The BobboSphere: Don't believe everything you think.

I recently read Cathy Wilkerson's new memoir, Flying to Close to the Sun about her days in SDS and Weatherman. She was in Chicago recently giving a reading from her book. I attended and here is my report.

Riding the Red Line up to Women and Children First Bookstore had my stomach tied in knots. Cathy Wilkerson was going to give a reading from her new book Flying Close to the Sun.

Thinking about Cathy brought back painful memories of the breakup of SDS, the murder of Fred Hampton­, the bloody civil war that tore apart the Black Panther Party, the townhouse explosion that killed three SDS leaders, the splitup of the Mother Bloor Collective.... all of which  happened around the last time I had laid eyes on Cathy Wilkerson.

Chicago is famous for its architecture, its storied political crime and corruption and its hapless but loveable Chicago Cubs. Tourists come from around the world to snap pictures from the top of the Sears Tower, marvel at the Impressionists housed in the Art Institute and tremble before Sue the Tyrannosaur at the Field Museum.

Some even ride the Green Line out to Oak Park to enjoy the work of Frank Lloyd Wright (you know, the guy who designed all those leaky roofs).

Not to put down these tourist attractions, which after all do pump some money into Chicago's 21st century de-industrialized economy, but one of my favorite spots in Chicago is---- a feminist bookstore.

1968 was not a good year. War, assassination, political violence and creeping fascism fell over the land like a gloomy shadow. It was however, a very good year to read J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings for the first time.

 I had first come across the epic trilogy in 1965 as a high school senior when I saw it listed as a favorite of 60's college students. Later some of my pals formed a band called Middle Earth and passed out business cards with the word "Hobbit" displayed prominently.

The bassplayer in the band had a hippie-style VW bus named "The Traveling Slum". On the windshield visor was a button that read "Frodo Lives".

But despite my travels with the Middle Earth band members in the Traveling Slum, I still had not read the book that had given birth to their name--- until the summer of 1968.