I just noticed that the Kennedy family crossed my life in various ways. And these crossings involved not one but three intriguing murder plots:
1964: My school lesson as a 9-year old: Kennedy is murdered and I am sad
Here, as 10 year old in 1964 in a village school in Germany, I learned that we Germans deplored the murder of John F Kennedy.
Note that the picture does not show my real school. Sadly, I do not have a foto of me in my old school. But my school looked exactly like the foto above. We kids sat on such long benches.
However, my school beat the depicted classroom regarding room occupation. In my real school, there were ca 60 kids spanning 8 classes. Until 1965, such schools existed in many German villages. One single teacher taught 8 classes - the entire village youth - simultaneously in one classroom.
He did it, in computer terms, in a round-robin time-slicing approach: he taught one class after the other. I assume, that as a by-product of this process, I had to learn to blank out the other kids' and his voices in order to do my assigned quiet work (Still Arbeit) . Blanking out is my super-skill that can drive my partner crazy.
How this teacher managed to equip me in 4 years to get into the gymnasium - I still don't know. Maybe it was my genius. Or, it was through my ambition to stand out from the village boys. Or, we overestimate the need for perfect circumstances.
This is what we wrote on that day:
Germany is very sad about the premature death of Kennedy, who stood for peace and black people's rights. And, most importantly: we don't want to experience war again.
It's quite amazing, that like many Americans I have a clear memory trace of the event.
Here is my Kennedy assassination moment:
I was up in our flat, the sun was shining through the windows, and my mother was scrubbing the floor. The radio was playing the news. Suddenly she stopped what she was doing. From that point on, my visual memory is not so clear, but I remember that the grownups- my mother had called in my father - were very emotional and talked about the assassination.
Here is what the following school diary says:
1. Kennedy was the youngest President of the United States. He was only 46 years old when he was murdered.
2. Kennedy wanted that the Negroes (sorry..) in the US should have the same rights as the Whites.
3. Kennedy wanted to help the poor peoples of the world, and that is why the Americans gave lots of money to them
4. Kennedy wanted to create a balance between Russia and USA and create peace (we all want to live in peace and do not want war)
5. Kennedy was Germany´s friend, and we are grieving his death
The boxed word is "Peace". The text says: "Kennedy wanted to create equality between Russia and the USA and thereby to create peace. We all want to live in peace. We don't want war".
Anyway, I felt reminded of this childhood episode when much later I read the Stephen King time travel novel about a failed attempt to undo Kennedy's assassination.
It was apparently dangerous to want peace.
1980: Writing my master's thesis: Marilyn Monroe murdered by Bobby Kennedy?
As 26 year old, in my sociological master's thesis on US labour unions (amongst them the Teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa) I researched the possibility that Marilyn Monroe was murdered by a mobster for Bobby Kennedy. The purpose of the murder: a cover-up of her sexual relations with both Kennedy. This was the most fun part of my thesis to research, and I guess it contributed to the very high mark I got for it. It must have been the most unusual sociological master thesis ever in our then quite stuffy university.
In her famous public appearance for Robert F Kennedy's birthday, here is she, quite drunk or drugged, shortly before her death.
The hypothesis of Marilyn Monroe's assassination has so far not been fully accepted. However, if I ever find my thesis of 1973, I will prove it to the world. It exists somewhere as a paper copy only. 300 pages with ca 400 quotations, typed on a typewriter on paper. No backspace, no copy-paste, no grammar check, no nothing. I also programmed Fortran on punchcards...
2021: My Dzog Chen teacher defends the alleged assassin of Bobby Kennedy as a Manchurian Candidate
As 66 year old, I had the great fortune to participate in a Mahamudra meditation retreat with Dr. Daniel P Brown. He is probably one of the greatest living experts, in theory, and teaching, in the Mahamudra pointing out style.
I later discovered that Dr. Brown, apart from teaching effectivity courses to CEOs at Harvard, writing fundamental books on Tibetan Buddhism, acting as a psychological expert at the war crimes court of Den Hague, writing books on hypnosis etc has also been a protector, defender and avenger.
In this case, Daniel P Brown has defended Sirhan Sirhan for many years, on the ground that Sirhan had been set up as a "Manchurian Candidate".
I have detailed it in this blog post.
Resources
Marilyn Monroe
I love you Mr. President (video)
Was Marylin Monroe murdered?
Stephen King
"11/22/63: A Novel".
A wonderful time travel novel, dealing with a lot of the detail around Kennedy's assassination.
Till Gebel
See my blogpost on his defense of Sirhan Sirhan