The BobboSphere: Don't believe everything you think.

Since Reverend Wright is not running for office or a place on the Sunday morning gab fests, he can speak truth to power in a way that is forbidden to mainstream political candidates and pundits. Speaking truth to power does not mean that one is always right. Some of his pronouncements are off-base, but he does appear to be speaking from his heart.

Of course one's heart is not where most public political pronouncements come from. Most of these come from the word processors of fresh-faced communications graduates filtered through the mesh of endless focus groups. That way all genuine substance can carefully strained out before being released to the public.

­It's been 40 years since 1968­ and already people are wondering how to remember it. Well, this is how I remember it and some of the years beyond.....

­

 I heard the loud thumping of­ footsteps coming up the basement stairs of
my parents' home in Silver Spring, Md. Something was very wrong. My
girlfriend Marie appeared at the kitchen entrance, distraught and out
of breath. Martin Luther King has just been shot dead in Memphis. It's
all over the news. Come downstairs. Now.

A terrible primal rage boiled up from somewhere deep in my
consciousness. Not Martin Luther King. Not King. For God's sake, not
him.

­ ­Estelle Carol and me in front of the­ Lincoln Ave Commune-1974 ­

In the early 1970's I was a member of a political commune based in Takoma Park, Maryland. Our small wood frame house was located in some leafy woods between Piney Branch Road and Maple Avenue. Sligo Creek Park was about a quarter mile away with its rocky swift flowing creek.

Although named after "Honest Abe", the Lincoln Avenue Commune began with a lie — a monstrous fraud perpetrated on the landlady Mrs. Chu. You see, we didn't think that we could find anyone who would rent to a gang of ruffians like Betty, Becky, Joey, Chet, Sarah, Greg and me (Bobbo) .

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.

After nearly a lifetime of being a newspaper junkie, I'm close to finally kicking the habit.  I recently canceled our daily subscription to the Chicago Tribune.  At the last minute, my determination to go cold turkey faltered and I'll be tapering off by reading the Sunday edition for a while longer.

Tracy Turnblad and the gang are back in this latest version of the John Waters classic about desegregation in Baltimore, Maryland during the early 1960's. Hairspray was originally a 1980's film starring Ricki Lake as Tracy Turnblad and then turned into a hit Broadway musical. The 2007 film is based more on the musical than the John Waters original film. Waters does make a brief cameo in the new movie as a flasher pervert. Anyone who has seen his Pink Flamingos will appreciate the irony.

The story of Hairspray was based on the real life civil rights protests at Baltimore's Gwynn Oak Amusement Park and at the Buddy Dean Show, a dance program modeled after Dick Clark's more famous American Bandstand.