Today in 1964

As you know, this blog is both a screed on current events as well as an exploration of my birth year, 1964, the Last Year of the Boomers. So occasionally I'll post "Today in 1964" timeline events, sometimes with comments, sometimes not. It's late, and I should be asleep, so I'll just post an event for the night.

On this day, October 14, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his leading the non-violent movement to end racial prejudice in the United States. According to his biography at the Nobel Peace Prize website, "at the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement."

Thank you, Dr. King. We all miss you.

Sites used:
Nobel Peace Prize website on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
including Presentation Speech, Biography, Nobel Lecture and Acceptance Speech.
Wikipedia Timeline, October 1964

Lyndon Baines Johnson won in 1964

Let us start off with an exploration of my year of birth by talking a bit about Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Though I was born in 1964, I wasn't very cognizant of what was happening during the year. It might be that I had just been born. In March. Though I didn't get out of the orphanage until September 1964. But we'll talk about that a little later.

The last year of the Baby Boomers found us having just gone through a rough 1963, I'm told. Folks were walking around in a daze after suffering from the assasination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 24, 1963, the day after Doctor Who premiered on the BBC in the United Kingdom. So, one day you have a far-reaching, mindbending telly program happening in the U.K., and the next day, the somewhat liberal, and future-thinking President is getting murdered in the U.S on the telly. As things in life go, this little metaphor actually defines the forty+ years that follows it: brave steps in the mind's imagination juxtaposed against many steps backward in the political life of the imagination. And both played out on the telly as well.

And then we head into the Johnson years, beginning in 1960 when he became Vice-President, but starting really in 1964, when he won the Presidency in his own right against Goldwater.

Oy.

Both good and bad times the Johnson years were. They were very turbulent, as the country was literally wrassling with itself about the direction in which it would head. Into this year I was born.

Johnson did more for Negroes (called such at the time) during his Presidency since Truman's integration of the military in 1948, possibly Roosevelt's New Deal in certain respects, and certainly, Lincoln's freeing of the slaves. As my African-American adoptive parents can tell you, being black in America was not an easy proposition. At least Johnson did right, mostly, for blacks and the poor. He did try. He left behind his Dixiecrat roots and dared to move forward.

But then there's the other side of his legacy. The Vietnam War, inherited from the French and Kennedy, and brimmng with America's obsession toward Communism. And that was the worse shit ever.

But in 1964, I didn't know any of this. I was born in March and didn't leave the orphanage until September. But I wouldn't find out about any of that until 1996.

1964 was a good year

So, I've entered the blog world for the second time. The first, a complete failure, but it's good to try again, I suppose.

So, why the title, "At the End of the Boom"? Well, I was born in 1964, the 'official' end of the baby boom. But it can also work as a triple-entendre: at the end of the American boom; at the end of the bomb comes the boom.

I've always been fascinated by being a baby boomer. But being at the end of the cycle is a little like coming to the party late: you can still get in, but mostly everyone is already gone by the time you get there. It's a little like being invited and then some folks won't believe you actually have an invitation. There's all kinds of arguments that 1964 wasn't the actual end of the boom (and I'm too lazy to go and find them for you, so there), but just suffice it to say that I'm late and no one cares if I'm here or not.

Anyway, my blog will be a mismash of stuff, items on politics, life, and a compilation of news of the day. Pretty much like every other blog on the 'net, only mine.