u weer aan
de Kerstkrandjang?
ppppppmm
All of a sudden, creating much conster
nation, there were the Beatles, Paul
McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr
and George Harrison from Liverpool,
England. Their music was fun and as
lively as they were. Their 'long' hair was
just as much the topic of the day as the
music was. In retrospect the songs they
wrote are pretty good. Remember, to
mention just a very few: 'The long and
winding road', 'Yesterday', 'The yellow
submarine'? Beatlemania had set in.
The boys were mobbed by shrieking
crowds of young people and they eclip
sed Elvis, revolutionizing the music
scene in the process. It was 1964.
The U.S. had been in Viet Nam in an
'advisory' capacity that changed when
we were halfway through the decade.
Before we knew it there was a war
raging in which we became deeply
involved and which divided the nation
into 'hawks' and 'doves'.
Especially the younger people were very
much against this war and students on
many college campuses vigorously
demonstrated against it. At work a mob
of students stood under my fourth-floor
window just about every day, chanting
among other things: 'Hell no, we won't
go!'
They had sleep-ins on the front cam
pus, built campfires on the lawn to keep
warm and were regularly shaken out of
their blankets in the morning when the
campus gardeners came to clean up.
Good-humoredly they then moved back
to the spot under my office window and
one day one student who had found his
way past the campus police into the
building, knocked on my door and
asked politely if he could stand in the
window so he could speak to his fellow
demonstrators down below. I laughed
and told him he had to go downstairs if
he wanted to talk to his friends and
leave my window alone.
'But then,' he said earnestly, 'they won't
let me back in.'
How naive could one get?
The Viet Nam war cost the
I U.S. a fortune in human lives,
in money and in prestige. Most
of the country wanted out of
Saigon and the protest demon-
stations became more and
more violent. We would have
to endure all this a few more
years.
The Ea^le has landed'
Since the first atom bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima in
1945, we had more or less
lived under the constant threat
of annihilation by nuclear
force. Finally, in 1968,
America and Russia negotiated
an international policy and the
Treaty of nuclear nonprolifera-
tion came into being. The
world heaved a sigh of relief,
especially when the rest of the
nuclear powers - France, China
and Great Britain - signed the
Treaty also.
Out of all the anti-war protests
came the peace and love sym
bol that has become universal.
It consists of the two flag sig
nals for the letters N and D
that stand for 'Nuclear
Disarmament'.
Some good had finally come
out of this decade, but it wasn't
quite over. There still was the promise
John Kennedy had made of putting a
man on the moon before the end of the
1960s.
An estimated 600 million people
watched the lunar lander approach the
moon surface. It looked so unbelievably
frail and vulnerable. We were watching
its descent live on tv, holding our bre
aths when, ever so softly, the lander tou
ched down on the moon and from 390
thousand kilometers away a voice
reached us on earth saying: 'The Eagle
has landed.'
We watched Neil Armstrong go down
the ladder of the lunar lander stepping
onto the moon's surface and uttering
the now so famous words: 'That's one
small step for man, one giant step for
mankind.'
It was July 24, 1969. The young presi
dent who had boldly promised that this
would come to pass before the decade
would be out, sadly did not live to see
his promise fulfilled, but he will always
be the man who stood behind the
impossible dream.
Ti
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De Kerstkrandjang, een activiteit van de
Stichting Charitatieve Fondsen Tjalie
Robinson heeft in de afgelopen jaren
dankzij uw goede giften aan talrijke
minderbedeelde gezinnen in Indonesië
een feestelijk Kerstfeest gebracht.
Ook dit jaar zal een extraatje bij hen zeer
welkom zijn en daarom is elk bedrag
voor de Kerstkrandjang welkom om hen
een goede Kerst te bezorgen!
Vergeet alstublieft deze families ook dit
keer niet. Bij voorbaat namens de
gelukkige ontvangers onze hartelijke
dank!
Maak uw bedrag over op
ABN-AMRObank,
rek.nr. 51.S6.15.749 t.n.v.
Stichting Charitatieve Fondsen
Tjalie Robinson, Bergstraat 27,
3811 NE Amersfoort.
44 ste jaargang - nummer 5 - november 1999
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