Colin McEnroe Show: Remembering 'The '60s In Connecticut'
Humorist Gina Barreca on the 1960s.
Published: May 09, 2011
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Gina Barreca
Photo:Chion Wolf
Chion Wolf
Gina Barreca
Photo:Chion Wolf
Chion Wolf
Chion Wolf
Chion Wolf
Gina Barreca's mismatched socks
Photo:Chion Wolf
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Colin McEnroe Show: Remembering 'The '60s In Connecticut'
Watching the new CPTV documentary "The '60s in Connecticut," I reminded again of the way collective memory shapes and archives traumatic events.
Most of us remember the protest of the Black Panther trial in New Haven, but many of us have sloppily conflated -- at the level of detail -- with the Chicago Seven trial. Only a small number of us could say with any precision what the trial was about or whether justice was served.
What we may remember is the decision made by Yale University's Kingman Brewster and his staff not to hide the university behind its walls but to open the campus to the protestors arriving from all over the country and indeed to feed and shelter them. Brewster and his staff took an enormous risk by embracing unrest. It seems unlikely that it would be repeated by a college president in this self-protective, liability-obsessed era.
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E-mail from Karl
For many folks the '50s aren't represented by real history (as you noted by name-checking David Halberstam), but by the fresh-scrubbed TV comedies of that decade. The amount of retconning from some quarters, post-'60s, yearning for the world of "Leave it to Beaver" that never existed, is amazing.
And one can do worse than to look at Dobie Gillis for when the '50s started to become the '60s. Wasn't he about the first TV teen with some social success, with something at stake, wondering how much effort to put into "popularity", embodied by competing Warren Beatty for the affections of Tuesday Weld? (This nugget was cribbed from Erik Barnouw.)
E-mail from Cynthia
I have Happy the Clown trauma, another local kid's TV show. My mother tried to make me go on the show when I was about 4. I was terrified! Didn't go on the show, but got my Happy sticks!
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