Sputnik I begat beatniks (YET ANOTHER LEFTY CONSPIRACY THEORY - THIS TIME FROM '57)

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | March 18, 2007 | DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter

[Chi-townChief]

Sputnik I crashing in Francisco with the local hipsters and jazzbos gathering up the wreakage is almost too funny but I guess it goes with the territory. Kerouac, by the way, was a pretty great novelist but Ginsberg sounded like he was trying to win an Edward Bulwer-Lytton award. You can't get much more over-the-top bad poetry than "Howl" or "America."

[tranzorZ]

Ok, I made it through half way through that thing. Are they celebrating sputnik itself, great tech buy the proletariat, or just that time period?

[Chi-townChief]

Actually, they're celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of "On the Road" which, in itself, is pretty cool. But the Sputnik and Ginsberg things are a pretty odd twist.

[tanuki]

Thank you for posting this. An entertaining if somewhat quixotic read. I doubt if anybody apart from Charlie Tuna has parts of the original Sputnik I, but the spare satellite was lying in rubbish and probably could have been had for cheap in Moscow around the early 90's.It might still be available for the right price.

[Dallas59]

Cool...*snaps fingers*

[ClearCase_guy]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
sputnik, starving hysterical naked,
dragging satellite pieces through the negro streets at
dawn looking for a beatnik museum,
angelheaded hipsters burning from the radioactive
connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night

[LibFreeOrDie]

"You rang?"

-- Maynard G. Krebs --

http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/lawrence/153/krebs.html

[ansel12]

Good old liberal icon Allen Ginsberg.



"In the early 1980s, NAMBLA was reported to have had over 300 members, and was supported by such noted figures as Allen Ginsberg.[4] Since then, the organization has kept membership data private, but an undercover FBI investigation in 1995 discovered that there were 1,100 people on the rolls.[4] It is the largest organization in the umbrella group IPCE[5] (formerly "International Pedophile and Child Emancipation").[6]"

[Brad from Tennessee]

When I was a kid, before Sputnik, I used to hear beats sometimes referred to as "Bohemians."

[Chi-townChief]

There ya go - maybe since Allen's gone you can give all of his "work" some posthumous updating.

[Chi-townChief]

I think they still are. Czechs get pissed if you refer to them that way, though.

[rbg81]

FBI head J. Edgar Hoover stated the three greatest threats to the American way of life were "Communists, eggheads and beatniks."


Perceptive.

[elcid1970]

There are references to "Bohemians" not as Czechs, but as artsy-fartsy creative types, going back to the 1920's and earlier (remember the opera "La Boheme"?)

Anyway, this is a fun thread. I remember as a kid hearing how beatniks were said to wear turtleneck sweaters, berets, hornrim glasses, and goatees, while playing bongo drums in funky cafes and reciting unintelligible poetry.

Beatnik girls were pretty and had long, straight hair. That part I liked.

[Bender2]

Re: The Russian-made Sputnik I was the first man-made object to orbit the Earth.

In the late 1950s my Dad was the Project Manager on constructing rocket pads at White Sands and McGregor Range test sites. I was an 11/12 year old with wide eyes at all I could see.

I recall (fuzzy though it be) some of the base personnel telling...
of either a Redstone...
or Jupiter-C Rocket...
launching 3 solid steel balls into orbit in 1955. They also said a proper satellite could have been launched in August, 1956, but the Eisenhower Administration wanted it to be a private (i.e. non-military) launch for the International Geophysical Year running from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958

As we all know, the Commies beat us to the punch on that and the Liberal Dems are still taking anyone's and everyone's side against our nation...

I say launch each and ever danged Liberal Democrat into the sun!

BTW...

The only good Beatnik was Maynard... G. Krebs

[BluH2o]

Sputnik I, whatever ... I can say with a fair degree of confidence I'm the only member of FR who actually saw Sputnik I in orbit October 1957. I was hunting with a friend of mine that beautiful fall day (a weekend); about 3PM we both observed a silver object about the size of a small ball bearing (BB size) transiting across the eastern horizon in a south east to northwest direction. This was in eastern Canada ... practically everyone around the world was aware the Russians had launched a satellite into space.
When my friend and I (both young teenagers) told adults we saw Sputnik they were skeptical ... what cinched the deal, a Captain, on a ship, perhaps a hundred miles north of us on the St. Lawrence River reported spotting Sputnik about the same time we did ... except, he was considered credible and it was reported by CBC News radio.
Years later I visited the Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC and they now have a large map tracking the flight of Sputnik ... which shows the orbit clearly tracking over eastern Canada.

[Fiddlstix]

......I remember as a kid hearing how beatniks were said to wear turtleneck sweaters, berets, hornrim glasses, and goatees, while playing bongo drums in funky cafes and reciting unintelligible poetry.

LOL! I remember that too......
But.....
You forgot to mention the "Expresso".....
J

[Battle Axe]

I was eleven in 1957. Dad was furious that the Russians had launched it. (USAF officer) I remember him dragging me outside in the middle of the night and pointing out a moving star. Don't know if it was that one or another.

But beatniks.......all that was done with fluoride.

[speedy]

Espresso and listening to Thelonious Monk were part of the scene too, Daddio.

[speedy]

You beat me to the espresso. Like crazy, man. Regular coffee was strictly for squares.

[Star Traveler]

You said -- "Sputnik I, whatever ... I can say with a fair degree of confidence I'm the only member of FR who actually saw Sputnik I in orbit October 1957."

I'm about to shatter your confidence then...

When I was a kid in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my family went out into the backyard looking for Sputnik, because it was reported to be going over at a certain time. And sure enough, there it was, moving across the sky, in the early evening.

It was a shiny moving spot in the sky, at the right time and right place where it was reported to be. And, of course, in those days -- there was *nothing* else in the skies (no International Space Station, no hundreds of other satellites, like you can see now, all the time). That was the *only thing* out there, at that time.

And, I'm sure many hundreds of thousands of others saw it, too. We were not the only ones...

Regards,
Star Traveler

P.S. -- I can get out my "Starry Night" program and check the satellites, and at any hour of the day, there will be a flood of them going across the sky, these days. It's easy to get a loot at many of them. And it's easy to get a look at the ISS (International Space Station).