The passing of Howard Zinn

With the passing of my hero, Howard Zinn, I thought I would start a new blog featuring my perspective and reflections on the American experience. About the title? My mother once told me that she was 9 months pregnant with me during the Cuban Missile Crisis, trying to decide whether she should go to a fall-out shelter or not. The crisis ended on October 28th, 1962, the day before her birthday, and I arrived a week later, November 6, 1962.

I guess that says a lot metaphorically. I came after a lot of things, even after I was born, things that profoundly affected me anyway, like Vietnam and the '60's.

Everyone older remembers where they were when Kennedy was assassinated. I remember where I was when Nixon resigned: August 8, 1974, age 11, in a station wagon, National Lampoon's Vacation style, passing the Hearst mansion in California, on the return leg of a family vacation to the American West, a trip that made me a geologist before I knew it.

And now an e-mail I shared with friends and family regarding the passing of Howard Zinn:

CLG just announced that Howard Zinn died. I am extremely saddened. CLG linked to this LA-times write-up: it is excellent, a sobering review of his life. Particularly poignant is his description (personal witnessing) of a worker’s rights crowd being beaten in Times Square in 1939, and his expression of indignation at his own beating, to the point of unconscious, at the same:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-obit-zinn,0,3882068.story