38 years ago today - Bobby's funeral train rolled through NJ

[Jersey Devil]

on its way to his final resting place in Arlington, VA



More pics - http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0108/train_index.htm

[Botany]

1. Thank you J.D.

Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

[dipsydoodle]

6. Quite appropriate and a personal favorite

best link I could find at short notice : http://www.ukuleledisco.com/cityofno

[Greeby]

2. Dayum, I'm gonna start bawling again

:cry:

[saltpoint]

3. Oh, my. Those photos are powerful, Jersey Devil.

A verse from Mary Chapin Carpenter's song, "Stones in the Road," may refer to the funeral train passing through New Jersey, which I believe is her home state.

- - - - - -

"When I was ten, my father held me on his shoulders above the crowd
To see a train draped in mourning pass slowly through our town
His widow kneeled with all their children at the sacred burial ground
And the TV glowed that long hot summer with all the cities burning down..."

- - - - - - -

Robert F. Kennedy was an enormously inspiring figure. I owe a large part of my loyalty to the Democratic Part to his campaign for president in 1968.

[omega minimo]

13. Kids watching ceremony and cities burning down that long hot summer

"TV glowed that long hot summer with all the cities burning down..."

are still around......

[saltpoint]

15. Yes they are. Hey there, omega minimo. I found myself "people watching"

in those photos, examining the crowd, but scanning the individual people in it for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. I can't quite name it.

It's not grief. Something else.

It's the mysterious element in a poem or passage or piece of music used as an elegy for someone who has just died, whether or not famous.

But still unnameable.

[omega minimo]

17. People weren't zombies then

That came later

:hi:


RFK footage amazing to look at is that ride in the convertible in L.A. during the campaign....the people reaching out to him...............

[saltpoint]

21. Definitely. RFK campaigned in cities and districts which today are

safely "red," and people would turn out in droves, and there was always this impulse to reach for him. There is photo after photo of crowds spontaneously reaching an arm out toward him. NEWSWEEK ran a cover story of him in the mid-point of his 68 campaign with the title, "RFK: Up, Up, and Away," and showed Kennedy in the crowd, and people's arms reaching toward him. His face reflects an understanding of why their arms were reaching, and not that it was him they were reaching toward.

Absolutely electric.

And then there were the speeches. The difference between an educated, accomplished, reverently curious mind like RFK's compared with a flat-spirited, unchallenged mind like Dubya's is astonishing. There was poetry in the Kennedys' upbringing and they quoted poets with a natural ease. They were good at things where language was distilled to its essence, because in significant ways we rarely see any more, they embodied that essence. Dubya embodies what -- daddy's oil money and countless lines of cocaine? Bush holds language in about the same regard as he holds everything else -- and so we get sentences like, "Is our children learning" and "I'm the decider." Jesus.

I'm not unaware of RFK's white-knuckled side. He liked to brawl and the rough edges were real. He could be a worthy, fearsome enemy to those who opposed him.

In the flux of politics he may have been one-of-a-kind, even among Kennedys. I could be wrong about that. But if someone this week were seeking a political model for meaningful reform in a world that could surely use some, Robert Kennedy would not be a bad place to start.

[omega minimo]

22. You can see in that electric connection, captured in film

the openess, lack of self-consciousness of the people and the leader. That has disappeared forever. Open car? Open faces? Within arm's reach? Today, the ever present Eye of the Camera and the internalized repression of a plastic-wrapped public have taken over from what used to be human.

"His face reflects an understanding of why their arms were reaching, and not that it was him they were reaching toward."

None of the current nightmare would be possible AT ALL if the human scale of contact were returned and the "official" royal reality weren't broadcast, mediated and enabled by talking head courtiers.

As for breeding, don't you ever wonder why all the Master Race nuts always look so fucking congenitally defected?

The Kennedy clan were of the "gift of gab" genetic persuasion and lived in a time when leaders actually spoke their minds, wrote their books, thought their thoughts, crafted their own speeches. Since Reagan, Rebublicans are merely TelePromptr delivery systems-- one reason that Gore and Kerry suffered being so stiff campaigning was that handlers tried to shove them into the straitjacket of pre-packaged behavior and phrases. IMHO. It's harder for smart people to deliver bullshit lines convincingly, which is why Republicans use the synapse-challenged.

"In the flux of politics he may have been one-of-a-kind, even among Kennedys. I could be wrong about that. But if someone this week were seeking a political model for meaningful reform in a world that could surely use some, Robert Kennedy would not be a bad place to start."

Thom Hartmann played an RFK speech yesterday-- the one about the value of the GNP. It's amazing to listen to (historic) speeches that seem to come from a place of authenticity and --gasp!!-- truth.

By contrast, someone modern and history&media-self-conscious like Obama brings one word to mind when I see him on TeeVee: "Player."



:hug: Old Crusoe

[saltpoint]

23. Good morning, omega minimo. A nicely done post there, as always.

When do you tell us all here to bide faithfully with muffins and coffee while you go into semi-exile and write a book -- one that by the way needs to be written?

There's a handful of greatly talented writers on these boards and I am typing a response to one of them right now.

I picture you in a library someplace, rummaging through books and mags from times past to write about conditions nowadays: the social pressures that induce the fear that engenders the shift in politics, and maybe more on your very astute observance that Reagan and other Republicans are delivery machines for pre-packaged tripe. The GOP scored big with Reagan, didn't they? Not only was he a compliant fool, he was literally incapable for large parts of the day of knowing what was going on. You can't beat a deal like that if you're a lying, scheming, dishonest, culturally arrogant mover & shaker. Reagan's wife's stem cell position now is the only affirming thing to emerge from the legacy of her husband. Ronald Reagan blanked out for the sins of stem cell recipients everywhere.

No one believes he didn't suffer, but long before the diagnosis, his administration was running death squads in Central America, and the children who were newborns in El Salvador who were startled awake some night when U.S.-backed soldiers and thugs burst into their modest homes to drag their fathers or brothers into the night never to be heard from again, are alive today, in their early 20s, and observing the debate over the Border Fence conservatives insist is so necessary. For them it is a fence to lock poverty in and keep memory from ever getting out. A great literature and art may rise from their sad musings, but not yet.

Quite a contrast from John Kennedy's administration when the Peace Corps was formed. I wager that few Peace Corps volunteers believe a huge Border Fence is the best use of that money. Not to mention it's damned snotty.

Well, continue to post on DU if you want, and we will be the better for it, but think of the success leftist writers have had recently in the book market. Gore Vidal. Noam Chomsky. Why not you, too?

[omega minimo]

26. I'd like to read yours as well

"The difference between an educated, accomplished, reverently curious mind like RFK's compared with a flat-spirited, unchallenged mind like Dubya's is astonishing."

:hi:

[Faygo Kid]

4. I and the nation have never recovered.

Our history would have been different, and I believe much better, had we not lost our visionaries. And each of our lives would have been different, as well. It was that important.

[shance]

11. That is why we cannot allow their deaths to be in vain.

Because we have not stood up to the evil being inflicted by the same people who are driving our country to ruin today, they continue their crimes: through 9-11, through Iraq and the needless murders and trauma, through stealing our elections, through Katrina and its aftermath and through looting our Treasury, the list goes on.

We have to fight the greed driven, evil, Neocon extremists who killed these good men and made others pay for the crimes that they committed on America.

It is they who are destroying all that is good in the world.

[Faygo Kid]

14. It is no longer abstract or theoretical. It is here.

We underestimate them. We never thought even they could get away with Ann Coulter's remarks. We were wrong. We do not think like them. We either fight back, or we flee. Or we are killed, or put in camps. If the USA does not rise up and say no, even with all the support the mainstream media gives to no matter how low these people stoop, then those under 40 should flee, now, to Canada or wherever, and those of us over 50 should stand and fight. And be crushed, but there are many of us. No one under 30 gives a tinker's dam; for all the criticism of the Boomers of Gen X, that cynical generation at least gets it right. Generally.

[MissWaverly]

16. Our cities would be humane, our country would be a beacon

for the world instead of a pariah, all those greedy, little bureacrats that wanted to punish
the US for having a conscience, well, they won, greed, pettiness, hatred, selfishness are all
victors today, since 1980, the tax burden of the wealthy has decreased by 25%.

[July]

5. I love Fusco's book. That last photo always gets to me.

The family all lined up.

[Dancing_Dave]

7. People in power today killed the Kennedys

They could only win by political assassination. They could only win by making Americans live in division and fear.

[Bunny]

8. Look at this one. Very good composition.

[dancingme]

9. I saw the train in PA

in my suburban Philly hometown the train went through our little train station. My Dad took my older sister and I to watch it pass through. There were about 100 people waiting and talking before the train came. As it approached, everyone grew silent. I still remember the complete silence as that train slowly passed and we saw the flag draped coffin in the last car and his kids (mostly the older ones like Joe III and Bobby Jr.) in the last car waving to the crowd. A memory I will always carry with me.

[Misskittycat]

25. I also saw the train in Philly. My Dad took my sister and me also.

I remember it like it was yesterday. My father drove around and picked a spot along the tracks - not near a station -- just like the second photo. As far as you looked in either direction, it was just the same. When the train rolled by us, Ted Kennedy (much younger, of course) was standing on the back platform acknowledging the crowd.

It felt terriby sad and almost unbelievable that this could happen in our country. I was 17 and it was the week of my high school graduation. Unfortunately, a lot more disillusion followed, particularly in the next 2-3 years when the antiwar movement grew. I also happened to be in the (geographical)center of those protests: I attended The George Washington University. We "hosted" a lot of the protesters attending the nearby Mall.

[wain]

10. Watched the train pass through Princeton Junction

That was an amazing trip to Washington. The tracks were lined with people all along the way. The trip took much longer than planned as the train speed was kept down for the people to see and pay their respects.x(

[omega minimo]

12. This Zarqawi pantomime to detract from RFK's memorial day?

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

18. so sad

My folks were for Humphrey because HHH was staunchly pro labor, but they weren't pro-war: though Dad served in WWII he openly stated his intention to send his sons to Canada if their numbers came up. He and Mom campaigned for JFK in 1960 and were excited about Bobby's run. His death knocked the wind out of their sails and they didn't get happy again until Nixon got his in 74.

Thanks for posting.

[DemoTex]

19. Devastated people. Devastated country.

I am still reeling from those bad times, and the NOW hits me square on.

[Liberty Belle]

20. Thanks, one of my best friends was on RFK's campaign in LA;

he was there the night Bobby Kennedy got shot and has never gotten over it.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

24. Damn, this one made me cry.

I wish Democrats could inspire this kind of love again.