Bankley got me a McCarthy button--the white lettering on blue background--when he was in Georgia a few years back. I'll tell ya Bobster, nostalgia ain't what it used to be, but then neither is apple pie.

I was also aware you'd worked for Gene. I liked it when his 'Kilroy' appeared in high school English texts.

"Few now remember that Gene McCarthy was the first US House member to debate Republican anticommunist icon Sen. Joe McCarthy head-to-head, the first Congressman to call for Congressional oversight of the CIA, the first to introduce the Equal Rights Amendment in the Senate, and the first to lead a Senate subcommittee on remedying hunger in America." (that info from the Daily Kos)


KILROY
by Eugene J. McCarthy

Kilroy is gone,
the word is out,
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Kilroy
who wrote his name
in every can
from Poland to Japan
and places in between
like Sheboygan and Racine
is gone
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Kilroy
who kept the dice
and stole the ice
out of the BOQ

Kilroy
whose name was good
on every IOU
in World War II
and even in Korea
is gone
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Kilroy
the unknown soldier
who was the first to land
the last to leave,
with his own hand
has taken his good name
from all the walls
and toilet stalls.

Kilroy
whose name around the world
was like the flag unfurled
has run it down
and left Saigon
and the Mekong
without a hero or a song
and gone
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

--from Eugene J. McCarthy, Selected Poems, (Rochester MN: Lone Oak Press) 1997 [ISBN 1-883477-15-8]


America missed electing a president who, in my opinion, would have changed the course of the last fifty years of history. His death in 2005 saddened me greatly, because we just ain't got enough people, elected people, like him. To me, that is the real tragedy of 1968.