we'll meet again someday on the avenue

Driving across America is a good way to see it.

Now that they've made air travel such a misery, it didn't surprise me to read a news story which said bus travel was making a comeback in popularity.  And of course if you just drive your own vehicle, you can go at your own pace and select your route. ...

Tonight a young lady who used to work in the same place where I work every day came in and said she was quitting to move to Belgrade, Minnesota.

(Was thinking -- Bell-gray?  Belgrade?...)  When people leave to drive across America -- or at least a part of it -- to go someplace I wonder and imagine what their life and work will be like -- there, in the new place.  And when people drive across a chunk of America to come here and work, I wonder -- and hope -- that they achieve their goals and are happy here, and not sorry they came. ...

Looking up Belgrade, Minnesota in the Free Encyclopedia, I see that it has a -- water tower.  A pickup truck, a car, a street.  A museum -- whoa!  the Belgrade Centennial Museum.

The town is named after the capital of Serbia.

People coming into your workplace; and people going out of it.  People come into your life, & go out of it.  (If anyone told you before you started out, all the stuff to watch out for in the world, you'd never Do Anything....)

People criss-crossing America seeking a better life situation ("My family's there," and "I have a job in a bar, to start") makes me think of this song --

Early one mornin' the sun was shinin'
I was layin' in bed
Wond'rin' if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red
Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was gonna be rough
They never did like Mama's homemade dress
Papa's bankbook wasn't big enough
And I was standin' on the side of the road
Rain fallin' on my shoes
Heading out for the East Coast
Lord knows I've paid some dues
gettin' through
Tangled up in blue

She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess
But I used a little too much force
We drove that car as far as we could
Abandoned it out West
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best
She turned around to look at me
As I was walkin' away
I heard her say over my shoulder
"We'll meet again someday
on the avenue"
Tangled up in blue

I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I happened to be employed
workin' for a while on a fishin' boat
Right outside of Delacroix
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind,
and I just grew
Tangled up in blue

She was workin' in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer
I just kept lookin' at the side of her face
In the spotlight so clear
and later on as the crowd thinned out
I's just about to do the same
She was standing there in back of my chair
Said to me, "Don't I know your name?"
I muttered somethin' underneath my breath
She studied the lines on my face
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces
of my shoe
Tangled up in blue

She lit a burner on the stove
And offered me a pipe
"I thought you'd never say hello," she said
"You look like the silent type"
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul
from me to you
Tangled up in blue

I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs
There was music in the cafés at night
And revolution in the air
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died
She had to sell everything she owned
and froze up inside
And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on
like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue

So now I'm goin' back again
I got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenters' wives
Don't know how it all got started
I don't know what they're doin' with their lives
But me, I'm still on the road
Headin' for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point
of view
Tangled up in blue

--------------------------
{"Tangled Up In Blue" -- Bob Dylan -- Copyright 1974 by Ram's Horn Music, and renewed 2002}

-30-

the cats in your head

-----------------"Oh, that atrocity!" Penelope exclaimed.  [excerpt]----------------- "It was one of those girls from Dimsdale.  She was housemaid for a short time."

"What happened to her?  Did she get a job painting subway trains?"

"I hear she left town after defacing her apartment," the attorney said briskly.  "Speaking of transportation, Mr. Qwilleran, wouldn't you like to replace your little car with something more . . . upscale?  Mr. Fitch at the bank will cover the transaction."

"There's nothing wrong with the car I have, Miss Goodwinter.  There's no rust on the body, and it's economical to operate."

Qwilleran ended the conversation hurriedly.  While Penelope was talking he became aware of unusual noises coming from another part of the house -- a miscellany of plopping, pattering, fluttering, swishing, and skittering.  He rushed out of the library to track it down. 

Beyond the foyer with its majestic staircase there was a vestibule of generous proportions, floored with squares of creamy white marble.  Here was the rosewood hall stand with hooks for top hats and derbies, as well as a rack for walking sticks.  Here was a marble-topped table with a silver tray for calling cards.  And here was the massive front door with its brass handle and escutcheon, its brass doorbell that jangled when one turned a key on the outside, and its brass mail slot.

Through this slot were shooting envelopes of every size and shape, dropping in a pile on the floor.  Sitting on the cool marble and watching the process with anticipation were Koko and Yum Yum.  Now and then Koko would put forth a paw and scoop a letter from the pile, and Yum Yum would bat it around the slick floor.

As Qwilleran watched, the cascade of envelopes stopped falling, and through the sidelights he could see the mail carrier stepping into her Jeep and driving away.

His first impulse was to call the post office and suggest some other arrangement, but then he observed the pleasure that the event afforded the cats.  They jumped into the pile like children in a snowbank, rolling over and skidding and scattering the mail.  Nothing so wonderful had ever happened in their young lives!  Letters slithered across the marble vestibule and into the parquet foyer, where Yum Yum tried to push them under the Oriental rug.  Hiding things was her specialty.

One letter was gripped in Koko's jaws, and he paraded around with an air of importance.  It was a pink envelope.

"Here, give me that letter!" Qwilleran commanded.

Koko ran into the dining room with Qwilleran in pursuit.  The cat darted in and out of the maze of sixty-four chair legs, with the man chasing and scolding.  Eventually Koko tired of the game and dropped the pink envelope at Qwilleran's feet.----------------------------{The Cat Who Played Post Office.  Lilian Jackson Braun.  Copyright 1987.  Jove, The Berkley Publishing Group, New York.}

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

---------------- [excerpts] -------------- Qwilleran opened the wicker hamper in the cats' parlor and invited two reluctant Siamese to jump out.  Why, he asked himself, did they never want to get into the hamper?  And when they were in it, why did they never want to get out?  Koko and Yum Yum finally emerged cautiously, a performance they had repeated every night for the last year, stalking the premises and sniffing the furnishings as if they suspected the room to be bugged or booby-trapped.

"Cats!" Qwilleran said aloud.  "Who can understand them?"

---------------------
Qwilleran went into the library to select wedding music:  Bach for the ceremony and Schubert with the champagne and caviar.  Koko followed him and scrutinized each cassette, sniffing some and reaching for others with an uncertain paw.

"A feline librarian is bad enough," Qwilleran said.  "Please!  We don't want a feline disc jockey."

"Nyik nyik nyik," Koko retorted irritably, swiveling one ear forward and the other back.

--------------------------
At 5:45 Qwilleran fed the cats.  Pork liver cupcakes, when thawed, became a revolting gray mush, but the Siamese crouched over the plate and devoured the chef's innovation with tails flat on the floor, denoting total satisfaction. ------------------------------------ {The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare.  Lilian Jackson Braun.  Copyright, 1988.  Jove.  The Berkley Publishing Group.  New York.}

==================
===============
One reads Mrs. Braun's mysteries partly for the Cat descriptions and action.  Koko helps Qwilleran -- a journalist who, in the fifth book in the series, inherits a fortune -- to solve puzzles and mysteries.  The cat gives him hints, by -- never walking on the part of a rug that's decorated with a pattern of roses -- or knocking books from a shelf to the floor.  Journalist Qwilleran finds the book on the floor and considers the book's contents, gleaning clues. ...

I think people who have cats can enjoy these mysteries, and people who don't have any cats can enjoy them, too.  Like, if a person was allergic to cats -- the book isn't going to cause a "reaction."  If you only imagine cats, in your head, there's no allergy flare-up. ...

---------------- [Post Office excerpt] ---------------- At a signal from the hostess the butler carried a silver tray of small envelopes to the gentlemen, containing the names of the ladies they were to take into the dining room.  "Dinner is served," he announced.  The musicians switched to Viennese waltzes, and the guests went in to dinner two by two.  No one noticed Koko and Yum Yum bringing up the rear, with tails proudly erect. --------------------

-30-

The Chef Who Knew Vegetables

-- "It's a service-oriented restaurant."
-- "What this town needs is a food-oriented restaurant."

-------------------- [excerpts from a conversation in Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who Played Post Office]------------------
Qwilleran and his date walked to the restaurant, which occupied an old stone residence rezoned for commercial use.
"The Lanspeaks named it after their cow," Melinda said, "and they did the whole place in dairy colors:  milk white, straw beige, and butter yellow.  It's a service-oriented restaurant."
Qwilleran grunted.  "What this town needs is a food-oriented restaurant."

A young hostess greeted them.  "My name is Vicki, and I'm your hostperson.  Your waitperson is Matthew, and he'll do everything possible to make your visit enjoyable."
A young man immediately appeared.  "My name is Matthew.  I am your waitperson, and I am at your service."
"My name is Jim," Qwilleran replied.  "I am your customer, and I am very hungry.  The lady's name is Melinda.  She is my guest, and she is hungry, too."

"And thirsty," Melinda added.  "Okay, Qwill, tell me all about the break-in last night.  How did he get into the house?"... [some talk of the Mystery and Clues]...

Matthew arrived with Melinda's champagne and Qwilleran's mineral water.  "This is your champagne cooler," he said, "and these are your chilled glasses."
"We'd also like an appetizer," Qwilleran told him.  "Bring us some paté de caneton."
"That's kind of a meatloaf made of ground-up duck," the waitperson explained helpfully.
"Thank you, Matthew.  It sounds delicious."
Melinda drank a toast to Qwilleran for exposing a deplorable crime.
Apologetically he said, "I'm afraid it's going to be a nasty scandal when everything comes to light."...[talk of the Mystery and Clues]...

After studying the menu they ordered trout almandine.
"That's trout with almonds," said the waitperson, eager to be of service.
"Fine.  And we'd like asparagus."
"That's extra," Matthew warned.
While they waited for the entrée Melinda said to Qwilleran, "So you were wrong about the New Jersey connection.  There was no sinister plot to eliminate you and grab the inheritance."...[Mystery - Clues]...

The entrée was served.  "This is your trout almandine and asparagus on heated plates," said Matthew.
Qwilleran stared at the vegetable. 

"This isn't asparagus.  It's broccoli."

"Sorry.  I'll take it back."  Matthew removed the plates but soon returned with them. 

"The chef says it's asparagus."

They ate their trout and broccoli in silence until Qwilleran said, "If Koko hadn't sniffed out the Daisy situation, and if I hadn't started investigating, Penelope and Tiffany and Della would be alive today."
"And a murderer would be at large," Melinda reminded him....[Mystery-Clue-talk]...

After the tossed salad on a chilled plate with a chilled fork, and after the Ribier grapes with homemade cheese, and after coffee...Qwilleran and Melinda walked back to her father's house.------- [end excerpts]

= = = = = = = = The above excerpts provide a "taste" of food-chat from a Lilian Jackson Braun "Cat Who" mystery. 

("The chef says it's asparagus" -- LOL)

Each of her mysteries is titled "The Cat Who..." something.
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards  (1966)
The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern  (1967)
The Cat Who Turned On And Off  (1968)
The Cat Who Saw Red    (1986)
The Cat Who Played Brahms    (1987)
The Cat Who Played Post Office  (1987)
The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare  (1988)
The Cat Who Sniffed Glue  (1988)
The Cat Who Went Underground  (1989)
The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts  (1990)
-- etc., to a total of 30.

And it's interesting to note that she began these books in the 60s -- the first three -- and then began writing them again in the 80s -- after retiring from a career at the Detroit Free Press. ...

===============
{excerpts, The Cat Who Played Post Office.  Lilian Jackson Braun.  Copyright, 1987.  Jove, Berkley Publishing Group, N.Y.}

-30-

sea salt, Greek yogurt, and poached eggs--oh my

In this season of Thanksgiving, I find myself considering -- food.

Although that isn't, of course, the most important component:  the point is being thankful.  And we have to try to do that all year-around -- be thankful, and optimistic.  (If we don't, the bad guys may win....)

And since the traditional meal shared with family / friends is the centerpiece of our Celebration of Thankfulness -- back to food. ...

I feel like -- in our modern society -- we "beat up on" food.
This food will kill you;
that food will kill you;
and you'll die for sure if you don't make sure and eat this other food....

You need protein! -- Eat meat!
No meat!  Become a vegan!

Eggs are good for you!
Eggs are bad for you!
Eggs are good for you again! -- but eat them quickly before the trend evolves and they're bad for you again...!

Yogurt!
Frozen yogurt!
Greek yogurt!!

------------------ Was re-filling salt shaker at home with sea salt --
nnn-n-n-o-o-tt Actual Salt like we used to use.
Not old-fashioned heart attack-inviting Actual Salt,
Not dry-land, land-locked, land-lubbin' SALT-salt, but
Sea Salt.

Instead of being "politically correct," I'm -- uhrm -- saltily correct.  Spicily correct.  Nutritionality-correct....

I look back at all the food "trends" that have come-and-gone in my brief lifetime, and of course there were more before that and will continue to be more, and sometimes when --
pouring SEA salt into the shaker
and
POACHING (not frying) an egg,
I just have this mad urge
to run up onto the roof
and call loudly and strongly out into the darkness,
WHAT-IN-THE-HELL-IS-THE-DIFFERENCE???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

= = = = = = = = = = =  In her "The Cat Who..." mysteries, the author Lilian Jackson Braun usually added food into the plots as part of the background color.  In The Cat Who Played Brahms, the main character Qwilleran's girlfriend Rosemary arrives at his north-country cabin:
-------- [excerpts]---------"...I'm going to stay here and cheer you up.  You've been too solitary, and you've probably been eating all the wrong food, and you've been spending too much time at the typewriter...."

Rosemary's vitality and dewy complexion and bright eyes were the result, she claimed, of eating the Right Food, some of which she had brought along in a cooler.  With the Right Food warming in the oven and the bearskin rug grinning on the hearth, the cabin felt homey and comfortable.  Koko walked across the cassette player, and they had music.

..."The pickax!  Where's the pickax?"  Qwilleran exclaimed, jumping to his feet.  "There was an antique pickax up there a week ago.  I don't know, Rosemary.  People walk in and out of this cabin like it's a bus terminal.  It's considered unfriendly to lock doors.  My good watch has disappeared and -- worst of all -- the gold pen you gave me.  And now the pickax is missing."

"Oh, dear," she said sympathetically.

"Everything around here is strange.  The police set up roadblocks just for fun.  Nobody has a last name.  There are footsteps on the roof in the middle of the night.  The cats spend all their time staring at the septic tank."

"Oh, Qwill, you must be exaggerating.  You're punchy from eating the wrong food."

"You think so?  Well, this is a fact:  Koko found a cassette hidden behind the moose head, with a threatening message recorded right in the middle of the music.  And when I went fishing, I hooked the body of a man."

Rosemary gasped.  "Who was it?"

"I don't know.  It went back to the bottom of the lake, and everybody tries to tell me it was an old rubber tire."

"Qwill, dearest, are you sure you're getting enough fresh fruit and vegetables?"

"You're like all the others," he complained, "but there was one person who believed me, and now he's dead, with his skull bashed in."

"Oh, Qwill!  Don't meddle with these things.  You might be in danger yourself."

"We'll see about that," he said.  "Let's eat.  But first I want to feed the cats...."

= = = = = = =
Qwilleran, on the other hand, was less than delighted with his late breakfast.  It consisted of a fresh fruit compote sprinkled with an unidentified powder resembling cement, followed by a cereal containing several mysterious ingredients -- some chewy, some gummy, some sandy.  He knew it was all the Right Food, and he consumed everything without comment but refused to give up his morning caffeine in favor of brewed herbs.

Rosemary said:  "I found some dreadful commercial rolls in your freezer, made with white flour and covered with sugary icing.  You don't want to eat that junk, Qwill dearest.  I threw them out."

[end excerpts]
--------------------------------
{excerpts -- The Cat Who Played Brahms, by Lilian Jackson Braun.  Copyright, 1987.  Jove, The Berkley Publishing Group, New York, New York.}

-30-

a muse for Chris Matthews

Almost four years ago, on Feb. 22, 2010, we discussed here at BCL blog the topic of Why won't politicians get along with each other in Washington anymore?

Wrote,
"It started in the early 90s.
Before that, I remember President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill working together and being civil.  Joking together.  Getting together on what they could get together on (as Pres. O. reminds us -- "finding common ground") and getting some bills passed, and making things work.

Governing.

Governing is a different ball game from campaigning.
during the campaign you compete.
Then when it's over, you do a different job.  You govern.

Since sometime early in the 90s, it seems to me, it became a situation where the campaigning Never Stops, and the Governing is hard to do because each party looks at the short-term goals of their own best interest for the next campaign.

And it's not even to make themselves look good; it's to make the other guy look bad.

It's like trying to win the voters by default.

Where did all this negativity come from?"

[end Blue Collar Lit excerpt]

And then today, saw Chris Matthews has a new book out titled,
Tip And The Gipper:
When Politics Worked.

[Publishers Weekly review excerpt] --
Author Chris Matthews draws from his personal journals, President Reagan's diary, and Speaker [Tip] O'Neill's press conference transcripts to bring 1980s politics back to life.  Matthews begins with the vastly different backgrounds of the two men.  He contrasts their styles and politics before moving through the Reagan years in a highly-detailed narrative.

Matthews' thesis is that the government's functionality at the time is largely attributed to the relationship of Reagan and O'Neill, who both used the check-and-balance design of their positions to "propel the republic forward..."...Matthews offers little direct commentary on today's contrasting "government by tantrum," allowing the events and personalities to speak for themselves....

Part history, part Washington inside story, part career memoir, this inspiring story of two remarkable men is recommended for political junkies and insiders alike.--------------------

= = = =
[Washington Post]:  During tense budget negotiations at the White House in 1982, President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill were spotted off to the side, heads together, whispering.  Aides wondered what was up, and Reagan replied that they were "just two Irishmen plotting."

Given the reverence for all things Hibernian in Chris Matthews's "Tip and the Gipper," a reader might conclude that the current legislative crises are due to a shortage of Irish Americans in the capital.  Matthews, the host of MSNBC's show "Hardball" and a former aide to O'Neill,...writes, "It's easy, from the vantage point of today, to mock all those Irish jokes and the swapping of stories between the President and the Speaker.  But I was there, and the plain truth is, they kept the conversation going when no other progress seemed possible otherwise."

-------------------------

Is Chris Matthews referring to this blog for book ideas?
His last book was about President Kennedy.
Maybe his next tome will feature "Sex And The City",
then one about "Bewitched," and then
about 14 books on the music and writings of Bob Dylan !!!   :D

-30-

I certainly will come back in the springtime

--------------- {excerpts}--------------
 
= = = =
One Secret Service man recalled a time the previous winter when he was on duty outside the Oval Office.  It was a freezing, bitter night.  JFK came to the French doors, opened them, and walked out saying, "I don't want you out here in this terrible cold.  Come in here and get warm."  The Secret Service guard told the president that his post was outside and he could not leave it.  Kennedy returned to his desk and signed some more papers.  About ten minutes later the president reappeared carrying a fleece-lined coat.  "I want you to put his on, you're not warm enough, I can tell."  To appease the president the guard put the coat on.
 
A little while later, the president came back with a cup of hot chocolate for the young man.  Coatless, he came through the French doors, sat down on the icy steps, and the two men drank hot chocolate together.
 
= = = =
Jackie Kennedy's mother, Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss, said,

I felt they were closer.  I can't think of two people who had packed more into ten years of marriage than they had.  And I felt that with all their strains and stresses, which any sensitive people have in marriage, had eased to a point where they were terribly close to each other.  I can't think of any other married couple I've ever known that had a greater understanding of each other....  He appreciated her gifts and she worshipped him and appreciated his humor and kindness, and they really had fun together.

 = = = =
June 1963
On his last presidential trip abroad, Kennedy visited Ireland, the land of his ancestors, for a sentimental journey.  There had been rumblings that this trip did not make any sense with a reelection year coming up.  ..."How many votes are we going to get in Ireland?"...
 
...Dave Powers recalls their return to the Kennedy homestead in New Ross, County Wexford.  "We went into this little room, with a fireplace, to see Mrs. Ryan.  I was carrying the gifts Jack was giving them.  He didn't realize he had that many cousins....There was nothing like the days in Ireland."
 
...When it was time to leave, the president said, "Cousin Mary, the next time I come I'll bring Jackie and the children." 
"Are you glad you came?" a friend asked.  He said, "These were the three happiest days I've ever spent in my life."
"He was really very happy -- a little sad leaving, or lonely, I thought.  I think he was very taken by the simple people about him who greeted him everywhere."
 
At a dinner the night before he left, a guest recited a poem for him, "On the River Shannon," by Gerald Griffin.  The president found a piece of paper, asked for a pen, and wrote it down:
 

'Tis it is the Shannon's brightly glancing stream,

Brightly gleaming, silent in the morning beam,

Oh, the sight entrancing,

Thus returns from travels long,

Years of exile, years of pain,

To see old Shannon's face again,

O'er the waters dancing.

 
Before flying from Limerick to London the next day, Kennedy wanted to say a few words to express what these days had meant to him.  Unselfconsciously, he stood in front of the crowd that had come to see him off, and recited the poem about the River Shannon from memory, and added, "This is a land for which I hold the greatest affection, and I certainly will come back in the springtime."  The crowd cheered.  A little shy now, he ducked his head, patted his hair, smiled more broadly, and lifted his hand to wave.

-------------------- {end excerpts}

[Jackie Style, by Pamela Clarke Keogh.  Copyright 2001.  HarperCollins.  New York.]

-30-

low-res, dreamlike, the height of knowingness

In today's on-line Christian Science Monitor, Peter Grier asks Why is Pres. Kennedy still so popular? and in the article, writes --

Maybe it's because Kennedy, even now, so embodies that era's palpable sense of freshness and promise. The youngest man elected to the presidency, Kennedy smiles brightly in those photos from Dallas from before his fateful turn near the Texas School Book Depository. On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, Americans were upbeat about him and about the nation, points out Andrew Kohut, founding director of the Pew Research Center. Fully 82 percent thought America's power would increase in 1963. Sixty-four percent said business conditions were good.


"The mood of America then had few parallels with the modern era," writes Mr. Kohut.

-------------------------
-------------------------
 In 1988 Lance Morrow wrote in TIME about the year 1968:  "History cracked open; bats came flapping out, dark surprises.

...Nineteen sixty-eight was a knife blade that severed past from future,

Then from Now;

the Then of triumphant postwar American power in the world, the Then of the nation's illusions of innocence and virtue, from the more complicated Now that began when the U.S. saw it was losing a war it should not have been fighting in the first place, when the huge tribe of the young revolted against the nation's elders and authority, and when the nation finished killing its heroes."

= = = = = = = = =

A Nov. 21, 2013 article by Mark Feeney in The Boston Globe is headlined "Kennedy murder a breakpoint in time."
That "breakpoint in time" phrase brings to mind

"history cracked open..." and
"...a knife blade that severed past from future"...

Feeney article:

On Nov. 21, 1963, John F. Kennedy gave a speech in San Antonio.  Americans "stand on the edge of a great era," the president declared, "filled with both crisis and opportunity, an era to be characterized by achievement and challenge."

Those words might be written off as standard presidential boilerplate, uplifting rhetoric of the sort that Kennedy did so well.

Except that, because of what happened the next day, they can't be written off.  Those words assume an eerie prescience.  A new era, gruesome as well as great, followed Kennedy's assassination. 

The 1960s, as state of mind and cultural epoch, had arrived.

Kennedy's death didn't trigger that era.  Demographic trends, economic growth, technological advances, and much else besides combined to produce the upheaval that was the '60s.  But that awful day in Dallas retains enormous symbolic importance as touchstone:  marking a boundary between a

pre-assassination Then and a post-assassination Now,

a now that in significant ways remains with us. 

The shock of Kennedy's death eventually faded.  Shock always does.  Yet the

confusion and suspicion that followed haven't.  They've become part of our cultural climate. 

We have not only grown accustomed to doubt and skepticism but come to expect them -- so, too, with a normalization of violence and expectation of random direness.

Phrases like "conspiracy theory" and "distrust of government" were rarely if ever heard prior to Nov. 22, 1963. 

Soon enough they became commonplace.  That a popular '90s television series, "The X-Files," would have three recurring characters known as the Lone Gunmen wasn't necessarily surprising.  (They even got a brief-lived spinoff series.)  The trio could have as easily been called the Grassy Knolls or the Oswald Patsies.  Assassination terminology, with its weird blend of the sinister and casual, had long ago entered everyday vocabulary.

...The great legacy of the assassination is how many people take for granted that the only place to find the truth is outside the public square.  Or as the "X-Files" tagline has it,

"The truth is out there."  Dealey Plaza is where "out there" begins.

...Our national horror stories subsequent to the assassination at least had redeeming elements:  the bravery of soldiers in Vietnam, the way Watergate demonstrated the system worked, the heroism and sacrifice of New York firefighters and Flight 93 passengers on 9/11.  Sometimes the redemption takes time to come out, as with the success of Tony Mendez's hostage-rescue mission, portrayed in "Argo."...Not the Kennedy assassination....Even something as basic as conclusiveness would qualify...."We know who did it.  We know how he did it.  We know why he did it.  Okay?  That's that."  Nothing like that was forthcoming.

Kennedy's assassination was a political act and historical event.  Its failure to resolve itself was, and still is,

a cultural phenomenon. 

There have been so many investigations of the assassination, starting with the Warren Commission:  by journalists, authors, obsessives, even the House Select Committee on Assassinations, in the late '70s.  The name sounds like the title of a Philip K. Dick novel.  The sum of the answers they tried to give, and the further doubts they raised, contributed even more to how what happened in Dallas has ramified than the actual killing did.

That cultural phenomenon has a pair of defining texts, its Old Testament and New:  the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission report, with its finding that Oswald acted alone; and the Zapruder film, the 26.6 seconds of 8mm home-movie footage shot by Dallas clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder, with its recording of the actual event.  One created the post-assassination landscape.  The other, as some saw it, offered the promise of revelation, an answer at last.

The Warren Commission report offers the truth, such as it is, handed down from on high.  Commission members included the chief justice of the United States, eminent leaders of Congress, and a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

It's one measure of how vastly the assassination changed the United States that the idea of a past CIA director being part of any comparable investigation now is inconceivable. 

The truth may or may not be out there, but wherever it is, the CIA is not to be trusted with it.

The report was obsolete the moment it was published,

an overdetermined, contradictory, confusing, and often-implausible monument to what [author Don] DeLillo has called "the endless fact-rubble of the investigation."  DeLillo has likened the report to a nonfiction counterpart to James Joyce's famously hermetic novel, "Finnegans Wake."

The Zapruder film has no counterpart. 

What counterpart could it have?  The film's opaque brevity is as confusing as the report's numbing immensity and claim to finality.  In fact, the report's attempts to interpret the film are no small part of the confusion, as the commission attempted to explain why the backward jerk of the president's body didn't suggest a bullet fired from somewhere other than Oswald's perch.  The phrase "magic bullet" entered the post-assassination lexicon.  Yet precisely because of that capacity to confuse, the 486 Zapruder frames possess an ongoing relevance and suggestiveness given to very few works, let alone one intrinsically artless and inexpressive.

...For years, the film was impossible to see. 

Life magazine had bought it from Zapruder, a great journalistic coup -- except that it wasn't.  To protect the magazine's investment as well as

for reasons of decency,

the film was never shown.  But everyone knew about it.  It was widely discussed and referred to.  Individual frames and sequences were reproduced in Life and elsewhere.  It was kind of like atmosphere: 

invisible yet everywhere.

Inaccessibility made the Zapruder film seem at once dubious (not seeing is not believing) and all the more authoritative (evidence that's impossible to see is evidence that's impossible to refute). 

Now you can see it on YouTube.  In slow motion?  Digitized?  Zoomed in?  With Dictabelt soundtrack?  Hosted by Geraldo Rivera?  Take your pick.  The footage is there among countless cat videos and karaoke numbers and the latest viral sensations.  All access, all the time.  Ho hum.  Except that 50 years later

viewing it remains utterly unnerving --

and stays so, no matter how many times you watch it.  The horror of watching the impact of the second bullet, in frame 313, cannot be exaggerated.

Watching the footage is unnerving for another reason:  how familiar it seems.  A Zapruder aesthetic, as one might call it, long ago emerged:  low-res, dreamlike, handheld [camera],

voyeuristic (the subjects unaware they are being filmed), affectless, detached, so visually unknowing as to seem (to sophisticated eyes) the height of knowingness, marked by unmediated violence and reliance on shock.  Aspects of the aesthetic are there in Warhol's underground films, cinema-verité documentary, Hollywood paranoid thrillers, video games (the violence and shock), security-camera and drone footage. 

Abraham Zapruder went out that day intending to take a home movie to show to his family.  What he ended up with was something incalculably different, a piece of history unlike any other.  Except that

it did turn out to be a home movie, too: 

everyone's home,

everyone's movie.

------------------------- [excerpts from "Kennedy murder a breakpoint in time," written by Mark Feeney, 11-21-13, Boston Globe]

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