Monthly Archive for March, 2004

My Aunt and Uncle were in Boston this past week­end, so we decid­ed to check out the John F. Kennedy Library & Muse­um.

Designed by I.M. Pei

The Harbor

Designed by I.M. Pei, the build­ing is tru­ly inspir­ing, despite it’s chilly, geo­met­ric parts. In my opin­ion, it is the only Pei build­ing worth it’s salt — cer­tain­ly the only one out of his many projects in Boston.

I’ve nev­er been nos­tal­gic for JFK – he only passed some­thing like 25% of the bills he sent to Capi­tol Hill… which tells me he was more con­cerned with main­tain­ing Camelot, than push­ing hard on dif­fi­cult leg­is­la­tion like Civ­il Rights and the War on Pover­ty.

How­ev­er, after tour­ing the many exhibits and films, I’ve come to respect the man — the man­ner in which the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis was han­dled alone mer­its recon­sid­er­a­tion. And, in the wake of our youth­ful excite­ment sur­round­ing Howard Dean, and his mes­sage, I can only imag­ine JFK’s impact on young peo­ple in 1960.

As Bill Clin­ton says in the exhib­it, JFK put a lot of dif­fi­cult issues on the table — which then need­ed to be worked out over the course of the six­ties.