-year-old kid is given a choice between Rap Brown and RFK, he might choose the way of sanity. It’s only a possibility, but at least there is that chance. Give that same kid a choice between Rap Brown and LBJ, and he’ll probably reach for his revolver.

Again, forgive the tone of this letter, Bob. But it’s not about five cent cigars and chickens in every pot. It’s about the country. I don’t want to sound like someone telling someone that he should mount the white horse; or that he should destroy his career. I also realize that if you had decided to run, you would face some filthy politics, and that there are plenty of people in the country who resent or dislike you.

With all of that, I still think the move would have been worth making, and I’m sorry you decided not to make it.

Tumbling exercises

2007-11-20T22:40:00Z

No not like in gym class. I'll be blogging a tumblr for a bit to see if it's a fit. t.populi.st.

Dance on vimeo for to start

2007-11-12T15:04:00Z

My first ukulele strum and sky

2007-10-23T05:00:00Z

Scarlett Johannson: Cognitive Dissonance

2007-10-17T02:55:00Z

“There does seem to be a mistaken belief out there that I am sexually available somehow..."

Love Comes To Me

2007-10-17T02:39:00Z

Is there such a thing as lyric diagramming, as with sentences?

This song reminds me of that book, The Alchemist. Inquire within for the whole concert.

<embed src="/mp3player.swf" height="20" alt="Love Comes To Me" width="270" />
Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Harem Scarem Live at Queen's Hall Edinburgh Scotland

holes and hills

2007-10-16T06:11:00Z

it is very easy to carry a shovel
in to the yard and to break ground.
the pick and dig of green velour
breaks crisply under the sharpness
of even the dullest blades.
but for the piling on of that earth, dies as it
mounds round like some gradual pompeii
before the screams and witless scrambles
that fell back to earth from such high places.

HD video on the internets?

2007-10-12T21:23:00Z

Vimeo just launched HD quality service…

Check it out full screen with Spider in Front Yard.

Here I Go Again

2007-10-07T21:42:00Z

<center><object height="125" width="300"><param></param><param></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lZ6jiZDvX0g" height="125" width="300"></embed></object>
<object height="150" width="325"><param></param><param></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4pVlE3QUt9o" height="150" width="325"></embed></object></center>
Rose Polezani

Courtney: Living with anorexia

2007-10-04T01:06:00Z

Article: In defense of the 50mm lens

2007-10-03T15:22:00Z

The following is a terrific piece ‘in defense’ of the classic kit lens that used to come with all cameras. Now the kit lens tends to be some 28-80mm with indecent glass. I remember my first 50mm lens. It came with my first SLR, a Pentax Super Program. I loved that camera.

So, as I calculate buying my next camera, no doubt a digital, I’m beginning to reminisce about the simplicity of it all back then. That Pentax used a watch battery that I can only remember replacing once in multiple years of use.

The Forgotten Lens by Gary Voth

Kate Micucci - Dear Deer

2007-10-02T18:47:00Z

Darlin' You Send Me

2007-10-02T00:38:00Z

Another Uke post, though if I had to choose one this’d be it. “Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me on Uke by Jeremy Warmsley.

Ukulélé Session Calexico

2007-10-02T00:25:00Z

Click through for video.

Btw: In Our Time's new season

2007-09-27T21:41:00Z

In Our Time is back. Whew. It’s been a long summer.

This week:

Of all the names in ancient philosophy, Socrates is one to conjure with. Born in 469 BC into the golden age of the city of Athens, his impact is so profound that all the thinkers who went before are simply known as pre-Socratic.

In person Socrates was deliberately irritating, he was funny and he was rude; he didn’t like democracy very much and spent quite a lot of time in shoe shops. He claimed he was on a mission from God to educate his fellow Athenians but has left us nothing in his own hand because he refused to write anything down.

Contributors

Angie Hobbs, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University

David Sedley, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University

Paul Millett, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge