A 45-Year Memory: In Memory of Janis

January 19, 1943 - October 4, 1970

On October 1 Janis Joplin did a quick a capella recording of a little ditty she had written a couple months earlier.

It would be the last song she recorded. She died three days later.

This Kris Kristofferson song from the last album that was just being completed when she died. It would be a posthumous #1:

The full measure of her powerful voice and style is probably best captured in this cover as she performed it on the Dick Cavett show:

Video of the Month

It was 45 years ago, right now, that this was on the charts. Whether it was about the break-up of the group or a love song- or both- isn't important. It's the Beatles swan song for all practical purposes. Enjoy!

A 45-Year Memory: Four Dead in Ohio

The Kent State shootings ... occurred at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Some of the students who were shot had been protesting the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.

There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students, and the event further affected public opinion—at an already socially contentious time—over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.
-Wikipedia

I was a senior in college and didn't know what to think. Sadly, it wasn't the last time I was faced with the cognitive dissonance of watching what I thought were sacred values and the foundation of who we are as a nation be undermined.

Michael Winship, the Emmy Award-winning senior writer of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com,
has posted an essay he wrote five years ago on the 40th anniversary of Kent State.
It brings back the memories.

Link to Bill Moyers.com

A 45-year Memory: I Was There

A beautiful April day, as I remember it. (I just checked- I was right.) It was sunny Wednesday and almost 70 degrees F. as students sat on the lawn and heard speakers tell us about the environmental dangers facing us. I was a senior and it was the first Earth Day!

The first Earth Day family had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. More importantly, it "brought 20 million Americans out into the spring sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform." It now is observed in 192 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, chaired by the first Earth Day 1970 organizer Denis Hayes, according to whom Earth Day is now "the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a billion people every year." Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action which changes human behavior and provokes policy changes.
--Link

Images from Lehigh's first Earth Day celebration, from the Epitome, 1970.

I wish we had come farther than we have. Yes, many advances have occurred, but the past years of extreme push-back against climate change is amazingly short-sighted. Everything has become an even greater point of divisiveness and in many places just the mention of "climate change" gets people more divided and hostile than the mention of marriage equality. We have not yet truly accepted that this is the only home we have. And we better take care of it.

A Video for Mid March

A 40-Year Memory: A Death in Music

September 18 – Jimi Hendrix dies of drug related complications.

Sorry I missed this a couple days ago. This was truly one of those days the music died for a lot of my generation.

A 40-Year Memory: A Long Run Begins

July 4 – Longtime radio music countdown show American Top 40 debuts on 5 U.S. stations with Casey Kasem as host.

A 40-Year Memory: Many Deaths Too Late

June 24 – The United States Senate repeals the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

A 40-Year Memory: Disappearing Railroad Blues

 
June 21 – Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy, largest ever US corporate bankruptcy up to this date.

Note the old Pennsylvania RR Red Keystone, faded, 

on the side behind the cab.

A 40-Year Memory: About Time

June 10 – U.S. President Richard Nixon signs a measure lowering the voting age to 18.

I was already over 21, but it was still a big, important day.

A 40-Year Memory: It Felt Very Scary (Part 2)

Thursday/Friday May 14–15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. A group of student protesters were confronted by city and state police. The police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve. This happened 10 days after National Guardsmen killed four students in similar protests at Kent State University in Ohio, which first captured national attention.

--Wikipedia

A 40-Year Memory: Protests

May 9 – In Washington, D.C., 100,000 people demonstrate against the Vietnam War.

A 40-Year Memory: A Final Time

May 8 – The Beatles release their 12th and final album, Let It Be.

A 40-Year Memory: It Felt Very Scary

May 4, 1970- 

National Guard troops opened fire on protesters at Kent State in Ohio.

The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.

There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students, and the event further affected the public opinion – at an already socially contentious time – over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.

--Wikipedia

A 40-Year Memory: And We Still Haven't Agreed

April 22 – The first Earth Day is celebrated in the U.S.

A 40-Year Memory: Safe at Home

April 17 – Apollo program: Apollo 13 splashes down safely in the Pacific.

A 40-Year Memory: The Danger

April 13 – An oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission and return in 4 days.

A 40-Year Memory: The Launch

April 11 – Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert) is launched toward the Moon.

A 40-Year Memory: At The End

April 10 – Paul McCartney announces that the Beatles have disbanded, while at the same press conference, announcing the release of his first solo album.

A 40-Year Memory: The Academy Awards Go Adult

April 7 - Academy Awards

Best Picture: Midnight Cowboy (which was X-Rated at that time.)
Best Actor- Male: John Wayne (True Grit)
Best Actor- Female: Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)

Needless to say this was quite a shock to the cultural nervous system in April 1970. There was a "culture war" going on that was the Vietnam War, hippies, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Midnight Cowboy represented that whole shift along with Easy Rider, which was also a 1969 film, and M*A*S*H released a few months earlier in 1970.