Saigon Falls, Ho Chi Minh City Rises!

It was thirty years ago today that the last American helicopter decamped from the rooftop. I was 19 years old. The Vietnam War (the Vietnamese call it the American War), is like a sad and embarassing old friend who shows up unexpectedly at your doorstep demanding reconciliation, or a really horrible nightmare that comes back after many, many years; a strange, open wound. My view of our government, the world, the press, the protest movement, the youth culture, sex, drugs and rock and roll are all inextricably linked up with that horrible, sad, befuddling, tragic, and absurd conflict (58,000 American men and women dead, 2-3 million Vietnamese dead), to save the world from one more domino falling into the Commie Camp!

I experienced the war through pop culture: Newspapers, TV, movies (see "Apocalypse Now," "The Deer Hunter"), books (read Michael Herr's "Dispatches," Neal Sheehan's "Bright Shining Lie"). My heroes were all in oppostion (the counter-culture), John Lennon, Bobby Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, the Conspiracy Seven (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, etc.). It was clear that the 'system' was evil. Nixon had turned guns on the students (Kent State). Long hair was a political/cultural statement. We lived in Another Tribe (The Woodstock Nation).

It's hard to get a handle on the last thirty years (it's so odd for me even to write that -- my life streaming out before/behind me). That time is layered into my being, even as I have moved on, evolved, changed, grown older, etc.

"We find ourselves in a bewildering world.  We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from?  Why is it the way it is?" -- Dr. Stephen Hawking, Ph.D., from "A Brief History of Time."

I'd add these questions too: Who am I? Where am I going? What have I learned? What have I forgotten?