Draplin Design Co.: Kennedy Kick, Then Some Frost

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Draplin Design Co., North America

September 18, 2011

Kennedy Kick, Then Some Frost

Posted at 12:38 PM

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CAMELOT WONDERING: Leigh’s a big Kennedy buff, and with all the latest Jackie stuff, she’s got me listening to the tapes, then checking out this and that old Senator or world leader or whatever. Interesting history…this weird time where the old ways were being snubbed out by new, modern ways. Youth taking over, mainly. Ike was out. Jack was in. Thank you Leigh, for all sorts of shit, but right now, for making me dig back into this stuff. Such an interesting time.

Here’s the poem Mr. Frost recited from memory at President Kennedy’s inauguration. After battling glare on the podium…

~ The Gift Outright ~

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

~ Robert Frost; 1874-1963 ~

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