(I wrote this 19 years ago during a trip to New York.)
I think my traveling companion has had a good trip. We interviewed her stuffy, Hugs, who revealed this has indeed been good so far.
Julia is seven and my sixth child. She is in line to become an aunt in three months, when I will become a Grandpa. When life is kind enough to span enough decades, you get to do what I've done, and that is to take all six of my children on at least one business trip with me.
How much they’ll remember of the actual content of these trips is questionable. Julia yesterday listened as Tom Hayden -- the primary author of the Port Huron Statement that launched Students for a Democratic Society in the'60s, and who is now in his 60s -- discussed in our lunch meeting whether it is time for progressives to issue a new manifesto.
Others in the room, whose memories or at least whose studies reach back to the '30s and '40s, debated the meaning of the word "liberal." Hayden, as an elder statesman for my generation, the Baby Boomers, rejected liberals, as we all did. Instead, we considered ourselves "radicals."
But, as American radicals in the '60s, we were not Communists. This is a distinction the establishment of the time couldn't handle: Unlike earlier generations of American progressives, we were not immigrant revolutionaries, but the homegrown kind. Even those among us who were "red diaper babies," i.e., the children of Communist Party members, identified with the New Left’s ideas, the kinds of things expressed in the Port Huron Statement, my copy of which I occasionally pull out to show younger people, few of whom have ever even heard of it.
When I first visited Mississippi, 38 years ago, those of us with long hair and northern license plates could only stop for gas or food at certain pre-arranged locations throughout the state. This was literally a mater of life or death at that time. Water fountains and bathrooms were still labeled "white" or "colored," and other reminders of racial segregation were everywhere.
My readings on those first few trips through the Deep South included W.E.B. Dubois' The Souls of Black Folk, where I learned the words to the old slave song, "Oh Freedom!", which I have sung to all of my kids to help them get to sleep at night these past 30 years.
Maybe, once he arrives, I'll sing it to my grandson too.
(This story was from 2006.)
HEADLINES:
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Trump and Putin End Alaska Summit Without Cease-Fire Deal on Ukraine (NYT)
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Why Russia Sold Alaska to the U.S. (NYT)
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No. 2 House Democrat Katherine Clark calls Gaza war a "genocide" (Axios)
US military deploying forces to southern Caribbean against drug groups (Reuters)
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott immediately calls second special session for redistricting (Politico)
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AI is having some relationship issues (FT)
A darker side of the artificial intelligence revolution. (Reuters)
What If A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This? (New Yorker)
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