Conquering Vertigo

RFK in memoriam

Bobby Kennedy was murdered 39 years ago.
His assassination is one of my first memories.

As a young child, I lived with my grandparents. My grandfather was a pastor, a calm and loving man. He had given me oatmeal and a banana that morning. Something caused him --perhaps the morning paper-- to turn on the black and white TV in the den. A newsman was reporting the shooting, and my Grandfather ran through the house, waking everyone else up and saying, "Kennedy's been shot, Kennedy's been shot!" My mother remembers confusion, thinking, "But he's already shot," reliving President John Kennedy's assassination.

I stayed alone in the den, with the oatmeal and banana, with the images of death and grief, sounds of wailing and pain.
I don't know why oatmeal is comfort food for me today -- it didn't help me then.

For some people, it is popular to libel Bobby Kennedy, smearing him with his brothers' adulteries. I don't know if he was faithful to his wife Ethel. I don't know what sins he may have committed. The man I remember was a pastor during the Martin Luther King assassination, sharing the grief and helping calm the riots. The Bobby I remember traveled through Appalachia and swaths of poverty where education, health care and justice was non-existent. The public figure I remember listened to children, immigrants, the disenfranchised. The RFK I remember called America to rediscover her moral core and lead the world with justice and truth.

And so he was murdered.

Here are some of his words, and a story from Salon.com.

Our gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strenght of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worth while. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1952393,00.html

posted by Woman In Love @ 12:44 PM