When I was ten, the world seemed fresh, as if it had been made, well, ten years before. Everything was possible. Chuck full of optimism my friend Dick Lefevre and I decided to make a pedal powered helicopter. We drew up plans, made drawings, and even did a little (as little as possible) math. We figured that if we could go to the top of some really steep hill and ride like hell down the thing, then the wind would spin the rotor and we could take off. My Dad the engineer looked at the plans and said "this is great, boys. Such ingenuity. There's only one problem."

"What's that?"

"It won't work."

Ah well. Maybe a pedal powered jet pack.

If tonight in a dream and archangel appeared and told me that I could have one gift, a gift not for the world, but a gift for me, I think I would choose moral courage. The power to do what is right, to stand up to a world that is drowning in self-interest, is the greatest power of all. No one really wants to tell the truth these days, even those whose job it is to tell the truth. People don't believe in truth; they believe in opinion, and in the right of everyone to have an opinion. Somehow, holding that there is some truth that rises above our opinions, that there is good and evil in the world, that good must be cultivated like a flower garden and that evil must be resisted like invading weeds is fashionable.

I hear my students say that "it all depends on your point of view." But there are points of view out there, racist, sexist, materialist points of view that I cannot consent to, points of view that subverts the intrinsic value of the human race. I cannot say that it depends on your point of view, because not all points of view are equal. We have to have something by which we can judge our opinions, a north star by which we can navigate our souls. That north star is truth.

videos

I can't watch these videos without crying, even after all these years. Heroes die; youthful optimism dies; but we would not be true to Kennedy's legacy if we did not believe that hope lives on.

The Room Where Bobby Kennedy Died

The memory is almost turned to dream now. I was in high school, but I had a sometime job as an assistant to Donn Reed, a reporter for KMPC radio in LA. It was 1968, and the California primary was nearly over. Donn called that afternoon and asked if I would come along with him to cover the speeches. The First one we went to was Sen. McCarthy, because he was losing and would likely speak first. I was cool with my press badge and made sure that the girls who passed by got a good look at it. The hoopla went on for quite a while, and eventually the girls stopped looking at my press badge, so I was happy when Donn told me that we should head over to the Ambassador Hotel to see if we could get there in time for Bobby Kennedy's victory speech.

We got to the Ambassador Hotel just as Kennedy was about to come on stage. The place was packed with ardent Democrats, trying to wriggle their way around each other in the press. We were too late to get Donn’s microphone up to the podium, so he directed me to take the tape recorder and stand in the middle of a crowd of reporters. I was a big guy and could push my way through the crowd to get up close. They announced Bobby, and the crowd jumped and hollered and whistled, while a pretty brunette near me hopped up and down and wept. I thought then that I should go into politics. The crowd pressed me all around, and in spite of my size I couldn’t move in any direction. Kennedy was unstoppable that year and his momentum was high. The reporters all around me were trying to keep their cool, and their objectivity, but that was hard to do. Bobby waved to everyone, congratulated Senator McCarthy for a great campaign, joked with everyone for a few moments, and then left the podium and started for the kitchen. The crowd of reporters followed after, still shouting questions, and since I was in the middle of the pack, I went along with them whether I wanted to or not.

At this point my memories collide with my dreams, and I can no longer be certain of what I saw that night. The crowd was pushing forward, through the door that led to a narrow hallway on the way to the kitchen pantry. Supposedly, KTLA television had a camera in there, but I didn't see it. All I saw were human heads in front of me and human heads behind me, crushed together in that hallway, inching forward. Suddenly I heard a pop, louder than a champagne cork but not as loud as a rifle. Pop Pop Pop. Suddenly the crowd was swaying back and forth, pressing me like laundry until it was hard to breathe. A short woman standing next to me reached up to me and said "help me kid, I'm going down." So I put my arm around her and pulled her up so that she was hanging around my shoulders. Then I thought I saw the crowd part for just a second and I could see the top of Rosie Grier's head. He was sitting on somebody and he was crying. I heard somebody shout that they'd been hit, and suddenly there was a hand on the collar of my jacket, pulling me out of the kitchen. By that time some security guards were trying to move all the reporters out of there so that they could capture Sirhan Sirhan and attend to Bobby.

Then I was standing in the ballroom where Kennedy gave his last speech and Don ran up to me and said "what happened? What happened?" I told him that Kennedy had been shot, or at least that's what I thought happened, and Don asked for the tape recorder. Then I noticed that I was still holding onto the woman. She was about 40 in a white suit and she was very short but not particularly petite. To this day I don't know who she was. When I set her down, she said "thanks kid, you saved my life." And then she ran off to file her story. The rest of that evening I sat on one of the folding chairs staring blankly into space watching people run back and forth. Some were weeping; others were angry; others still were trying to hold it together and at least look professional. I was trying to keep from crying, but I’m not sure if I succeeded. I didn't care about my press badge and I didn't care about looking cool, because I knew at that point that America was losing its mind.

Lazy Day

Today is Sunday. Sitting around in my grubbies watching tv and pretending to concentrate on my class that starts on Tuesday. I have papers to grade, grass to cut, a dog to walk, Church to attend, naps to take. Naps. That's what I'll do.

I have been working on a kid's book series. I love teen and young adult literature, because I never really grew up. My wife tells me I'm still a ten year old, and I tell her that as soon as I get my jet pack up and running, I'd show her! Actually, being a perpetual ten year old is pretty cool, except if you slip and act that way in public. I remember walking down the hall of the university singing "Ooh Wah Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Do" to myself and turning a few heads, but not in a positive way. And then all the administrative types at Kean think that I'm a "problem." "Not a team player." The Jesuits used to tell me that I was not attentive to the vow of obedience. I thought ok, as long as they don't tell my Mom.

The series I'm working on is a fantasy series. Thank God for JK Rowling bringing fantasy back. I love fantasy and science fiction because I can go to cool places in the universe, or invent cool magic things like psychodelic lawn grass or cookies that make you a genius for ten minutes at a time.

Michelangelo

I just had a book come out from Palgrave McMillan, titled Last Judgment: Michelangelo and the Death of the Renaissance. It's a cool book about Michelangelo's most controversial fresco, painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. Everybody knows about his famous Sistine Chapel ceiling, but I think that the Last Judgment is the most powerful painting I've ever seen. One of the things I discovered about it is that Michelangelo encoded the Copernican Universe in the fresco, and he did this at the request of the Pope, Clement VII, the last of the true Renaissance popes. If you look at the painting closely you can see it. Jesus, depicted as the sun god Apollo is in the middle, damning the sinners, with the souls of both saints and sinners revolve around him in elliptical orbits. This was not an accident, because the pope had received a special briefing on Copernicus a few months before Michelangelo began painting.