4/4 walking in memphis

Thinking about historical events today. I'm still doing history lessons in E3H (because what else is English for?) and I'm also reading Stephen King's 11-22-63, about a man who discovers he can time travel back to the years before Kennedy was shot and decides to try to prevent the assassination. Then I looked at the date and realized it's April 4...the day M L King was shot back in 1968. No one will ever convince me that those two events are not linked. If Oswald never kills Kennedy, Ray never kills King and Sirhan never kills Robert Kennedy. Period. It's the domino effect, started by one crazy jackass who fashioned himself as some kind of heroic figure.

I went to the Fifth Floor Museum at the Texas School Book Depository once, where they have all sorts of exhibits about Kennedy and Oswald. They even have a replicated version of his sniper's nest at the window from which he took the shots. That day scarred the country and it scarred me--only six years old at the time but I felt it powerfully anyway. The country's scars have never healed, have only deepened with time, solidified into something ugly and unrecognizable.

The protagonist of King's story keeps saying that he finds life in the 1950s thoroughly enjoyable because it is a much simpler, more trusting time with better food, less development, etc. He admits the pollution and the omnipresent cigarette smoke and the poorer health service, but prefers it anyway. He loves the lack of computers, which he quickly realizes he had become "addicted" to back in 2011. I think he is probably right. Life was probably better then. But I think what started the change was not anything recent; it was three bullets fired in Dallas on November 22, 1963. We've been on a long, terrible fall ever since.

Film: We finished "Midnight in Paris" and discussed it a bit. More tomorrow plus the Sound chapter. Bring your books.

E3H:  History lesson redux; caught up to the start of the play and began the reading: how Shakespeare connected the witches and Macbeth from the outset.

E2CP: RW today. You might not have another full one, considering the amount of time wasted in this one. WW tomorrow. Don't waste that.

WORD OF THE DAY*:       VENERABLE
* Click word for information.


Tomorrow's Conferences:Willie, Tommy W

Great song:



Bizarre people. (I really couldn't even watch #1.)