Machine Gun Mouth
One of the things I first noticed at "Passing the Torch: An International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" was that many of the authors, researchers and others gathered were very reserved in one-on-one conversation.
Understandably so, after they met me. I have what Lisa Pease called "machine gun mouth." It's an unnatural phenomena. Anybody I met, from Joan Mellen to Jefferson Morley from Rex Bradford to William Kelly to a few new -- and good -- friends from Ohio and Pennsylvania and a whole nation over, fell like dominoes -- victim to my nonstop 500 word-per-minute verbal assault. I wasn't ranting at them, I was trying to tell them everything I'd learned over the last 50 years in about 50 seconds.
The looks on people's faces made me realize I needed to dial it down three or four orders of magnitude. I tried, but even then I couldn't help myself, the words would come up and fly at breakneck speed from my gob. Every single person there -- including arch-supporter of the Warren Commission, John McAdams, was interesting and kind to me and to everyone else.
It was unplanned. Some sort of venting of steam from a pressure cooker of a psyche. Normally, I'm intense, but it was ridiculous. I should have worked a simple elevator speech, which is a nice, brief, overview professional pitch-sters use. The point is: I need to learn how to make complex information concise, understandable, memorable -- and repeatable.
Why? Democracy depends on it.
PS: I knew I was too old to be cool anymore when I tried zooming in and focusing up on Oliver Stone as he made a presentation to the symposium. For some reason, he shot me a look. I looked at my borrowed camera and learned it shoots out a laser beam to focus and was zapping him as he talked. I put it away as soon as I realized it did that.
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If you were, we could've covered the first 10 minutes of Robert Groden's presentation. I was chatting it up and helping DUer Deb Conway and criminologist and author Sherry P. Fiester move boxes of books. I had the chance to ask Mr. Groden about the provenance of this piece of film:
Mr. Groden, who has used most of his Sundays for the past 18 years to educate visitors to Dealey Plaza, indicated the still and the video it's taken from are from footage shot at Love Field by NBC Dallas.
We also could've covered "An Analysis of Government Misconduct: The House Select Committee on Assassinations" by Robert K. Tanenbaum, JD. I understand he let loose on what we've learned since, including CIA documents that prove they continued to operate a Murder Inc even after being ordered to stop by Attorney General Kennedy. Once I get a transcript, I'll update with exactly what he said.
