Charit 1963 Quotes

This nation was founded by many men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
John F. Kennedy, Radio and television report to the American people in civil rights, June 11, 1963
35th president of US 1961-1963 (1917 - 1963)
― John F. Kennedy ~ John F. Kennedy

I began to realize that my pictures of God were old. They were not old in the sense of antique champagne flutes, which are abundant with significance precisely because they are old - when you sip from them you remember your grandmother using them at birthday dinners, or your sister toasting her beloved at their wedding. Rather, they were old like a seventh-grade health textbook from 1963: moderately interesting for what it might say about culture and science in 1963, but generally out of date. ~ Lauren F. Winner

My mind reels with sarcastic replies! ~ Charles M. Schulz

Martin Luther King did not stir his audience in 1963 by declaiming 'I have a nightmare' ~ Anthony Giddens

On observing 1963 America for the first time, the author says that organization and standardization to a certain degree compete with divine providence. ~ Karl Barth

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
[Undelivered remarks for Dallas Trade Mart, November 22 1963] ~ John F. Kennedy

Elvira always lied first to herself before she lied to anybody else, since this gave her a conviction of moral honesty.' - Phyllis Bottome, novelist (1884-1963) ~ Phylllis Bottome

I knew personally many figures in this novel: Harold Urey, who greeted me at the grad students reception at UCSD in 1963; Karl Cohen, my father-in-law; ~ Gregory Benford

When girls were permitted to wear slacks to Creelman on Saturdays in 1963, it was headline news in the Ontarion. ~ James G. Snell

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree. ~ Julian Fellowes

The modern era of Cape Cod baseball dawned in 1963 when the league became a showcase for the collegiate elite. ~ Jane Leavy

[On President Kennedy's assassination Nov. 22, 1963:] Something dreadful is going to happen to the president today. ~ Jeane Dixon

Even in the wake of Rachel Carson's best-selling Silent Spring, Americans in 1963 spent nearly as much money fighting crabgrass with chemical weed controls as they contributed to the American Cancer Society. ~ Ted Steinberg

In 1963 ... The Vatican condemned Dr. No as a 'dangerous mixture of violence, vulgarity, sadism and sex.' Ka-ching! ~ Manohla Dargis

The Beatles had a six-year career, from 1963 to 1969, which - to me, in my early 20s - seemed like a phenomenally long time. ~ Chris Squire

People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.
From the poem "Sheep in Fog", 2 December 1962, 28 January 1963 ~ Sylvia Plath

It's called a repository spell. Makes something bigger on the inside than on the outside. Works great for bags, barrels, hats, just about anything really, even a 1963 police box. ~ Chuck

The Jackal was perfectly aware that in 1963 General de Gaulle was not only the President of France; he was also the most closely and skilfully guarded figure in the Western world. To assassinate him, as was later proved, was considerably more difficult than to kill President John F. Kennedy of the United States. Although the English killer did not know it, French security experts who had through American courtesy been given an opportunity to study the precautions taken to guard the life of President Kennedy had returned somewhat disdainful of those precautions as exercised by the American Secret Service. The French experts rejection of the American methods was later justified when in November 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a half-crazed and security-slack amateur while Charles de Gaulle lived on, to retire in peace and eventually to die in his own home. ~ Frederick Forsyth

I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics for Civil Rights.' ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

On January 10, 1963, I was sworn in as a lawyer, so next January 10 I will have practiced law for 40 years, and I've loved every minute of it. ~ Johnnie Cochran

When Johnson decided to fight for passage of the law John F. Kennedy had put before Congress in June 1963 banning segregation in places of public accommodation, he believed he was taking considerable political risks. ~ Robert Dallek

Word on the streets of Chicago in 1963 was that if Chuck Nicoletti got a contract with your name on it, you were already dead-- you just didn't know it yet. ~ Richard Belzer And David Wayne

December 25, 1963
Christmas night and they've battered their heads together until they are silly and they've smiled themselves silly and vomited on the floor, 98% of them amateur drinkers, amateur Christians, amateur human beings ~ Charles Bukowski

So that this thing that aired in 1963 would result a few years later in personal bankruptcy, would result in having people be on edge with me, wondering when I'm going to blow up. ~ Shelley Berman

…it was not whim or wildness which made me go, but a sudden clear realization that tho you were the first man of importance to me, you could not be the last. - Gwendolyn MacEwen to Milton Acorn, 1963 (age 21) ~ Jeanette Lynes

I became a door-to-door IBM salesman in 1963, a job I had for six years. But most everyone thought it was a bad idea. Door-to-door salesmen were lower than used-car salesmen or attorneys. ~ James W. Murphy

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. And however undramatic the pursuit of peace, that pursuit must go on.
[Address before the United Nations, September 20 1963] ~ John F. Kennedy

As my poor father used to say In 1963, Once people start on all this Art Goodbye, moralitee! And what my father used to say Is good enough for me. ~ A.P. Herbert

We need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter. From Strength to Love, 1963 ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

People fail to realize there's a difference in kinds of money. There is old money and there is new money. Old money has political power but new money has only purchasing power. (1963) ~ LIFE Magazine

I started in movies in 1963, and the first big one was 'Rosemary's Baby' in 1967. While you don't notice it right away, it finally dawns on you that 80% of the time, you're doing nothing. ~ Charles Grodin

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
[Address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, June 26 1963] ~ John F. Kennedy

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969. ~ Camille Paglia

In 1963, while my brothers were engaged in their lives, I call this period of my life 'my character-building years.' I adhered to the saying, 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going. ~ Marc Ashton

The Sixties was all about style and a certain look. But what was interesting about 1963 was that it was pre-Beatles, so the clothes of that time, especially the suits, were very different from the clothes post-Beatlemania. ~ Luke Evans

The leaders of the world face no greater task than that of avoiding nuclear war. While preserving the cause of freedom, we must seek abolition of war through programs of general and complete disarmament. The Test-Ban Treaty of 1963 represents a significant beginning in this immense undertaking. ~ Robert Kennedy

The United States lost the nuclear-powered submarine Thresher 100 miles east of Cape Cod in 1963, and the submarine Scorpion sank in 1968 in more than 10,000 feet of water 400 miles southwest of the Azores. ~ Andrew Rosenthal

Since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the gap between men and women's earnings has narrowed by less than a half-cent per year. At this rate, American women will have to wait until 2062 to bring home the same salary as their male counterparts. ~ Jackie Speier

Thomas Pynchon surely inaugurated or crystallized a new genre in 1963 when he published 'V.' The seriocomic mystery or thriller with one foot set in the present and one in various historical eras received its postmodern baptism from Pynchon. ~ Paul Di Filippo

I would like you to consider the difference in the time from 1963 to date. The FBI, at that time, was headed by Mr. Hoover who had been appointed Director continuously. He had, I would say, a good reputation. ~ John Sherman Cooper

It was so crucial to the Civil Rights Movement that on June 23, 1963, Martin Luther King came to town, walked down Woodward Avenue with more than 100,000 people and delivered the first major public iteration of his "I Have A Dream" speech, two months before he did it in Washington. ~ David Maraniss

There is room enough indoors in New York City for the whole 1963 world's population to enter, with room enough inside for all hands to dance the twist in average nightclub proximity. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

We demand that segregation be ended in every school district in the year 1963! We demand that we have effective civil rights legislation - no compromise, no filibuster - and that include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FEPC and the right to vote. ~ Bayard Rustin

Was anybody shooting at you?"
-George "Judge" Knott (responding to his son-in-law after hearing complaints about the army in 1963.)

"No."
-Son-in-law

"Well then, sounds like you had a pretty good day."
-George "Judge" Knott ~ Jennifer Rude Klett

Men [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

(Marx, 1963) ~ Karl Marx

As a graduate student at Oxford in 1963, I began writing about books in revolutionary France, helping to found the discipline of book history. I was in my academic corner writing about Enlightenment ideals when the Internet exploded the world of academic communication in the 1990s. ~ Robert Darnton

Being a woman in control of a company - even a small private company, as ours was then - was so singular and surprising in those days that I necessarily stood out. In 1963, and for the first several years of my working life, my situation was certainly unique. ~ Katharine Graham

[The Soviet State Security Service] is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries. ~ Allen W. Dulles

I graduated from high school in 1963. There were no computers, cell phones, Internet, credit cards, cassette tapes or cable TV. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer

My father was a really sharp cartoonist and filmmaker. He used to tape-record the family surreptitiously, either while we were driving around or at dinner, and in 1963 he and I made up a story about a brother and a sister, Lisa and Matt, having an adventure out in the woods with animals. ~ Matt Groening

Back on Nov. 23, 1963, I sailed into Manhattan Harbor onboard the Queen Mary and landed with no job and contacts and just $135 in my pocket. My first lodging was in a rundown hotel for $27 a week with the bathroom down the end of a corridor of beds. ~ Robin Leach

I was taken to my first fashion show - Nina Ricci haute couture - in Paris by the White Russian princess, down on her luck, whom I was boarding with in Paris in 1963. I was captivated by the glamour of the gilded salon, the elegant clothes, and the audience of grand ladies. ~ Suzy Menkes

The whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, '2001' shows that what some people call 'god' is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don't understand, they call 'god' -Stanley Kubrick, interview, 1963 ~ Stanley Kubrick

The 'New York Honk,' as it was called, was the most fashionable accent an American male could have at that time, namely, the spring of 1963. One achieved it by forcing all words out through the nostrils rather than the mouth. It was at once virile ... and utterly affected. Nelson Rockefeller had a New York Honk. ~ Tom Wolfe

When I was at 'Newsweek' magazine - which, you know, this really sounds like I walked four miles in the snow to school - but I started at 'Newsweek' magazine in 1963, which was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So it was actually legal to discriminate against women, and 'Newsweek' did. ~ Ellen Goodman

They claim there's a rationale for the children, don't they, sir?"
"Yes. Those babes in arms will grow up and want revenge on the Nazis in about 1963. I suppose the rationale for the women under forty-five is that they might be pregnant. And the rationale for the older women is while we're at it. ~ Martin Amis

The four stages of acceptance:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so."

(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464) ~ J.B.S. Haldane

The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrence to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system, and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963. ~ John F. Kennedy

Today's theater-goer must live in dread of walking into a theater and discovering that some classic work has been given a modernized, socially relevant setting. Oedipus gouges his eyes with a spoon at a 1950's malt shop; Macbeth napalms Banquo in Viet Nam, Julius Caesar dies in Dallas in 1963. More and more, American theater is coming to resemble a season of Quantum Leap. ~ Reduced Shakespeare Company

The red library is Sui's tribute to fashion maven Diana Vreeland, who served as editor for Harper's Bazaar (1939-1962) and Vogue (1963-1961). My most precious collection is my bound Vogue magazines, .. and they're kind of like my Bible. I look at them all the time when I'm trying to inspire myself for a collection. ~ Anna Sui

The Ford Falcon holds the proud title of Slowest Car Ever Built. In certain areas of the country you can go to a stoplight and find Falcon drivers who pressed down on their accelerators in 1963 and are still waiting for their cars to move. ~ Dave Barry

When it's over it should be over. When a man is no longer at risk, he loses touch. I think these fellows who think they have some long-term right to dignity and salary and expense accounts and company planes are all wrong. On December 21, 1963 I walked out of there and said that's it: no office, no secretaries. Nothing. ~ Ralph J. Cordiner

In 1962 and 1963, there were two abominable decisions out of the Supreme Court, and that was taking prayer out of school, and taking bible reading out of school. But you know, if you look at the statistics, two very critical things happened after that date. Number one: teen pregnancy skyrocketed. Number two: violent crime skyrocketed. ~ Rafael Cruz

I have been a journalist, off and on, since I was 17. I was a copy boy for the 'New York Times,' when it had an edition in Paris, in 1963. I sold the paper in the streets by day and tore wire copy off the tele-printer for the editors making up the edition by night. ~ Michael Ignatieff

The famous speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, included the sentence: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". Today's left-wing, through identity politics, affirmative-action policies, and hiring quotas, has shattered that dream. ~ Tammy Bruce

I was born in New York City, but I was raised in New Jersey, part of the great Jewish emigration of 1963. ~ Jon Stewart

Every man - in the development of his own personality - has the right to form his own beliefs and opinions. Hence, suppression of belief, opinion and expression is an affront to the dignity of man, a negation of man's essential nature.
[Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment (1963)] ~ Thomas I. Emerson

How can U say one style is better than another. You ought to be able to be an Abstract Expressionist next week, or a Pop artist, or a realist, without feeling youve given up something ... I think that would be so great, to be able to change styles. And I think that's what's going to happen, that's going to be the whole new scene. - Andy Warhol, 1963 ~ Legs McNeil

One of the ironic things," Kennedy observed to Norman Cousins in the spring of 1963, " ... is that Mr. Khrushchev and I occupy approximately the same political positions inside our governments. He would like to prevent a nuclear war but is under severe pressure from his hard-line crowd, which interprets every move in that direction as appeasement. I've got similar problems ... . The hard-liners in the Soviet Union and the United States feed on one another."8 ~ Robert F. Kennedy

Martin Luther King's 1963 'I have a dream' speech was a thrilling milestone in the civil rights movement, so enduring that we tend to attribute its searing power to a kind of magic. But Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on its significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes
the thought and preparation, vision and revision
whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history. ~ Patricia J. Williams

I was writing with different people in Nashville - whoever I could. Eddie Hinton came on the scene about 1963, and about four years later we wrote a ton of songs together. I drifted around, but Eddie and I had some cuts through the '60s and '70s. I went on the road with Kris Kristofferson in 1970. ~ Donnie Fritts

In Britain, the theatre has traditionally been where the public goes to think about its past and debate its future. The formation of the National Theatre, at the Old Vic, near the South Bank, in 1963, institutionalized the symbolic importance of drama by giving it both a building and state funding. ~ John Lahr

Kids started having their own cameras, en masse, in the 1960s. Kodak Instamatics, which came out in 1963, were inexpensive ($16) and easy to use, durable and small, the perfect size to fit in a child's pocket or the upper tray of a footlocker on its way to summer camp. The Instagram logo, in a conscious nod, echoes the look of the early Instamatics - a dark stripe on top, metallic on the bottom, with a round flat lens and viewfinder in the middle. The ~ Nancy Jo Sales

There's one Baldessari work I genuinely love and would like to own, maybe because of my Midwestern roots and love of driving alone. 'The backs of all the trucks passed while driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January 1963' consists of a grid of 32 small color photographs depicting just what the title says. ~ Jerry Saltz

In comparative terms, there's no poverty in America by a long shot. Heritage Foundation political scientist Robert Rector has worked up figures showing that when the official U.S. measure of poverty was developed in 1963, a poor American family had an income twenty-nine times greater than the average per capita income in the rest of the world. An individual American could make more money than 93 percent of the other people on the planet and still be considered poor. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

The shittrain began on November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas - when some twisted little geek blew the President's off... and then a year later, LBJ was re-elected as the "Peace Candidate."

Johnson did a lot of rotten things in those five bloody years, but when the history books are written he will emerge in his proper role as the man who caused an entire generation of Americans to lose all respect for the Presidency, the White House, the Army, and in fact the who structure of "government. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Maybe I have never had the Christmas I remember, since we never remember the event itself but just the last time we revisited the memory. I have woven together a few dozen scraps (the Sears catalog, my father videoing everything we did, Christmas parties and visits with Santa) and pretended they amount to one perfect, cohesive moment, but I am as guilty as baby-boomers, who dictated unconsciously that all the songs they listened to in 1963 would be the timeless Christmas standards of today. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

That was a piece I did in 1963 with Konrad Lueg in a department store, in the furniture department. It was announced in some papers as an exhibition opening, but the people who came didn't know that it was to be a sort of Happening. I don't think it is quite right that it has become so famous anyhow. It was just a lot of fun, and the word itself, Capitalist Realism, hit just right. But it wasn't such a big deal. ~ Gerhard Richter

I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22, 1963, the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered, cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas; it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived. ~ Jon Meacham

Even in 1963, only a year before opening, the director-general of the Construction Department of JNR, stated to new JNR employees: The Tokaido Shinkansen is the height of madness. As the gauge of the Tokaido Shinkansen is different from existing lines, track sharing is not possible. Even if the journey time between Tokyo and Osaka is shortened, passengers have to change trains at Osaka in order to travel further west. A railway system which lacks smooth connections and networks with other lines is meaningless and destined to fail. ~ Christopher P. Hood

The Pill was introduced in the early 1960s and modern woman was born. Women were no longer going to be tied to the cycle of endless babies; they were going to be themselves. With the Pill came what we now call the sexual revolution. Women could, for the first time in history, be like men, and enjoy sex for its own sake. In the late 1950s we had eighty to a hundred deliveries a month on our books. In 1963 the number had dropped to four or five a month. Now that is some social change! ~ Jennifer Worth

I went on tours with [Bob] Dylan - the big one was in 1975 and called Roaring Thunder Review. I knew him well because I met him around the time he did his second album, in 1963. He recorded one of my songs called Shadows. In the 1970s, it was suggested that we do a duet, because we had the same manager, Albert Grossman, who also managed Odetta and Peter, Paul and Mary. Dylan and I respected what each other did, but I just decided not to do it. ~ Gordon Lightfoot

I love this country. I loved it the first time I came here, back in 1963. I love it because it's free. My mother escaped from Nazi Germany; the rest of her family never made it. The first thing Hitler did was take over the press and make it subservient to the government. Lenin did the same." Jasper had drunk a few glasses of wine, and as a result he was a shade more candid. "America is free because it has disrespectful newspapers and television shows to expose and shame presidents who fuck the Constitution up the ass." He raised his glass. "Here's to the free press. Here's to disrespect. And God bless America. ~ Ken Follett

That is, whether or not an act is considered deviant depends upon how it is labeled (defined) by other people. For example, in a well-known study of jazz musicians, Becker (1963) found marijuana use to be considered normal by the musicians, but labeled as illegal, deviant behavior by the larger society, and subject to sanctions like arrest, fines, and jail terms. Although labeling theory pertained to deviance generally, several studies focused on the mental patient experience in which persons once treated for mental illness found it difficult to shed the label of "former mental patient" even if the experience was in the past and the person supposedly cured (Scheff [1966] 1999). ~ William C. Cockerham

I knew about some experience on the operational part of the CIA with Latin American services and so forth having to do with torture. But this was the first time that the CIA was openly advocating for permission to be able to torture. And that seemed to me so abhorrent that I wanted to disassociate myself from the CIA for the first time since 1963, because I didn't want to be associated in any way, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture. ~ Ray McGovern

If Vin Scully calling a game is just as good in 2013 as he was in 1963, that's the way a game should sound. If Jack Buck were around today, I don't think anybody would ask him to change his style. My style has always been a little bit of a combination of old and new, if only because my frame of reference, personally, was different than that of Ernie Harwell or Jack Buck or Harry Caray. I was a younger guy. Just as Joe Buck's frame of reference is somewhat different from mine. But the nuts and bolts of how to call a ballgame well, I think remain the same. ~ Bob Costas

As I've said before, "the Mod generation", contrary to popular belief, was not born in even 1958, but in the 1920s after a steady gestation from about 1917 or so. Now, Mod certainly came of age, fully sure of itself by 1958, completely misunderstood by 1963, and in a perpetual cycle of reinvention and rediscovery of itself by 1967 and 1975, respectively, but it was born in the 1920s, and I will maintain this. I don't care who disagrees with me, and there are dozens of reasons that I do so - from the Art Deco aesthetic, to flapper fashions (complete with bobbed hair), to androgyny and subtle effeminacy, to jazz. ~ Ruadhan J. McElroy

Advertising is psychologically intrusive; it aims to make people want a particular product. Advertising must be considered as one of the most influential institutions of twentieth century America. By mid-century the country was spending more on advertising than on education or religion (Potter, 1954, p. 178). Unlike other major social institutions like education and religion, advertising has a nearly complete "lack of institutional responsibility" - that is, it has "no motivation to seek the improvement of the individual or to impart qualities of social usefulness" (Potter, 1954, p.177; also see Henry, 1963). Thus advertising is an enormously powerful institution that is largely indifferent to its effects on humanity and society, except for its concern to get people to buy more things. ~ Roy F. Baumeister

The Black Power advocates are disenchanted with the inconsistencies in the militaristic posture of our government. Over the past decade they have seen America applauding nonviolence whenever the Negroes have practiced it. They have watched it being praised in the sit-in movements of 1960, in the Freedom Riots of 1961, in the Albany movement of 1962, in the Birmingham movement of 1963 and in the Selma movement of 1965. But then these same black young men and women have watched as America sends black young men to burn Vietnamese with napalm, to slaughter men, women, and children; and they wonder what kind of nation it is that applauds nonviolence whenever Negroes face white people in the streets of the United State but then applauds violence and burning and death when these same Negroes are sent to the fields of Vietnam. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

By the spring of 1963, Las Vegas was made up of an odd convergence of gamblers, gangsters, and government. All three forces, intentionally or unintentionally, catered to every kind of human weakness. Although the aboveground nuclear blasts were gone, the town was still full of glitzy, beckoning casinos; flamboyant, roguish celebrities; down-and-out and entrepreneurial prostitutes; and notorious, brutal criminals. By now it had gained its much deserved reputation as "Sin City" - universally considered a town where "just about anything goes." And surrounding it were the infamous "holes in the desert." Many of Las Vegas's problems were known to be buried in those same holes.
So, naturally, as a woman who relished audacity, this would be the place to which my mother would move my sister and me. As it turned out, that was the other part of her telephone call's "exciting news. ~ Gary Spetz

Dear John - It will be many years before you understand fully what a great man your father was. His loss is a deep personal tragedy for all of us, but I wanted you particularly to know that I share your grief - You can always be proud of him - Affectionately Lyndon B. Johnson The second was a little longer. Himself the father of two girls, he had been particularly fond of the President's daughter. THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON Friday Night 7:30 November 22, 1963 Dearest Caroline - Your father's death has been a great tragedy for the Nation, as well as for you, and I wanted you to know how much my thoughts are of you at this time. He was a wise and devoted man. You can always be proud of what he did for his country - Affectionately Lyndon B. Johnson ~ William Manchester

At the bottom of the box were two big fairy-tale collections our father had sent us sometime after our parents divorced in 1963. I was four and my sister was five. We never saw him again. One book was a beautifully illustrated collection of Russian fairy tales inscribed, "To Rachel, from Daddy." The other, a book of Japanese fables, was inscribed to me. It had been years since I had opened them. I stared at the handwriting. Something seemed a bit off. Then it dawned on me - both inscriptions bore my own adolescent scrawl. I had always remembered the books and our father's dedications as proof of his love for us. Yet, how malleable our memories are, even if our brains are intact. Neuroscientists now suggest that while the core meaning of a long-term memory remains, the memory transforms each time we attempt to retrieve it. In fact, anatomical changes occur in the brain every single time we remember. As Proust said, "The only paradise is paradise lost. ~ Mira Bartok

Since 1963, LEGO bricks have been manufactured from acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer - ABS copolymer for short - a plastic with a matte finish. It is very hard and robust - import criteria for a children's toy. Laboratories in Switzerland and Denmark regularly test the quality of the ABS. The plastic is distributed to factories as granules rather than in liquid form. These grains of plastic are heated up to 232ºC and converted into a molten mass. Injection moulding machines weighing up to 150 tonnes squeeze the viscous plastic mass into the desired injection moulds - of which there are 2,400 varieties. After seven seconds, the brick produced in this way has cooled down enough to be removed from the mould. The injection moulding method is so precise that out of every million elements produced, only about 18 units have to be rejected. Unsold bricks are converted back into granulates and recycled. ~ Christian Humberg

The legitimacy of Oswald's alleged alias, Alex Hidell, is tainted beyond
repair by the nature of the Selective Service card supposedly found on him
after his arrest in the Texas Theater. This card bore a photograph of Lee Harvey
Oswald but the name of Alex Hidell. The problem is real Selective Service
cards never had photos on them, so the card would have been worthless as
a means of identification. It was perfect, however, for instantly associating
Oswald with the Hidell alias. Oswald apparently only used this alias twice -
once to order the unreliable rifle later dubiously tied to the assassination,
and once to order the revolver allegedly used to kill Officer Tippit. The
authorities claimed Oswald utilized a P.O. Box, under Hidell's name, for
just this purpose. Critics quickly pointed out how senseless this would have
been, as anyone could have purchased better, cheaper weapons on virtually
every street corner in 1963 Dallas, with no convenient trail left behind. ~ Donald Jeffries

In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork." Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark." Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork." But the book represents the dreams of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau words" in Through the Looking Glass. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature. ~ Murray Gell-Mann

The ten commandments according to Leó Szilárd

1. Recognize the connections of things and laws of conduct of men, so that you may know what you are doing.

2. Let your acts be directed toward a worthy goal, but do not ask if they will reach it; they are to be models and examples, not means to an end.

3. Speak to all men as you do to yourself, with no concern for the effect you make, so that you do not shut them out from your world; lest in isolation the meaning of life slips out of sight and you lose the belief in the perfection of creation.

4. Do not destroy what you cannot create.

5. Touch no dish, except that you are hungry.

6. Do not covet what you cannot have.

7. Do not lie without need.

8. Honor children. Listen reverently to their words and speak to them with infinite love.

9.Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.

10. Lead your life with a gentle hand and be ready to leave whenever you are called.

Leo Szilard 'Die Stimme der Delphine.' Utopische Erzählungen. Rowohit Taschenbuch Verlag. 1963. Translated by Dr. Jacob Bronowski. ~ Leo Szilard

In 1498, Vasco da Gama the Portuguese navigator explored this eastern coast of Africa flanking the Indian Ocean. This led him to open a trade route to Asia and occupy Mozambique to the Portuguese colony. In 1840, it came under the control of the Sultan of Zanzibar and became a British protectorate in 1895, with Mombasa as its capital.

Nairobi, lying 300 miles to the northwest of Mombasa is the largest city in Kenya. It became the capital in 1907 and is the fastest growing urban area in the Republic having become independent of the United Kingdom on December 12, 1963 and declared a republic the following year on December 12, 1964.


Kenya is divided by the 38th meridian of longitude into two very different halves. The eastern half of Kenya slopes towards the coral-backed seashore of the Indian Ocean while the western side rises through a series of hills to the African Shear Zone or Central Rift. West of the Rift, the lowest part of a westward-sloping plateau contains Lake Victoria. This, the largest lake in Africa, receives most of its water from rain, the Kagera River and countless small streams. Its only outlet is the White Nile River which is part of the longest river on Earth. Combined, the Blue Nile and the White Nile, stretches 4,160 miles before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. ~ Captain Hank, "Seawater Three"

Keeping The City

"Unless the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman guardeth in vain" - John F. Kennedy's unspoken words in Dallas on November 23, 1963.

Once,
in August,
head on your chest,
I heard wings
battering up the place,
something inside trying to fly out
and I was silent
and attentive,
the watchman.
I was your small public,
your small audience
but it was you that was clapping,
it was you untying the snarls and knots,
the webs, all bloody and gluey;
you with your twelve tongues and twelve wings
beating, wresting, beating, beating
your way out of childhood,
that airless net that fastened you down.

Since then I was more silent
though you had gone miles away,
tearing down, rebuilding the fortress.
I was there
but could do nothing
but guard the city
lest it break.

I was silent.
I had a strange idea I could overhear
but that your voice, tongue, wing
belonged solely to you.
The Lord was silent too.
I did not know if he could keep you whole,
where I, miles away, yet head on your chest,
could do nothing. Not a single thing.

The wings of the watchman,
if I spoke, would hurt the bird of your soul
as he nested, bit, sucked, flapped.
I wanted him to fly, burst like a missile from your throat,
burst from the spidery-mother-web,
burst from Woman herself
w ~ Anne Sexton

Before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the very word
conspiracy was seldom used by most Americans. The JFK assassination
was the seminal national event in the lives of the Baby Boomer generation.
We've heard all the clichés about the loss of our innocence, and the beginning
of public distrust in our government's leaders, being born with the events
of November 22, 1963, but there's a good deal of truth in that. President
Kennedy tapped into our innate idealism and inspired a great many people,
especially the young, like no president ever had before.
John F. Kennedy was vastly different from most of our elected presidents.
He was the first president to refuse a salary. He never attended a Bilderberg
meeting. He was the first Catholic to sit in the Oval Office, and he almost
certainly wasn't related to numerous other presidents and/or the royal family
of England, as is often the case. He was a genuine war hero, having tugged an
injured man more than three miles using only a life preserver's strap between
his teeth, after the Japanese had destroyed the boat he commanded, PT-109.
This selfless act seems even more courageous when one takes into account
Kennedy's recurring health problems and chronic bad back. He was an
intellectual and an accomplished author who wrote many of his memorable
speeches. He would never have been invited to dance naked with other
powerful men a ~ Donald Jeffries

It is already the fashion to diminish Eliot by calling him derivative, the mouthpiece of Pound, and so forth; and yet if one wanted to understand the apocalypse of early modernism in its true complexity it would be Eliot, I fancy, who would demand one's closest attention. He was ready to rewrite the history of all that interested him in order to have past and present conform; he was a poet of apocalypse, of the last days and the renovation, the destruction of the earthly city as a chastisement of human presumption, but also of empire. Tradition, a word we especially associate with this modernist, is for him the continuity of imperial deposits; hence the importance in his thought of Virgil and Dante. He saw his age as a long transition through which the elect must live, redeeming the time. He had his demonic host, too; the word 'Jew' remained in lower case through all the editions of the poems until the last of his lifetime, the seventy-fifth birthday edition of 1963. He had a persistent nostalgia for closed, immobile hierarchical societies. If tradition is, as he said in After Strange Gods--though the work was suppressed--'the habitual actions, habits and customs' which represent the kinship 'of the same people living in the same place' it is clear that Jews do not have it, but also that practically nobody now does. It is a fiction, a fiction cousin to a myth which had its effect in more practical politics. In extenuation it might be said that these writers felt, as Sartre fe ~ Frank Kermode