Pophistory: music, movies, history, and life.
For our readers here in the U.S., we wish you a happy Thanksgiving. For a little holiday cheer, here is the ending segment of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, a Peanuts special that first aired on CBS on November 20, 1973.
Below is the opening for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Of course, the episode begins with a football.
What is your favorite Thanksgiving tradition? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
Less than five years after John F. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, the country lost Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy to the bullets of assassins in 1968. Later that year, in tribute to the fallen men, Dion released the song, “Abraham, Martin, and John,” which became a hit in a country in shock and mourning.
The song, written by Dick Holler, has been performed by a number of artists, but nobody has matched Dion’s moving version. In the video below, he performs the song on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. [June 2014
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
A number of television shows and movies have commemorated the anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy. PBS recently broadcast a new documentary in its American Experience series, JFK. The two-part examination of Kennedy’s life featured some new footage and it brought new understanding about Kennedy’s health problems. CNN’s The Assassination of President Kennedy is a fascinating portrayal of the events around the killing using a lot of archival footage I had never seen before (see video below). Meanwhile, the National Geographic Channel presented a dramatization of the period leading up to the assassination with its TV-movie version of Bill O’Reilly’s book, Killing Kennedy, which one might find superficial but still entertaining. While some have wondered if popular culture is overdoing the commemoration of the national tragedy of our president’s death, I found a quiet way to contemplate the anniversary by reading a novel related to the event: Stephen King‘s 11/22/63.
The novel explores a famous what-if question about “what if you could go back and time and prevent a horrible event from happening?” In 11/22/63, the narrator is Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in Maine who learns from his friend Al about a time portal that will take him back to 1958. With some experimentation, Jake and Al discuss whether one may change the past and how the world might have been different had Lee Harvey Oswald not killed Kennedy. What happens if history is changed? Can it be changed? And what if Oswald was not the person who killed Kennedy?
As King explains in his “Afterword,” he did a significant amount of research about Oswald, and the book is informative about the main players we associate with the events leading up to the assassination. But the book is more than a novel about a killing. King provides an interesting portrayal of life in America in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The protagonist of the novel is not Oswald or Kennedy but Jake Epping, and it is his life that fascinates us. Epping becomes the focal point in the context of major world events while King meditates on the fragility of both life and history. The book is long, but it is fast reading, and it is Jake’s story that makes it a page-turner that you cannot put down.
Conclusion? 11/22/63 is a fun read that also asks some big questions. And while enjoying the book you might learn a little bit along the way. Earlier this year it was reported that the novel may be made into a TV series or miniseries, but the book is so fun you should read it. In the meantime, below you may check out part one and part two of CNN’s The Assassination of President Kennedy.
The Assassination of President Kennedy CNN… by VidsnMore
The Assassination of President Kennedy CNN… by VidsnMore
What is your favorite historical novel? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The PBS American Masters series presents My Train A Comin’, a documentary about the life of Jimi Hendrix, who died at the age of 27. The documentary features previously unseen concert footage and home movies. For example, the movie includes recently discovered footage of Hendrix at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. My Train A Comin‘ also contains interviews with people ranging from Paul McCartney to Hendrix’s girlfriend Linda Keith. I am not sure how long the PBS video will be available online, but for now you may check it out below. [May 2014 Update: Unfortunately, the full PBS documentary is no longer available online, so below is the trailer.]
The American Masters website features a number of extras related to the documentary, such as outtakes and an interview with director Bob Smeaton.
What is your favorite part of My Train A Comin’? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
On November 6, 1860, the United States affirmed that a democratic system of government can work when the country elected what many consider the greatest U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln. The election occurred during a time the country was greatly divided, and three other candidates also appeared on the ballot splitting the vote: John C. Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen Douglas. Lincoln won with 40% of the popular vote. But the nation had to endure President James Buchanan for several months because Lincoln would not be inaugurated until March 4, 1861.
Lincoln had little time in office before the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. As the nation went into the bloody war, citizens had no idea what the future held — or that one day Conan O’Brien would visit with a group of Civil War reenactors.
What is your favorite Civil War story? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
