Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost

Subject: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Peter T.
Date: 09 May 03 - 04:08 PM

I just ran across this here! on the Smithsonian Save our Sounds page. If you have the facilities, click onto J.F.K.s brief speech on Robert Frost. Never heard it before, completely breathtaking. A long long time ago, friends.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 09 May 03 - 04:22 PM

Sorry, but I can't listen to Kennedy without thinking it's Mayor Quimby.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: chip a
Date: 09 May 03 - 04:55 PM

You're right, it was a long, long time ago. But how timely to hear it today. Thanks Peter T.

Chip

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 09 May 03 - 08:24 PM

The text is here:

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/people/home/idris/Speeches/kennedy_frost.htm

clint

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 May 03 - 10:58 PM

As someone once said, if he were alive today, he'd be spinning in his grave. :(

How far we have departed from the dream.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 May 03 - 11:08 PM

Incredible, Peter, thansk so much. Very timely, once again.

I esp. found these bits significant:

But the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested.
For they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state.

If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential.

I think Kennedy and Frost would be sore disappointed were they to see the shape of things today.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Doug_Remley
Date: 10 May 03 - 12:25 AM

A beautiful site! It seems well worth an extensive search, thank you!

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Art Thieme
Date: 10 May 03 - 09:58 PM

I was just in touch with another Catter who is Far away from the USA. He was quite surprised that there were so many songs in my collection of John Kennedy songd that were from Afro Americans. Blues about the assassination by Otis Spann, Blind Jim Brewer, Big Joe Williams, Avery Brady, Son House, Big Walter Horton, Rick Von Schmidt, and MANY others.   I told this fellow that from here on 2003 it is hard to look back and not cloud the memory of JFK with all that has gone down in history since November 22, 1963. Womanizing was simply what was done back then. It was seen as O.K. and was accepted by men and women alike. ----- John Kennedy was the one who gave the first speech by an Amnerican president that was in favor of real civil rights and equality. It took Lyndon Johnson (Kennedy's veep) to pass the Civil Rights Bill and to try to foment his War On Poverty (a nice try)----but Johnson was destroyed by the Viet Nam War and the challenge of Senator Eugene McCarthy --- (the peace candidate -- NOT Joseph McCarthy). --------- In those days it was common to find a framed picture of John F. Kennedy proudly displayed in every Afro-American home. To Afro-Americans, and to much of the Caucasian youth population of the U.S.A. in the early 1960s, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a youthful, energetic, handsome, leftish, pro-Negro, all-American guy from the Ivy League who even had longer hair than any politician in our memories. He went after the Mafia too. We thought he was for the good and against the bad. As a young person then, for us he was pretty much a mentor. It was a time of looser sex mores. It was a time before "raised consciences" on many issues and causes, and it was a time before AIDS. It was also a time before Political Correctness !! Sex was O.K. and fun---so we did it. The president did it too and the media didn't talk about it because that is just the way things were then. Not right. Not wrong. Not good. Not evil. Not moral. Not immoral.------------------ It just was the way it was.

Personally, I'm glad I was young and alive then.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Art Thieme
Date: 10 May 03 - 10:15 PM

sorry for not proofreading. I'm just too tired to do it.

Also, When John Kennedy was killed it was then that many of us who were young then lost our political and social innocense. It was the beginning of PHIL OCHS realization that the songs he was writing possibly couldn't change a damn thing----that when we thought that we had changed the world, we were just exhibiting our dense ignorance of the realities of this best of all possible mortal coils. Phil eventually committed suicide.

But listen to Phil Ochs' songs about John Kennedy---"Crucifixion", "That Was The President, That Was The Man" (two different versions). Several others too.

Mudcatters, please, don't be surprised when people here at this forum say glowing things about John Kennedy ! For those who were there then, it's quite fitting and logical.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 03 - 12:25 AM

Peter:

Many thanks, friend. That voice brings back the realization that what the Sixties really were about was not drugs and free love. It was about following someone who could speak like that, and believing in that kind of speech, in that tenor of thought.

If the current Resident ever was told he should say something on such a topic he would be at a complete loss not only to speak, but to understand why he should do so.

A

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: GUEST,pdc
Date: 11 May 03 - 02:15 AM

The time of Camelot -- weren't we all young and innocent, and don't you wish we could give that same innocence to our young people today?

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 03 - 10:16 AM

The innocence wasn't naivete, so much as optimism and intelligence, and a great trust in the power of human understanding.

That's what I would give every child in the world.

A

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 11 May 03 - 10:27 AM

I hate to be the one who flings stones at Camelot, but JFK was the one who really was responsible for US military involvement in Vietnam, after Eisenhower tentatively started it. He also was, in terms of accomplishments, one of the weakest presidents in hi story.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Peter T.
Date: 11 May 03 - 10:36 AM

All that may be true, but listening to that speech (as a foreigner), I was reminded of why people admired America in those days.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 03 - 11:33 AM

I am not sure I agree with that Dick. The Peace Corps was no small accomplishment, and neither was landing a man on the moon.

A

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Art Thieme
Date: 11 May 03 - 12:21 PM

I have 3 LPs of Robert Frost reading his work---(and one of John Steinbeck reading his)---- but no turntable to play them on. I am glad I put some of it on cassette though. This world of changing audio formats is enough to drive one nuts ! Ah, the curse of a long life. ;-)

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: GUEST,pdc
Date: 11 May 03 - 01:25 PM

I think I used the wrong word when I said it would be good to give some of our innocence from the sixties to the kids of today. The word I should have used is idealism: we believed that so much could happen for the good.

Today's kids are still quite innocent even as they are cynical. I feel very sorry for them -- they have inherited a legacy of disbelief, doubt and political malaise that probably began with Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

And although Kennedy was flawed -- who isn't? -- he still represented all that was good and hopeful in America, unlike the politicians of today.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: GUEST,Susan from California
Date: 11 May 03 - 02:45 PM

A few of our kids are stillidealistic, but so few are. They are way more cynical than this 43 year old, and that ain't right. The kids I teach have hard lives, no doubt about it, but so have lots of people. I am down pretty far in the dumps right now because so few of my students care, about theimselves, about their grades, about other people outside of their homies. They get high and have sex (these are 12 to 14 year olds) and are parents way before they should be because they believe that they don't have a future. Where have we gone as a culture? Why can't I get through to mare of these kids? I know that a few of them are buying what I'm selling (that education is the way out of poverty) but when I see 12 year olds who want to join gangs...yikes. Sorry if this is way off topic, but to bring it back, kinda, my students don't even understand the phrasing of "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" :-( much less the sentiment.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: GUEST,Susan from California
Date: 11 May 03 - 02:48 PM

Oh man, I really should proofread...try this one...

A few of our kids are still idealistic, but so few are. They are way more cynical than this 43 year old, and that ain't right. The kids I teach have hard lives, no doubt about it, but so have lots of people. I am down pretty far in the dumps right now because so few of my students care, about themselves, about their grades, about other people outside of their homies. They get high and have sex (these are 12 to 14 year olds) and are parents way before they should be because they believe that they don't have a future. Where have we gone as a culture? Why can't I get through to more of these kids? I know that a few of them are buying what I'm selling (that education is the way out of poverty) but when I see 12 year olds who want to join gangs...yikes. Sorry if this is way off topic, but to bring it back, kinda, my students don't even understand the phrasing of "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" :-( much less the sentiment.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 03 - 02:56 PM

Susan:

Get them to put on a rapper version of Shakespeare, using his language. The drama will sweep them up, and the language seep in to the excitement and thence into their sorry brains.


A

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Peter T.
Date: 11 May 03 - 03:00 PM

I teach them in university, and I sympathise with anyone working on them at the early teenage level. They have sorted themselves into much tighter categories by the time they hit me, and the motivated ones are forging ahead. The others remain in trouble. I think the real problem is that they aren't really challenged, except in sports. They get very few chances to overcome creative and intellectual obstacles in a safe environment, as opposed to struggling through life. They are sheltered from making mistakes positively. As a result, contrary to the mythology, their self-esteem is low, because it is not based on any achievements. Also, because they see everything on TV, they think they have experienced everything, so you can't tell them anything they haven't already discounted.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: GUEST
Date: 11 May 03 - 05:03 PM

Amos,

Problem is, I teach History and Shakespeare isn't in the History standards. I do work music is as often as possible, we started the year listening to Avril Lavigne, The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones, and Sheryl Crowe to explore ideas of identity. Last week we were listening to Richie Havens and Sweet Honey in the Rock do Civil War tunes.

Peter T.

I do challenge them to think things through, and our debates on current events are fun for everybody. But about 30 % of the kids I work with can barely read! I try to make my classroom a safe environment for exploration, but I only have them for 50 mins, 5 days a week. So we have to teach in ways that illiterate kids and second language learners can deal with (the state mandates that we do this) and we have to perform on the same tests that
students from high SES households do easily. I'm sure a summer of reflection will recharge me, but this time of year with 8th grade students is *very* challenging.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: GUEST,Susan from California
Date: 11 May 03 - 05:07 PM

oops, that was cookieless me above :-)

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 03 - 05:08 PM

Hell, Susan, I went around the bend managing just ONE!! :>) They come through it eventually, but you then get the next batch who haven't yet! My sympathies.

A

Subject: JFK "Poetry and Power"
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 08 Aug 04 - 04:18 PM

The link above to the text of the speech is defunct. Here's one which may be more permanent, from the JFK Library and Museum. Sound available there, too.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Aug 04 - 07:30 PM

Thanks to Peter for this thread in the first place, and to Desert Dancer for revivng it. I hadn't seen it before.

... I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future...

Americans must feel embarrassed, looking at how it's turned out so far, and what you've got today...

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Aug 04 - 07:57 PM

That's an incredible speech. It gives me chills and reminds me all too keenly of what we have lost. I have watched Big Brother remorselessy taking over everything for the last 40 years or more...all for a lousy buck. I remember what I believed in when I hear Kennedy talking. What a time it was!

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Aug 04 - 08:34 PM

Not so much embarrassed, for some of us McGrath, as just very very sad and disappointed, and maybe a bit angry.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Aug 04 - 08:50 PM

Perhaps it's time for our generation to take back the American Dream. We've been disillusioned for many years watching how politics is done. It's time to sweep out the old political ways and make it something we can be proud of again. It's become a way of life and a lucrative one at that for too many. I beleive most go into it with high ideals but have to end up playing the game.It's time to unseat those fat bastards and make our gov't one WE respect and one the world respects.Everyone who cares must get involved. I still beleive it's possible.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 04 - 09:23 PM

Well if it ever happens, it will be done by people who are not afraid to be named and answer for their statements. It is cowardice and greed that has undermined the kind of idealism Kennedy spoke to. Neither one makes such dreams possible. It is possible. But it takes a certain amount of courage as well as an inherent sense of decency.

Thanks, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: freightdawg
Date: 08 Aug 04 - 11:49 PM

From someone who can only remember Kennedy through history books, it is enlightening to me to see a Democrat with such "conservative" ideas being raised as the icon of liberalism. Along with the idealism that Kennedy brought to the White House, he also had his failures. The Bay of Pigs invasion jumps to mind, as does the Vietnam war. (I have to add here, though, that if Kennedy had been president long enough to have prosecuted the war, it might have been fought very differently and ended with a different conclusion. Kennedy cannot bear the guilt of Johnson and his folly.) Kennedy pushed for large tax relief, was strong on defense (the solution to the Cuban missile crisis was one of his great victories), was unequivocal in his belief that the United States was the only entity that was going to tell the United States what to do (read his inaugural address) and was very cautious about moving on the Civil Rights Bill (it was his brother Robert who was the true leading Kennedy voice behind that legislation.)

I am not saying this to disrespect Kennedy. I am just saying that the liberal left has moved so far that Kennedy himself, who I respect for some of his idealism and some of his ideas, probably would not be much of a leader in the movement now. This is simply a fact of life in the history of people and movements. Very often, in many different situations, the heros of a particular movement would not even recognize its later permutations and developments. Lest anyone think I'm a right wing zealot, does anyone think that Lincoln would be a member of the modern Republican party? Hmmm.

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: Breathtaking Speech - Kennedy on Frost
From: CarolC
Date: 09 Aug 04 - 12:09 AM

I see Kerry as being as "conservative" as JFK was in many respects.