This summer I hear the drummin'...

[ceebeegee]

It's weird, though, I always think of May 4 as the day of the Kent State massacre (May 4, 1970, in Kent, Ohio, after a weekend of protest following Nixon's incursion into Cambodia). Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'...Four Dead in Ohio.... That song is so haunting--I first learned about this event in college when I read a book by James Michener about it (the book was very much a product of its time--each female student was invariably described as a "leggy blonde co-ed" or "a stunning, brunette student." I'm surprised he didn't call them birds. But for all that it was pretty informative). I had also discovered the score to Godspell, which, coincidentally was big when Kent State happened, and the song "On the Willows" kept going through my head as I stared at those pictures of Jeff Miller, lying on the pavement, shot in the face. (He's the one in the Pulitzer Prize-winning picture with the screaming girl, who was actually a 14-year-old runaway.)

Rest in peace, Alison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, William Schroeder and Jeffrey Glenn Miller. And not to be forgotten--Philip (?--I don't know that case as well) Green also killed at Jackson State College a few weeks later. Students shouldn't be afraid to demonstrate peacefully.