Nice Car
I am happy I gave that graduation speech. I am happy about two messages – the big obvious one about doing good, and the brief but needed one – to oppose the current war. The kids who applauded when they heard “Today our country is involved in an unjust war…” may have been applauding a political message, outside of class, for the first time in their lives (I really don’t know, just guessing). But maybe it was a little step in their maturing into politically aware adults.
Anyhow, credit in three directions:
- First to the seniors for asking me, especially since they didn’t know what I’d say.
- Then to math teacher / blogger Zenoferox of Halfway There, whose Memorial Day post inspired a previous draft (which focused on the Draft. Did you know that our students are registered as 1-H with Selective Service?). In the end I cut out all references to the draft (I was my father’s deferment; my cousin whose been in Vancouver for 40 years; today’s economic draft), but he set some of the tone, and just set an example of saying something that needed to be said.
- Finally, Dave Lippman.
(story beneath the fold —>)
Once upon a time, before my graduated seniors were born, I worked for a few months with Dave’s mother. She was smart, and liked politics, and one of her sons, she told me, played anti-intervention music and was appearing at the Knitting Factory and would I like to come. And I did.
Dave played a guitar, sort of a 60’s throwback, but mostly original songs (or old melodies with new lyrics). Satirical. And then he disappeared and came back in a suit and sunglasses, and he was George Shrub from the CIA (Committee to Intervene Anywhere). Oh, the 80’s. I remember “You can call me Ollie (Ollie), I’ll call you Bill…” to the tune of a Paul Simon song (can you guess the song? do you know who Ollie or Bill are/were?)
Anyway, that night one of the songs had a refrain that stuck in my head. And it provided a little catch for my talk. I hadn’t thought about Lippman for 20 years or so, but I googled him, found him playing the same stuff, e-mailed him, and, you got to like celebrities who answer their own e-mails — “how do you know me?” “when did you see me?” — and found the right lyrics to this thing that had been stuck in my head for two decades:
JD2718 
You can call me Al…
Oliver North… but I don’t know Bill. I remember at the time being really pissed off that all my (PBS) television shows were canceled in favor of “the men in the green suits…” aka the Iran-Contra hearings.
My mom protested – by herself! – when Oliver North was invited to speak at a nearby library (or university? I don’t remember, this was maybe 8 years ago now).
By herself? Wow.
Bill died, avoiding what likely would have been very embarassing testimony.
But I’ll give someone else a chance to jump in here.
And those favorite tv shows? Would they have been Nova? Mystery? or more like Sesame Street and Electric Company?
(disconnected trivia – the little bridge from the beginning of Sesame Street – at least once upon a time – that bridge is in the NY Botanical Garden, here in the Bronx)
Bill Casey, Director of the CIA