The Writer's Almanac from Monday, August 26, 2013

The Writer's Almanac from Monday, August 26, 2013

"Found Poem" by Howard Nemerov, from War Stories. © University of Chicago Press, 1990.

ORIGINAL TEXT AND AUDIO - 2013

It's the birthday of French poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire, born in Rome, Italy (1880).

It's also the birthday of novelist and playwright Christopher Isherwood, born in Cheshire, England (1904). He's best known for the novels he wrote about life in Berlin, just before the rise of the Nazi party, including Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935), Sally Bowles (1937), and Goodbye to Berlin (1939).

Isherwood met the future poet W.H. Auden at prep school. The two became good friends. In the 1930s, they wrote three prose-verse plays together. In 1938, they traveled to China, where Isherwood did some research for his book Journey to a War (1939). They immigrated together to the United States, in 1939.

He settled in Santa Monica, where he lived until he died. He worked as a teacher and wrote for Hollywood films. He was a pacifist. During the first stages of World War II, he worked at a Quaker hostel in Pennsylvania with refugees from Europe.

Isherwood's friend, fellow writer Aldous Huxley, introduced him to an active swami in Hollywood. Isherwood became a follower of Hinduism. He started meditating and became a vegetarian. He said, "I'm tired of strumming on that old harp, the Ego, darling Me."

Isherwood wrote: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair."

It was on this day in 1968 that the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago. It had already been one of the bloodiest years of the decade. That February, the North Vietnamese launched their devastating "Tet Offensive," which indicated that the war was nowhere near over. Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection, and the anti-war movement thought that they had won a victory. Then, in April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, sparking widespread riots. Two months later, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed as he left a celebration for his victory in the California primary.

In the wake of Robert Kennedy's murder, the Democratic Party establishment chose Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey as their candidate, but the anti-war faction of the party wanted Senator Eugene McCarthy. Thousands of college students and anti-war activists showed up at the convention on this day to protest the choice of Humphrey, and the Democratic Party's support of the war in Vietnam.

Abbie Hoffman, leader of the "yippies," announced a plan to lace the city's water supply with hallucinogenic drugs, release animals from the zoo, and seduce the wives and daughters of delegates. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley called in 7,500 U.S. Army troops and 6,000 National Guardsmen to keep the peace.

For the first two days of the convention, protesters shouted insults at the police and threw rocks and other objects. On the evening of the third day, the police responded by charging toward Grant Park where thousands of protestors were gathered, attacking everyone in their path with billy clubs and tear gas.

On the first floor of the Hilton Hotel, the crowd began to chant, "The whole world is watching," because TV news cameras were capturing the whole thing. Footage of police attacking men, women, and even elderly protesters was being broadcast on news stations within the hour.

As the delegates were beginning their roll call to choose Humphrey as their nominee, Connecticut was about to be called when news footage of the riot outside appeared on the monitors in the convention hall. Senator Abraham Ribicoff took the podium to attack what he called Mayor Daley's "Gestapo tactics." Television cameras then turned and captured Mayor Daley shouting obscenities at Senator Ribicoff.

In his notebook that night, the reporter and historian Theodore White wrote, "The Democrats are finished." Hubert Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon that year.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

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