First appeared in the Boston Globe
Days of rage, but calmer (and wiser)
When friends asked why I was heading down to the Aug. 29
demonstration in New York City in advance of the Republican National
Convention, I liked to crack wise that it was because I missed the smell of
tear gas. I suspected tear gas would work like Proust's madeleine on a boomer
like me. One whiff and I'd see old friends just as they were at 20, their long
hair held in place by bandannas, wet handkerchiefs over their faces as they
braved gas, police batons, and sometimes bullets in yet another in the unending
series of protests against the war in Vietnam.
