I have been sinking deeply into the emotions of May 4th and, perhaps as a lifeline to myself, I bring you:

Annie Kinsella: Terence Mann was a voice of reason during a time of great madness. Where others were chanting, “Burn, baby burn”, he was talking about love and peace and prosperity. He coined the phrase, “Make love, not war”. I cherished every one of his books, and I dearly wish he had written some more. And if you experienced even a little bit of the sixties, you would feel the same way, too.
Beulah: [indignantly] I *experienced* the sixties.
Annie Kinsella: No, I think you had two fifties and moved right into the seventies.

From Field of Dreams, quote found at IMDB.com

The comment is both comic and pointed.

“The Sixties” were a shared time but not a shared – commonly held – experience. Everyone brought their life experience to their experience of the events of the time. Some saw radicals and communists. Others saw profiteers and liars. My own father, a veteran of WWII, expressed thoughts about May 4th, 1970 that hit me like a bomb’s blast wave, the shockware of worlds – world views – colliding.

What I recall thinking “back then” was rooted in a sense of possibility: War was no longer a solution, a viable answer, so new approaches to solving old problems would have to emerge – of necessity – if for no better reason than to avoid “mutually assured destruction”. Equality, not oppression or discrimination, would make the world a better place IF we could get over our fear of “the other”. Earth was a place to leave better, not worse, for our time here. We weren’t earth’s master. We were its caretakers for future generations.

For me, it was a time of possibility – the sense without which the possible begins to escape us.

There’s still time and where there’s life there’s possibility.

Don’t plow under your field of dreams. Don’t sell it. Don’t let the “bank” take it. Don’t pave it over.

Hold onto it. Care for it. Don’t shy from acknowledging the dream. When you know that your heart is in the right place then you need to honor those values. Otherwise you will die the slow death of a 1000 cuts to your soul, your sense of who you really are or were meant to be, to live as.

Don’t lose faith in values that once moved you to believe in possibility.

“People will come, Ray. People will come.”

All you have to do is . . . answer for yourself.

I remember the day JFK was shot.

I also remember the day 4 students were shot at Kent State University.

A war memorial: Ohio , Neil Young.

Welcome, sis,  to Babyboomers.org and the wonderful world of online publishing.