This site is for those who know him as more than a face in a motorcade, and "Ask not." Or would like to.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Intro to the Alpha Version (a work in progress:)
This site will emphasize the memories, experiences, influences, and future hopes of the baby boom era. Starting with the early boomers, who begin to turn 60 this year.
We look to our past, remembering, savoring, and examining where it fits into our present identities and character, and how the past helped shape our views and attitudes towards the future.
I hope the information, discussions and photos here will also be of interest to younger readers. While aspects of the 50s and 60s have become culturally and historically prominent in recent years, the prevailing media image-making of those people and events lacks much real information and perpetuates a lot of misinformation.
Just about all that’s widely known about the 60s, for instance, is contained in montages of familiar images and dramatic film footage, which leave a simplistic and even deceptive impression. All that’s recalled of major figures is an image and a catch-phrase that seems to get shorter every year. To many people, Martin Luther King, Jr. means four words—“I have a dream.” John F. Kennedy is a face in a fatal motorcade, and a voice saying “Ask not.”
We know better. We will honor the elders who shaped us, the heroes who inspired us, and our contemporaries who made their mark on the world.
We will recall the revolutions we were part of, the tv shows and movies we grew up with, the books that inspired and informed us, the stuff of our lives.
But this is not nostalgia. It is part of reconsidering and remembering, so we can better chart where we've been, and who we are. This is increasingly important to us. It is essential to us, as the inessential fashions of the moment seem less important, and we look for the bigger picture, not only of the past, but of the shape of things to come.
Because like the young, we think about the future. Unlike the young perhaps, we think about the future we will never see. What will our legacy be, and what do we yet need to do to make it a good one?
This is a companion site with 60's Now, that deals more directly with the 60s generation---when the early boomers came of age--as they enter their 60s.
We look to our past, remembering, savoring, and examining where it fits into our present identities and character, and how the past helped shape our views and attitudes towards the future.
I hope the information, discussions and photos here will also be of interest to younger readers. While aspects of the 50s and 60s have become culturally and historically prominent in recent years, the prevailing media image-making of those people and events lacks much real information and perpetuates a lot of misinformation.
Just about all that’s widely known about the 60s, for instance, is contained in montages of familiar images and dramatic film footage, which leave a simplistic and even deceptive impression. All that’s recalled of major figures is an image and a catch-phrase that seems to get shorter every year. To many people, Martin Luther King, Jr. means four words—“I have a dream.” John F. Kennedy is a face in a fatal motorcade, and a voice saying “Ask not.”
We know better. We will honor the elders who shaped us, the heroes who inspired us, and our contemporaries who made their mark on the world.
We will recall the revolutions we were part of, the tv shows and movies we grew up with, the books that inspired and informed us, the stuff of our lives.
But this is not nostalgia. It is part of reconsidering and remembering, so we can better chart where we've been, and who we are. This is increasingly important to us. It is essential to us, as the inessential fashions of the moment seem less important, and we look for the bigger picture, not only of the past, but of the shape of things to come.
Because like the young, we think about the future. Unlike the young perhaps, we think about the future we will never see. What will our legacy be, and what do we yet need to do to make it a good one?
This is a companion site with 60's Now, that deals more directly with the 60s generation---when the early boomers came of age--as they enter their 60s.
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