Patrick,

With all due respect, May 4th is NOT "Star Wars Day." It is not even the anniversary of Star Wars. If you go to http://www.may4.org, you will find the day has a far different meaning.

Along with November 22nd, April 4th, and June 5th, May 4th is a day that is etched in our history as a anniversary of martyrdom, and each May 4th, I stop for a moment to remember.

Ok, I now officially show my age. Before many of you were born, or in the year in which many of Patrick's contemporaries were born (including my wife), May 4th had an entirely different meaning. I was 11 years old, and in 6th grade in Brooklyn.

From memory (you all can look it up if you want): On April 30th, Nixon announced that the Viet Nam war spread into Cambodia. Students were outraged, and went "on strike" across the country.

On May 3rd, 1970, Governor James Rhodes declared a state of emergency and sent the National Guard to the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. I was 11, in 6th grade. On May 4th, outraged students confronted the National Guard, which first acted incompetently and then acted criminally.

4 students were killed in Ohio that day. My cousin and her future husband were students at Kent State at the time. My cousin was fortunately in the library when the students were murdered, and her future husband was out of town and hitchhiked back that day. He told me that when he got to a bank that afternoon, a teller gleefully told him "I heard they got some!"

Also a student at Kent State at the time was Thurman Munson.

37 years ago. 4 dead seems almost a small number these days, I guess, compared to Columbine and Virginia Tech, but this was not random violence at the hands of nutjobs. This was the National Guard -- the same National Guard that is now sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the same National Guard 37 years ago that people like our current President entered to avoid being sent to fight overseas. How different the times were then.

I remember how outraged my teachers and fellow students were that day. I remember the picture on the front page of the Times of soldiers firing on one knee, rifles on the shoulder, aimed and fired. One of my fellow students defaced the picture, making the Guardsmen into Martians with antennae on their helmets in that faceless picture. This was a time of "otherness" in which the other was clearly not human. They had to be alien, otherworldly. How else could they kill our brothers, sisters, children, cousins?

So maybe there is a connection to Star Wars after all. Perhaps this all happened such a long time ago in a place far, far away.

November 22nd, 1963. April 4th 1968. June 5th, 1968. May 4th, 1970. To paraphrase Phil Ochs: "With the speed of insanity, then they died."

And Neil Young:

Tin Soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming
4 dead in Ohio.

Perhaps Santayana said it best:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

A long time ago, in a place far, far away....

Sigh.

Let's not forget: The Battle of Chancellorsville, the Naval Battle of Hakodate, the Haymarket Square Riot, the May Fourth Movement demonstrations, the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Liberation of the Neuengamme concentration camp, the launch of the Freedom Riders trip, the deaths of 20 sailors on the HMS Sheffield, the PEPCON disaster, and the death of 148 people in the crash of EAS Airlines BAC 1-11-500.

So it goes.

Mike,

Very cute. It's amazing what you can find in an almanac.

Seriously: how many of those events did you live through? At how many of those events did you have relatives nearby?

I know for a fact that you are not old enough to remember Kent State. That does not give you license to trivialize the tragedy.

Holly Near:

Students in Ohio, 200 yards away
Shot down by nameless fire, one early day in May
Some people cried out angry, "You should have shot more of them down,"
But you can't bury youth, my friend, it grows the whole world round
And it could have been me....

In the fall semester of my Freshman year at Wesleyan, fellow frosh rented a bus to go to a demonstration at Kent State (long bus ride) to protest the building of a gym on the site of the massacre. Yet, ironically, it wasn't until that same semester that I actually met people -- fellow students -- who believed that the murders were justified.

The launch of the Freedom Riders trip is not the day people remember. People remember, however, where they were when they heard about Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. I'm sure some people believed their murders to be justified as well.

Kent State polarized and already polarized nation. The same way that the murders of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner shook white liberals in the Civil Rights movement, the murders at Kent State -- and Jackson State -- let activists throughout the country know that the Nixon Administration was playing for keeps, and that the price of the right of assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment could well be death. It was no longer a game. The gloves were off.

You can't trivialize this, Mike. Everyone American alive and cognizant at the time, including your parents and your in-laws, remembers Kent State. They probably remember where they were when they heard about it. The same cannot be said of any of the other events you mention.

Oh, and if you look up May 9th, 1970, you will see that this was the day that Willis Reed limped out of the locker room and the Knicks won their first NBA title, 5 days later. Life went on, as it did after 9/11, and after all of the assassinations.

But this was not a trivial moment. It was a significant and tragic event, and a pivotal one in this nation's recent history.

You're absolutely right, David. I don't remember Kent State. And I don't know anyone who was involved in these other historical events that I mention (although I certainly remember the Falklands War).

My point is, there are plenty of historical events on any given calendar day. Some of them involve the death of tens or hundreds or thousands, by disaster and accident and war and murder. The days are rife with injustice. There is no date without its bloody deeds. As our late friend says, so it goes.

Why did I write that list of other May 4th events? Certainly not to demean what happened at Kent State, or what it meant to the country or to you. What possible reason would I do such a thing? There isn't one.

May 4 can be the day you, and we, remember Kent State. It can also be the day we think about what the Haymarket Riots meant, or how a tornado can destroy a town. Or a day when we walk the dog and open a window. Or the day we make a pun about Star Wars. There's room for it all -- there has to be room for it all -- or we will spend all our days in sackcloth and ashes. Life, as you say, goes on.

All my life -- at least, all my youth -- I was told that the struggles, the politics, the very culture of my time was a pale reflection of the Sixties and all that it represented. We listened to "classic rock." We were told that our protests were feeble imitations of those of our parents' generation. I wrote a political journal in high school; the editor of our local paper likened it to the Berkley Barb. (He did not mean that as a compliment.) I had to ask my parents what he was talking about. Rebellion was something our parents did, and how could you rebel against Rebellion?

And we believed it. Or at least I did. We knew more about the Vietnam war than we did about the wars going on around us. We listened to our parents' music. It was, of course, destructive to our own generation.

Which is probably why I don't think about Kent State much.

Mike,

Of course lots of things had to happen each and every day in history in order for history to be history.

My beef is that while you did not necessarily "demean" the events in Ohio that day, I did feel that there is here an attempt to trivialize it, and your last post did nothing to change that feeling.

I understand that you have issues with "The Sixties," and your relationship that time. "The Sixties" is a misnomer; the time truly started in the 50's with the Civil Rights movement, and ended in 1974 with Nixon's resignation amid calls for impeachment. When Nixon resigned, the country sighed a collective sigh of exhaustion and "Activism Fatigue." In the spring of 1974 we had Impeachment rallies on campus. In the fall of 1974 we had streaking. No joke. There was a complete activism fatigue in the country, particular on campuses, from 1974 on.

The Sixties were a tough act to follow. While they were my prepubescent youth, when I came of age I had the same experience you did, where just about any hint of activism that occurred for the next 15 years or so was accused of being what Charlie King called "Vaguely Reminiscent of the Sixties" -- including many things I did in college and for years after.

I'm not talking about "sackcloth and ashes," as you suggest, but a moment of reflection is in order. Yes, the Haymarket Square Riot, fighting for the 8 hour day, was as significant in its time, but it is not our time. Maybe 1970 wasn't your time, but it is of your time, as you co-exist today with many of us who lived through it.

Remember that while Ben and Zach and Emma did not live through 9/11, their historical circumstances will be shaped by it, as yours and mine were shaped by Montgomery and Little Rock and Sputnick and Birmingham and Dallas and Memphis and Kent State and Viet Nam. Some occured before either one of us were born, and our historical circumstances were shaped by them nonetheless.

All I'm saying, really, is that attention must be paid. A little respect is in order, and a little reflection. Just a little.

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