Saturday, September 17, 2005

My first anti-war protest...plus: Mick Jagger and Happy B'day to Joe from Oregon

Once upon a time…

By the time I had reached nine years old, I understood these two things:
1. The war in Vietnam was not popular
2. Being on TV is a big deal to most people


(Not an actual photo of Michele and I)

Hanging with my friends on Crescent Street…just 2 blocks from the 59th Street Bridge, connecting Queens to the east side of Manhattan, I hatched a cynical scheme to capitalize on the above two facts.


(View of my old neighborhood from the 59th St. Bridge)

About six of us staged an anti-war protest amidst the high volume of motor vehicles streaming down Crescent Street on their way to the city (Queens is one of NYC’s five boroughs but for us, only Manhattan is “the city”). We made signs and posters and held them up to passing cars and trucks as we yelled “stop the war” in our pre-pubescent voices.

“Someone will call the news,” I promised, “and we’ll be on TV tonight.”


(Our protest didn’t draw this much of a police presence.)

One of my fellow radicals wasn’t a regular on the block…a little older than me. I can’t remember his name but I can still see his face when I scolded him for writing: SPOT THE WAR!

Our children’s crusade lasted about 30 minutes...and neither ended the war nor landed us on TV. I should’ve learned some kind of lesson back then, huh?

The End.

Stories, anyone?

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Sympathy for the devil…

Speaking of Vietnam and all that, noted radical Mick Jagger recently said this about the war in Iraq:

“The boys are doing a very professional and a very tough job over there and they aren’t getting a lot of fun. If we were asked to go it would be a very, very serious consideration. Just because I don’t support the policy doesn’t mean I don’t support the troops. That was one of the tragedies of Vietnam.”
(http://tinyurl.com/7pmbl)

Thanks to Gabriele at Cat’s Dream (http://thecatsdream.com) for the Jagger quote.

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Happy Birthday to Joe from Oregon, Our Own Private Vonnegut…

On this day, in 1787, the U.S. Constitution was signed.
(Then again, September 17, 1862 was also “the bloodiest day in American history” at Antietam.)

Hey Joe, I just discovered the Center for Unhindered Living:
http://www.unhinderedliving.com

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Posted on 09/17 at 07:16 AM
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