Episode 227: Do the Bus Stop
The animus expressed in connection with the Inauguration has made me think about events that happened almost 47 years ago. The catalyst was the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, and then Kent State. Everyone went wild.
A few of us were conservatives then. (Don’t blame me, please. It’s just a statement “du fait”.) And did we get clobbered!
One night five or six of us were having lunch in Adams House. That particular residence hall was “crawling” with SDS (i.e., Students for a Democratic Society). We had somehow forgotten about that. All of a sudden, our table in the refectory was surrounded by yelling SDS’ers. Honestly, we exited about five seconds short of being “set upon”. No kidding. This really happened.
Are you the clothes you wear? Not mostly.
Are you the color of your skin? Not mostly.
Are you your gender? Or “a credit to your gender” (Linda Ronstadt)? Not entirely.
Are you your family’s intra-psychic history? Maybe mostly, but still, not entirely.
You’re a human soul. You’re Ivan Denisovich, and Paul Dombey, and Tevye in “Fiddler”; and you’re Kellyanne Conway. (Wait a minute! But seriously.) I am Ashley Judd.
All these typifications and classifications, these predicates and identity-markers: They’re only half the truth, maybe even at most.
This cast also tells the tale of something revealing which happened to me the other day. A person I saw and met was quite different from the person I had read about on the internet. What truth was the truth about her? Guess I would like to say, the person whom I saw and met.
Hope you like my music today. It’s a long track, mixed by the celebrated Tom Moulton and performed by The Trammps. It’s too good to cut. The cast ends with “Orange Air” by The 5th Dimension. David Zahl got me on to that one.
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