moonchild:

I think he was ground in an emotional, mental, spiritual gristmill; the price millions who paid even if they never lost a finger in SE Asia. Those who built and bought and sold the machinery of it were not immune; those who gathered and assessed the information of it could not turn off their minds when the files were closed; those who were captured, wounded, broken in battle one way or the other with nothing but their own resilience to fall back on, and too little of that...I skirted it all, because I would not subscribe, one way or the other; but your life was in the middle of it. What a tale! Thanks for sneaking away to hold that candle.

I think perhaps in our world, we have built up technology to serve where we used to use conviction, passion and individual courage. Courage today means leaving your salary to risk it all on an Internet startup. In broad media terms, anyway. But what difference does that make. The newspapers neither knew much about and certainly never provided or nourished courage, because it doesn't sell papers until it collides with something. No more would it ever come from technology.

Sometimes the hardest question is which path courage would truly choose. For some, going to Woodstock meant breaking every bond with their home environments.

For others, not going to Vietnam meant inviting a lifetime of doubt and possibly castigation.
ANd for sure going there meant swallowing more doubt, more terror, than the rest of the world combined.

I don't think individuals are really any less courageous today than they were then. I just think we are making different stories, featuriong different virtues (if that is the word).

Seattle is a good example. It would take something extraordinary to capture the minds of a large number, and in fact it may be that we are less liekly to experience that because of the multi-threaded high-speed nature of communication today; the mainstream media are no longer the unifying notion of what is real -- we all belong to our colonies and islands.

Somehow, the act of standing up and singing reverses that, and restores the clarity of one voice reaching one ear clearly, touching one handful of hearts, and showing courage. Mudcat is like that...that's why I lov eit so.

I am rambling -- it's gettin' late. I just had a real<.Guinness, and even though it had arrived in a can, the young man was kind enough to pour it into a proper tall slope-sided glass, chilled. Quel plaisir, ca! Thanks for your thoughtful post.

Soon,

A