Michael Kennedy and Ethan Frome?

Bobby and Ethel with their new born son
Michael LeMoyne Kennedy (1958 - 1997

A picture in this morning's paper shows a nine or ten year old Michael Kennedy with his - to me and many others - awesome father, Senator Robert Kennedy, just before his father was assassinated after winning the California primary.

Bobby died a winner, a tough act to follow for his eleven children. They probably had to compete fiercely just for HIS attention while he was alive.

After J.F K's death in Dallas, I understand Robert was seeking answers to the BIG QUESTIONS . He read Albert Camus, the humanist existentialist, whose recurring theme was the ABSURD - to be an infinitely sensitive being in an eternally INDIFFERENT universe. Like Camus' death - he was killed in a car accident not long after he received the Nobel prize for literature- Michael's death was illustrative of the ABSURD.

If the reporting is truthful, Michael Kennedy died a rather foolish death, reckless jock playing on a dangerous ski slope. A family affair?

His father's death was a mournful martyrdom: he was perceived as a powerful friend of hated Israel by a deranged young Arab. When I first heard about Michael's death on the ski slope- colliding with a tree- I was reminded of the Edith Wharton novel, Ethan Frome.

My imagination was racing: Heartbroken and depressed he found his Corbury Hill- the perfect place to end it all. But alone with no Mattie Silver to share his fate.

My imagination was quickly checked by the next news report. Michael, a friend said, had a wonderful sense of humor and could always see the silly side of things.

They both died still quite young, Robert Kennedy and son Michael. In his moving short story "The Dead" James Joyce suggested that it is perhaps better to die in the heat of youthful passions - in full possession of one's faculties - than to merely fade pitifully into impotent and dull old age.

Care-less Carlos and "Ia revolucion"

Terrorist Carlos the Jackal to stand trial for 1975 murders

I know very little about this Carlos, the international terrorist, character. As a member of his generation, it is clear to me that he- pitiful as he now is - was shaped by the late Sixties.

I was warned before going to an anti-war rally in downtown Providence by my "petty bourgeois" newsman brother that it was completely controlled by communists. At the time I was innocent of left wing politics - just anti-war.

The rally -for the time - was peaceful enough. No bomb throwers in sight. In the Sixties you learned that lunacy was relative. There was the lunacy of the RIGHT - completely abhorrent - and the lunacy
of the LEFT- often forgivable.

After the rally a leaflet invited me to a meeting on the bastion of radicalism - the Brown University campus. To be debated: "Leninism vs. Stalinism"

Within a few months I was speaking the language of American Trotskyism myself. Today I am still rather fond of the "Old Man" but it does not seem likely that his theory of Permanent Revolution will be verified.

I am deeply grateful, however, for one of his propaganda pieces : "Against Individual Terrorism".

Leon Trotsky absolutely would have rejected the Carlos delusion that a few well aimed shots - and a few grandiose explosions - can make the world a more just place.

What is the use of POLITICS if dynamite can do the job? I feel sorry for you Carlos - and for your tragic victims !

Is H.P. Lovecraft's Body Missing?

(a 10/1997 letter to Ron Marshall)

Good morning Ron! As a member of the Lovecraft circle here in Providence for many years, I know you would be very disturbed by today's headline in the Providence Journal: "New Lovecraft mystery surfaces at Swan Point".

You and I have made frequent visits to the gravesite ourselves. At times we observed petty but disrespectful vandalism there ourselves. The atmosphere around H.P grave is for me eerie reminder of the cult horror film, "The Night of the Living Dead"

Lovecraft himself was a dignified scholar, indeed a philosophical Materialist, and would have scorned many silly cult groups inspired by his brilliant horror fantasies. I wonder what S.T Joshi thinks about this latest abominable deed.

According to the paper: "Cemetery president Dugan declines to elaborate on the grave desecration not wanting to attract more attention. "But–Is he there?" - he is asking himself.

I'm sure H.P would have delighted in writing a horror story dealing with a suitable punishment for
anybody trying to rob his pitiful remains - for what? A profitable sensation?

In one modest way I would like to imitate H.P Lovecraft: perhaps I can write 100,000 letters myself. If one tenth of them were worth reading!

But all of them are FUN writing!

"The oldest and strongest emotion of
mankind is fear, and the oldest and
strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
 - H.P. Lovecraft

Religion in Russia

Is Boris Yeltsin the only significant person in Russia who appreciates Western Civilization's concept of religious freedom? He alone, it seems, just saved this precious thing in Russia. By power of veto!

There was overwhelming sentiment in both houses of parliament to make the Russian Orthodox Church the official one in that vast and troubled country. What an unholy alliance! Communists and religious bigots!

In a way the leaders were trying ,no doubt, to protect their old culture. Our idea of separation of Church and State is as fundamental as the idea of "CHECKS AND BALANCES" in government. It was a colossal mistake for the old communist regime to even preach a definite philosophy- dialect materialism to the masses.

People everywhere hunger for deeper meaning and purpose in their uninspired, humdrum lives. But it is not any government's job to supply it! No government in the world can tell us how to be happy, or even good.

April 2007: An Orthodox priest stands next
to the coffin of former Russian President
Boris Yeltsin in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral
in Moscow.

Only FOOLS will seek ultimate meaning in some political order. Our form of democracy is the best way to protect human dignity. That is all we can ask of it. And that is enough! We can leave all the rest to the world's great religions or to the solitary human heart.