Ich bin John F. Kennedy

I was away last week in Germany, visiting Frankfurt, Darmstadt and Stuttgart. It was interesting to see this building in Darmstadt, at the intersection of the tramlines through the heart of the city. It was built as an American cultural center in the 1950s and renamed for Kennedy following his death in 1963. Germans remain very big on Kennedy, not just for him standing up to the wall in 1963, but for the optimism he brought the world at a time Germany was still very much rebuilding its national identity.

Remnants of the Berlin wall can be found throughout Germany, as it divided a nation, not just a city. There was a segment of it in Frankfurt in the heart of its commercial district. The events of 1989 resonated throughout the world, as the Soviet Union and its satellite states crumbled before our eyes on television. There was much talk of how German reunification would be felt throughout the world, but it has been without doubt for the greater good of the country and Europe.

Hard to believe a whole generation has grown up since these times. You can now find Starbucks, Urban Outfitters and other hip American brands throughout Germany, but it is this culture house and others like it that reveal the ongoing commitment between the United States and Germany for greater unity and shared identity. The words of John F. Kennedy live on.

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Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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