[Peace-discuss] A Little More Than Mackinder & Less Than Kind (cf. Hamlet 1.2)

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Francis--

When we were undergraduates, my late friend Perry Bullard - anti-war activist, Navy airman, Michigan legislator, and a man of infinite jest - took Kissinger’s graduate seminar in ‘government’ (not ‘political science’). At dinner, he would regale us with tales of  Kissinger’s oddness, e.g. - he would always enter the class dressed in a black suit, black horn-rimmed glasses, carrying a black briefcase - and followed by three graduate students (“section men”) identically dressed… 

Even in that long-ago day and our green, unknowing youth, we knew that 'Henry the K' was talking dangerous nonsense... (Requiescas in pace frater.)     

—CGE

PS - I won’t try to match your versifying, but as an avocational actor, I’m put in mind of the following:

THOUGH actors cannot much of learning boast,	
Of all who want it, we admire it most:	
We love the praises of a learned pit,	
As we remotely are allied to wit.	
We speak our poet’s wit, and trade in ore,	        
Like those who touch upon the golden shore;	
Betwixt our judges can distinction make,	
Discern how much, and why, our poems take;	
Mark if the fools, or men of sense, rejoice;	
Whether th’ applause be only sound or voice.	      
When our fop gallants, or our city folly,	
Clap over-loud, it makes us melancholy:	
We doubt that scene which does their wonder raise,	
And, for their ignorance, contemn their praise.	
Judge then, if we who act, and they who write,	       
Should not be proud of giving you delight.	
London like grossly; but this nicer pit	
Examines, fathoms, all the depths of wit;	
The ready finger lays on every blot;	
Knows what should justly please, and what should not.	     
Nature herself lies open to your view,	
You judge by her what draught of her is true,	
Where outlines false, and colours seem too faint,	
Where bunglers daub, and where true poets paint.	
But, by the sacred genius of this place,	        
By every Muse, by each domestic grace,	
Be kind to wit, which but endeavours well,	
And, where you judge, presumes not to excel.	
Our poets hither for adoption come,	
As nations sued to be made free of Rome:	        
Not in the suffragating tribes to stand,	
But in your utmost, last, provincial band.	
If his ambition may those opes pursue,	
Who with religion loves your arts and you,	
Oxford to him a dearer name shall be,	       
Than his own mother-university.	
Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage;	
He chooses Athens in his riper age.	
 
—Dryden, Prologue to the University of Oxford, 1681

> On Mar 7, 2017, at 9:21 PM, Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu> wrote:
> 
> Well Carl I did go through the exact same PHD Program at Harvard that produced Kissinger before me: Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Government—not the Kennedy School. They gave me Kissinger’s old office at the Center for International Affairs. To get a PHD from that Program you had to know your Machiavelli backward and forward and upside down and in your sleep and by rote—just like Kissinger did. Fab.
> 26.
>  
> Kissy and Timmy and Me
>  
> “You’re moving into Kissinger’s old office”
> Said Bud, the wizened old janitor
> And a decent guy at that
> “His file cabinets are in there.”
> Sure enough they were
> So it must be true
>  
> “And down the hallway there
> Is Timothy Leary’s old office”
> So that must be true too!
> Kissy and Timmy
> Kissing Cousins in the Vanserg Building
> Amazing!
>  
> Did they pass in the hall?
> Glance at each other?
> Say a few words of greeting?
> The last probably not
>  
> Did they piss in the men’s room
> Silently standing next to each other?
> Staring at the wall
> Maybe so
> There was only one
>  
> The counterfactuals of history
> What if Timmy had given Kissy acid?
> Timmy turn Kissy on?
> Maybe the world would have become
> A more peaceful place
> With Kissinger on acid
> It certainly
> Could not have been worse
>  
> The Kissinger War Prize for Vietnam
> Obama got one too
> Those Norwegians
> Surely have
> A wicked sense of humor
>  
> Timothy Leary’s dead
> No! No!
> He’s on the outside
> Looking in
> The Moodies
> Bards of My Woodstock Generation
> 
>  
>  
>  
> Francis A. Boyle
> Law Building
> 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
> Champaign IL 61820 USA
> 217-333-7954 (phone)
> 217-244-1478 (fax)
> (personal comments only)
>