Note From Preet: A Ripple of Hope

A pokes prettier, as many of, you know, each week I write and record a note for Cafe insiders. This week's note was an especially personal reflection and I wanted to share it with listeners of stay tuned. I hope you enjoy it.

Do listener. The summer of 88 was a hot one, but maybe I remembered hotter than it was because back then there was no air conditioning on the subway in those months, the New York City subway was the final leg of my morning, commute to an unpaid state government internship with the office of the Ombudsman where I did constituent work, I just finished my sophomore year of college and living in the city was out of the question. So I looked at home in Eatontown, New Jersey, with my parents, every morning. My mother would drive me to the little silver train station or I would join the hordes of commuters for the hour-long, track to Penn Station in Manhattan. Then I took the subway to a downtown government office. Building candles were decades in the future. So if you wanted to read a big fat book, you have to Lug it around just before my internship. I found a big fat book I wanted to read, so I loved it onto the train each day in my JanSport backpack.

The book was called Robert Kennedy and his Times by Arthur M Schlessinger Junior. It ran to 983 Pages 1163 Pages. If you counted, the notes and index the cupboard contained the boast the Magnificent Nationwide bestseller. And this mournful question, who can say What Might Have Been. I read it cover-to-cover that summer, I trust, you will believe me. When I tell you I read the living, hell out of that book.

For an hour each morning and an hour each evening. I shut the world out and lived in Bobby Kennedy's times. I was nineteen years old and impressionable and ready to inject idealism straight into my veins. It may not have been the most balanced treatment of Kennedy Schlessinger and Arden Kennedy supporter. And adviser paints a holy flattering portrait but I mainlined it anyway.

I've been thinking about that book this week or more accurately, the experience of reading that book.

Sunday was the 53rd anniversary of the assassination of its subject Kennedy was 42. Most years, I quietly Market in some way. I feel a similar way about April 4th. Am I pick up my copy of Thirteen Days? Kennedy's own book about the Cuban Missile Crisis or I might go back over and old speech of his. Sometimes it's the address. He made to the Democratic National Convention the year after his brother was killed when he was applauded for some 22 minutes before he could pay tribute to John. And sometimes I pull up the video of Ted Kennedy's eulogy of Bobby, Edwards, 10, mostly quotes, his Fallen Brothers. Finest oration, this year, I didn't mark the anniversary, I forgot. Sunday was a busy day. My wife and I drove my daughter to college, or she has a research Fellowship for the summer. It's her first time on campus and 15 months.

Which means that it's her first time that living with us in 15 months. And so I was a bit sad that day. It also occurs to me that she is the exact same age as I was in the summer of 88 on Monday. I remember the anniversary and also the book, I read that summer, I stop whatever I was doing and when hunting for it, I finally found it on the top shelf of a bookcase, in the family room, it sure. Look, 33 years old when I say, I read the hell out of that book. I mean, it, there are words and passages circled and starred. Some have asterisks whole sentences are underlined in ink. I'm using the passive voice out of mild embarrassment. There's this passage quoting a famous speech, Kennedy gave in Cape Town, South Africa, quote each time, a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against Injustice. He sends a tiny Ripple of Hope.

In Crossing each other from a million different centers of energy. And during those ripples build a current, which can sweep down the mightiest walls of Oppression and resistance, and I was already quite familiar with this paragraph because I delivered it in speech. Competitions, in high school, I literally knew it by heart in it. I underlined it anyway. It is also, by the way, the speech that TED quotes from in his eulogy, I devoured every story about the fights for civil rights, the battles against the mafia and later against poverty years. Before I became a prosecutor, I'm marked. This passage about Kennedy's times attorney general quote, he was determined to transform the department from The Citadel of Starry decisis in an agency of Reform and quote.

There is this passage underlined and stored for extra emphasis about what Kennedy said. When he saw the awful conditions workers, endured at a coal mine, during a trip to Chile. If I work in this mine, I'd be a communist too.

I learned the Bobby love aeschylus, so I read and loved aeschylus. I learned that he felt wiser we can eat at Hamilton's, the Greek way. So I bought and read the Greek way, some of you might be wondering right about now whether this was unhealthy hero-worship, not to worry, I was 19 I have long since learned not to place politicians on pedestals I have no Idols but I do have Inspirations Inspirations are important. They get you through malaise and writer's block and setbacks Inspirations get you to aim high and aim straight. They helped make you feel dumb about the small stuff you sweat. They give you permission to dream big Bobby. Kennedy has always been there for me. I'm often asked what motivated me to become a lawyer, what? Impelled me to Public Service, what drew me to the justice department. There are many things of course, but high up there,

Is the inspiration of Kennedy. And to a degree that astonishes me, still the idle Daydreams of that commuting New Jersey. Teenager dreams of serving the public and making a difference in true. He may not have become president. In 1968, it may not have saved us from Nixon, he may not have lived up to the expectations. He said for himself, he may have a dental disappointed or divided us, but I will tell you that every year on the anniversary of Bobby's death, I have the same plaintiff wish

Oh, how I wish he had lived my best free.

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