Just the other day, I heard the old 1970 hippie anthem on the radio, and
it all came back:

       Did you pay your dues?
       Did you read the news?
       This morning, when the paper landed in your yard
       Do you know their names?

Yes, my brain replied instantly, I know their names.

Allison Krause.  Bill Schroeder.  Sandy Lee Scheuer.  Jeffrey Miller.

Probably some of y'all, of a certain age, know those names, too.  Solid
Midwestern German-American names, all of them (Miller usually comes from
Mueller).  Clean, normal college kids, not druggies or radical agitators.
It's a funny kind of fame that comes from dying under those circumstances.
Another kid was crippled that day, but he lived, and I don't know his
name.

I was a high school sophomore then, one of the editors of a left-wing
student paper.  I don't even want to think about the mood of May 1970, the
rage and fear and excitement of that time, the sense that the era of
"sharing and laughing" (as in the lyrics of that same song) was turning to
bullets and blood.  Fortunately, we were wrong about that.

Some think the "Sixties" (the concept, not the numerical decade) ended
that day.  I would put it a bit later, maybe in 1972 or 1973, but Michigan
State was always a step behind the times.  The last big antiwar
demonstration in East Lansing happened in mid-May 1973; ours was the only
major campus to decide that the mining of Haiphong Harbor was worth
demonstrating against.

We have all come a long way in thirty-two years.  But May 4 always stirs
up the old memories.

                                  Larry

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Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
Washtenaw County Commissioner, 4th District
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com
Ebay Page, http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/potifos/
Mailing address: P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106

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