ain't you heard? there's a war on!

Approaching up ahead, November 22nd, and it'll be 50 years since assassination of President Kennedy.

With people thinking and talking about that, I wanted to think and type about him when he was alive....last Thursday I took an excerpt out of an interesting nytimes article, about two significant speeches the president made, on close-together dates in spring of 1963 -- and thought later, maybe by taking out just that piece of the article, I might have made it sound like Pres. K just made these two speeches and abra-ca-dabra stuff happened -- things changed....wasn't trying to leave that impression.

The president spoke on civil rights -- ("...as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution...") and that movement had been happening, apparently all through the 1950s.  It was significant that the president was giving that attention to it -- attention is promotion, when you're in that powerful position.  But he didn't -- like -- start it that day, or anything....

And the process of not blowing up the world with nuclear weapons had been going on under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower for more than a decade, also....

(A person puts up an interesting "snapshot" of historical moments, but always have to remember they're not isolated....history is a process.  Ongoing.  With any snapshot, there's stuff surrounding it -- stuff before, stuff after....)

--------------- So wanting to think of JFK in life, went through some of Robert Dallek's bio, An Unfinished Life.

Health problems, health problems, health problems, aaahhgghh! 
Back
Digestive
Addison's
pill taken for one thing made the other thing worse....
(groan -- gggrrroooaaannn...rrhhmmnn...)

All through his childhood, John Kennedy was in and out of hospitals, school infirmaries, specialists' offices, back to the hospitals....

He got good and tired of it. 

The doctors would be telling his parents, Joe and Rose Kennedy,
"He isn't growing properly -- he can't put on weight as he ought to...."

And all the while they're sending him to boarding schools....
It seems to be the "thing" of some of the wealthier people -- at least back then, to send kids away to school....

(Not sure I "get" that.  Like -- I have my cat.  I got him so I could have a cat, at home, & have the pleasure of his company...I wouldn't think of sending him away to -- I don't know -- Cat School, or whatever....It seems like -- these folks want to have all these children, and then just when they're becoming interesting people, it's "Off!  Off to boarding-school with ye - !")

So basically anytime he wasn't in a hospital or medical testing clinic of some kind having something fixed, operated on, or tested, he was rolling through school, playing sports like a maniac -- (how would you feel like doing that when you're sick all the time?? -- well, I guess I'm not an 11-year-old Kennedy male so I wasn't schooled in WINWINWIN!!!!!!!!!!! and maybe if I was him, in that time and place, I'd do the same...)

-------------- WWII -- while some wealthy-and-influential people might pull strings to get their son out of military service, or into a less dangerous area of it, Joseph Kennedy did the opposite:  pulled strings and used influence to get the military to accept his second son, John Fitzgerald, in spite of his many health concerns / mysteries.  (Doctors did all this stuff and could never really define what was wrong with JFK and then successfully treat it....)

So, you're in near-constant pain, where do you want to be?  In the Solomon Islands looking for Japanese to get rid of before they get rid of you....Yikes.  And ouch.

-30-