tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30017373.post5628225458957751581..comments2024-01-29T08:28:26.187-05:00Comments on Nellie Blog: Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16807727819590358834noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30017373.post-9176296854475471182009-04-26T21:13:00.000-04:002009-04-26T21:13:00.000-04:00I'm sure not lettin' you speak at any commencement...I'm sure not lettin' you speak at any commencement!!WVFrannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30017373.post-75032280061883106942009-04-13T00:49:00.000-04:002009-04-13T00:49:00.000-04:00...having high school friends serving in Southeast...<I>...having high school friends serving in Southeast Asia. For me, the answers were not as black-and-white as they were for students whose high school buddies were also attending universities where correct answers were either one thing or the other.</I><BR/><BR/>At that very same time, April of 1970, I was a first-year grad student at UC Berkeley, and our state's governor had just said that he thought that a "bloodbath" might be a good way of dealing with students' objections to their elders' ways of doing things. The smell and sting of tear gas frequently hung in the leaves on campus, and many of our little astronomy graduate class meetings were held off-campus, in the safety of faculty homes.<BR/><BR/>We even took our first, written round of our preliminary exams in two profs' houses. The guy who sat next to me for that exam, one of my two lifelong good friends thereafter from grad school, was going through a very bad case of torn sympathies. He, like almost all of us, was fervently anti-war and vocal about it -- but his father, a pilot, had been missing in action in southeast Asia for four years. (His dad's remains were finally recovered in Laos in 1994.) My friend went on to a brilliant career, but was always hounded by his conflicts, and sank under the weight of alcoholism to his death in 2007.<BR/><BR/>Our allegiance to the anti-war movement -- or anything else -- could never be complete. I think we, and especially he, would have had a good laugh over your piece had it made its way west across the Rockies to Berkeley.Sherwood Harringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09575868746160608731noreply@blogger.com