Frank Beacham's Journal

The Sad Loss of George McGovern

It is with great sadness that I write of the death of Senator George McGovern. He was 90 years old and his advanced age simply caught up with him. But George McGovern, as the movie line went, was some kind of man.

He was the first and only candidate I ever truly supported for president. He would have been a great one, but—up against the likes of Richard M. Nixon—he wasn’t vicious enough to get to the White House. Since he ran in 1968, we’ve had no one—and I mean no one—of his character and caliber.

It is hard not to be wistful about how far our national politics has fallen since 1968. I knew McGovern, followed his work and reported on it, listened to his speeches, had a few drinks with him and always admired him.

When in college—being from the still impoverished state of South Carolina—I came to Washington to report on McGovern’s hearings on hunger. In 1968, I was a very green 20-year-old reporter, but I could not help being impressed. Yes, McGovern was a liberal of the highest order—one who wanted to help poor people live a better life.

And, yes, even then he was attacked for that. Little has changed since that day, including the lack of popularity of helping the poor. But I was completely on board with McGovern and his policies.

As one facing the draft and the war in Vietnam, I also appreciated McGovern’s opposition to the war. He was unlike the racist hypocrites who served and still serve in Congress from South Carolina.

Later, when I worked on Capitol Hill for Sen. Robert Byrd, I got to know McGovern and his top aide, Gary Hart (later to become a senator himself). We all became friendly. Hart offered me a job on McGovern’s presidential campaign, which I refused, deciding to leave Washington to become a reporter and writer instead.

In the era of Richard Nixon, whose reign of power turned out to be far more toxic than anyone could even imagine back in the 60s, McGovern offered an antidote of incredible decency and solid thinking.

America’s rejection of him was tough for me to swallow. But one thing is clear—the quality of our presidential candidates has gone down ever since.

I heard McGovern speak again in 2008 in New York City. Even then at his advanced age, he was dead on right with everything he said. I still wanted him to be president more than ever, but it was not to be.

McGovern remains a shining symbol of the best of this country’s political left—particularly in relation to the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s when the country was torn by U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the corruption and abuse of power of the Nixon administration.

Even he recognized the mixed results of his 1972 candidacy, saying, "I opened the doors of the Democratic Party and 20 million people walked out." McGovern had also become more forceful in recent years in drawing historical parallels between the Nixon and Bush administrations and the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

McGovern's post-political career generally enhanced his reputation. Tom Brokaw wrote in 1998 that “he remains one of the country's most decent and thoughtful public servants.”

Sadly, the nation has run out of this breed of politician. Now, in this election, we’ve hit bottom on all sides. But, for those who remember, it wasn’t always that way.

George McGovern was definitely some kind of man. I’m proud to have known him and thankful I lived in his time. May he finally rest in peace.

George Stoney: Changing a Town and the Lives of Its People Forever

                    

George Stoney, the great documentary filmmaker, has died at age 96. Though he had made films since the early 1950s, Stoney made one in 1995 that turned my world upside down.

The Uprising of ’34, made with his former student, Judith Helfand, was about the Textile Strike of 1934. In it was a section about how, on September 6, 1934, seven workers were shot and killed and 30 others wounded at the Chiquola Mill in my home town of Honea Path, South Carolina.

It was an act that has shaped the town’s history and attitudes in ways that few could have imagined. I had a special interest in the film because my late grandfather, Dan Beacham, Honea Path’s mayor and superintendent of the mill in 1934, organized the gunmen who fired their weapons at the workers. That day became known as “Bloody Thursday.”

My grandfather died in 1936, many years before I was born. When I was growing up in Honea Path during the 1960s, the subject of the mill violence was taboo. There were hints of what happened, of course, but the topic was never discussed in the open. I learned the truth about Honea Path’s history in 1994 from a rough-cut of Stoney’s film.

Since that film essentially ended Honea Path’s six-decade long secret, I’ve learned about the history of the town and its people through many conversations and stories. I wrote about it in my book, Whitewash: A Southern Journey through Music, Mayhem and Murder.

As a writer who makes his living telling stories, I was shocked to find one of the most compelling stories I’ve ever heard connected to my own family and hometown. Even more shocking, I found, was how an event of such magnitude and importance to the lives of generations of Honea Path families could have been hidden and buried for so long. Of course the reason that I and so few of my fellow baby boomers didn’t know the story of Chiquola Mill was because it was purposely denied us.

There was a campaign of fear and intimidation after the shootings that effectively erased public discussion of what had happened. Fearful workers who wanted to keep their jobs put a self-imposed lid on their own past. Somehow, as the years went by, the violence at Chiquola evolved into a source of shame.

George Stoney, a Southerner himself, understood all this. He explained more to me about where I came from than I ever learned while living there. After the film’s release, he came to Honea Path and we did a radio talk show together. He organized a retreat at the Highlander Center in Tennessee where we discussed what happened in Honea Path for several days.

Later, we spoke, not only in his classes at New York University, but at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Natural History in New York City. We always winged it and the endless conversations were never boring.

As I learned from all this, a documentary filmmaker’s job is never done. George invited me to one of his film classes last year at NYU, still teaching well into his 90s.

George addressed the many myths that built up over the years about the workers who died in Honea Path more than 75 years ago. They were called an isolated group of troublemakers and rabble-rousers. Some, mainly the mill’s former management, claimed they deserved what happened to them.

He saw it another way. He thought these mill workers risked everything—their jobs, their freedom and ultimately their lives—for a cause they believed in. They made a decision to exert some control over their changing place in an increasingly industrialized world. Their method was to attempt to organize their fellow workers into a labor union.

The amazing chain of events that caused friends and neighbors in Honea Path to turn on one another with weapons has to be viewed in the context of the time. In 1934 the cork finally blew and labor protests erupted all over the United States. There were 1,856 work stoppages involving 1,470,000 workers.

Honea Path represented a microcosm in a whirlwind of worker unrest. The shooting of the Honea Path mill workers was a pivotal moment in the General Textile Strike that was sweeping the South. Though the efforts of the workers ended in defeat and much suffering followed, the deaths of the seven Honea Path men was not in vain.

The disillusionment of the workers and the outrageous conduct by the mill owners made a strong impression on the Roosevelt Administration. This helped spur passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. Out of these laws came reforms that vastly improved the lives of all American workers. One example was child labor. Before 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act outlawed employment of children under sixteen, the concept of “helping” was used in the mills.

Very young children were taught factory skills by their parents and soon “helped” by working in the mill to increase the family's piecemeal earnings. “Helping” became a form of apprenticeship and a major part of the mill’s labor system. Because this practice is now illegal, children have a better chance at a quality life by getting to stay in school rather than be exploited as cheap labor.

Other major reforms that came out of the labor unrest was the establishment of the minimum wage and the 40-hour work week. These are reforms—a direct result of what happened in Honea Path—have permeated modern life in the United States and have extended far beyond the textile industry. That’s why these workers were heroes and why their history should be honored.

The corrosive division that poisoned Honea Path after the shootings and the sense of shame that followed the shooting was concocted by those responsible for the violence. Fortunately that has mostly ended now, if for no other reason than fewer and fewer remain with us who can give a first person account of what happened.

Now, we have lost George Stoney, too. The Honea Path story is just one of many that George told. What a life! What a wonderful ability to change people's lives through storytelling. That’s what George Stoney did so well.

RIP, George!

 

Fox and CNN Get the Supreme Court Ruling Wrong

It is remarkable to me how people continue to watch, defend and put up with the sorry state of television news.

When I worked at United Press International in the 1970s, we had very difficult desegregation busing decisions that required quick, but thorough analysis. If I had gotten a decision wrong on the UPI wire, I would have been fired then and there. That’s no longer the case.

Both Fox News and CNN got the story flat wrong. In their rush to get the news out, coupled with their built-in bias as to what the decision would be, both networks initially reported that the Supreme Court had struck down the law’s individual mandate. Of course they were wrong, because the opposite actually happened.

“The mandate is gone,” Shannon Bream, a Fox News correspondent, announced at 10:08 a.m. as a graphic flashed on the screen that called it unconstitutional. A moment later, one of the Fox anchors, Megyn Kelly, cautioned that Bream might be wrong.

“We’re getting conflicting information,” Kelly said, while reading from Scotus blog, an a web site about the court. Citing the blog, she accurately told viewers that “the individual mandate is surviving as a tax.”

At the same time on CNN, relaying information from a producer, Bill Mears, on the phone inside the court building, a correspondent, Kate Bolduan, said, “It appears as if the Supreme Court justices have struck down the individual mandate.”

“Wow,” said Wolf Blitzer, the anchor, who immediately said that if the court had indeed done what she had said, it would be a setback for President Obama and the Democratic Party. Despite his qualified words, a banner on the screen read, “Supreme Ct. Kills Individual Mandate.” The mistake lingered for six minutes — well after other television networks and news outlets had reported that the opposite was true.

Editors and producers at several organizations said they would emphasize accuracy over speed in any coverage of the decision, lest they risk being wrong. But today news organizations hire amateur reporters at low pay scales and expect them to have the skill to report accurately. Fox was even taking information from a blog, not first-hand reporting. This was absolute proof of the low state of TV news.

“CNN regrets that it didn’t wait to report out the full and complete opinion regarding the mandate,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “We made a correction within a few minutes and apologize for the error.”

Fox News did not issue an apology. In a statement, Michael Clemente, a Fox executive, said flatly, “Fox reported the facts as they came in.” Clemente should be fired for his arrogance, much less his incompetence.

Even the President of the United States, watching like much of the nation, was fooled by the bad reporting. He, of all people, should have known better.

That’s the difference in news today. It should be strong proof that television coverage is unreliable and amateur at best. Turn them off is my advice.

Civil War Buff Becomes Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina

In another bizarre event in my home state of South Carolina, former state Sen. Glenn McConnell, an avid civil war enthusiast, has ascended to lieutenant governor of the state after the indictment and conviction of the current Republican holding that office.

Former Lt. Gov. Ken Ard pleaded guilty Friday to criminal charges of spending campaign funds on personal expenses and fabricating donations. That money went for things like iPads, clothes, football tickets and family vacations, the indictment said.

By state law, this left McConnell, as President Pro Tempore of the state senate, to become the state's new second in command. 

McConnell is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Secession Camp #4. The Sons of Confederate Veterans were charged in 1906 by Lt. General Stephen Dill Lee, Commander General of the United Confederate Veterans, with "the vindication of the cause for which we fought."

In 2000, when the Confederate flag was brought down from atop the dome of the State House, McConnell successfully advocated flying another Confederate flag from a flagpole in the front of the Statehouse, on the grounds, near the Confederate Soldier Monument.

He rejected the suggestion that the Confederate flag be placed in a glass case by saying, "Encasement represents entombment," and by saying that he wanted "no part in symbolically burying the Confederate banner." The resulting bill that was passed in 2000 was called a compromise.

McConnell vigorously fights attempts to take down the currently-flying Confederate flag, and he declares such attempts as having the goal of carrying out a "cultural genocide." He has been featured as a guest on The Political Cesspool, a radio show that promotes the Confederacy.

McConnell, a Confederate heritage defender who has owned a Civil War memorabilia business, reportedly gets a kick out of reenacting battles and is known for firing his personal cannon, dubbed "Big Ray." Only in South Carolina!

Some Thoughts on “What’s Next” for Occupy Wall Street

The past week has been an exciting time in New York City. We have seen a popular uprising grow and expand—aided by a tin-eared billionaire mayor and a violent and over-zealous police department dedicated to protecting the wealthy. As with many of the dictators that have fallen around the world recently, these New York officials are as lost and isolated as Gadhafi was in Lybia or Mubarak in Egypt.

There is a global trend at work and it’s in reaction to the huge and growing disparities in wealth and political power throughout the world. Today’s government leaders have hit bottom—enabling and supporting a culture of shallow commercialism, intellectual bankruptcy, corporate corruption and phoniness in everyday life that is crushing ordinary people. 

Honest, objective news media has evaporated, entertainment is becoming no more than corporate-created fluff and public education has come down to brainwashing a generation that the best life offers are financial deals that make money. 

Art, music and the creating of anything that enhances human life is minimized in today’s over-commercialized culture. All that matters in the short term is a soul-killing chase for bucks and the drudge work that usually goes with it. 

Today, the rich actually “make” very little. Manufacture of goods is done offshore at poverty wages. The wealthy today essentially create shady schemes to shift money around and charge the masses for their efforts. Those that aren’t devious enough to find success at that—and that is most of us—are left out.

I, for one, am sick of it. I want a different life. I want different values. I want out of a system that has created fiendish values and meaningless work that pays little and does nothing but enhance the lies perpetrated by the wealthy drones and the two political parties.

So what’s next? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. It is clear that both the Democrats and Republicans offer zero for the future. Both parties are bankrupt of ideas and controlled by lobbyists for the wealthy or right-wing whackos that are now self-destructing.

Before this election cycle, I would have said that third parties had little chance of getting elected in the United States. But times change and I think the day has arrived that a third-party candidate could be elected president. I also believe that most Americans side with Occupy Wall Street, despite what fraudulent institutions like “Fox News” or its pundits say.

The problem is who would run? It would be need to a strong, Ralph Nader-like progressive. Elizabeth Warren comes to mind, though she is already running for the Senate in Massachusetts.

I came out of the 1960s and realize the major fight ahead is for a younger generation. For so long I worried they didn’t care or weren’t energized. Now that has changed and the corrupt power structure has done all the right things to magnify their efforts throughout the world. This now must be translated to political action that can have a lasting effect in the world. The street protests are fine, but the movement needs to grow.

What’s needed is a presidential candidate with all the charisma of a Barack Obama, but this time with the spine to carry the things out that need to be done and not collapse to the interests of the wealthy and special interests. We also need progressive members of Congress to support this new president. That's a big order, but the time is certainly right.

Another Night of Victory for Daniel Ortega—This Time in 1979

   
Reading that Daniel Ortega is heading for a third term as president of Nicaragua brings back memories of a very unusual night in 1979—when I, and other reporters—ate rice and drank Johnnie Walker Red into the wee hours with the future president in a dark, candlelit bar at Managua’s InterContinental Hotel.

Earlier that day, July 17, Nicaragua's longtime leader, Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was overthrown after an insurrection led by the FSLN, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a group whose leaders included Ortega. Earlier, Somoza had left the country, flying to exile in Miami.

Rebels were shooting in the air and the celebrations, though dangerous, were going on in the streets. I had been eating cans of tuna fish seemingly for days—there was no food to be had—and had just returned from a tour of Gen. Somoza’s “safe house,” where cans of caviar were ripped open and tossed across the room.

In an earlier time, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, I had shared a couple of beers with General Somoza during an outdoor party for the astronauts at the Cocoa Beach Holiday Inn. He seemed like a pleasant enough guy, on his best behavior for a visit to the United States. I didn’t know how dictators operated back then. 

I was at the Intercontinental Hotel during the revolution for NBC News and walking down a stairwell when I ran into Ortega, an exuberant young 34-year-old leader of the rebellion. I had met Ortega earlier, while shooting video of the Sandinistas in the jungles as they approached Managua. The tension of the earlier days was missing—this time Ortega was relaxed and gleeful. 

There may have been no food or electricity in the hotel, but the cheerful Ortega, who spoke perfect English, invited me and other members of the press to join him for some newly discovered booze and rice in the hotel bar. Now, he was a different man, one about to take hold of the reigns of power.

That night he was jubilant and everyone’s best friend. Born poor, his parents had been opposed to Somoza. His mother was imprisoned by the National Guard. Two of his brothers died in combat. He, himself, was arrested at age 15 for political activities, and became an early member of the FSLN. 

During his imprisonment, Ortega was severely tortured. After his release, he was exiled to Cuba, where he received several months of guerrilla training. He later returned to Nicaragua secretly.

That night, at least, Ortega told of the good things he would do for his long exploited people. At the time, the things he said made me feel good. I saw hope for this poor country.  He was a friendly, very articulate man, not someone I could comprehend to be a killer. But, in Latin America, I have since learned, nothing is as it seemed.

Ortega went on the be in a five-person Junta of National Reconstruction, the only member from the FSLN. Soon, President Ronald Reagan accused the FSLN of joining Soviet-based Cuba in supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in Latin America. Reagan and company authorized the CIA to begin financing and arming rebels, who were known as the Contras. Some of the Contras were former officers from Somoza's National Guard.            

This turned out to be one of the largest political scandals in U.S. history—the Iran Contra Affair—when Oliver North and several members of the Reagan administration defied an amendment to sell arms to Iran, and then used the proceeds to fund the Contras. Between 1980 and 1989, over 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the conflict between the Sandinista government and the Contras. 

In the 1984 general election, Ortega won the presidency with 67 percent of the vote and took office on January 10, 1985. Now 65, Ortega appears to have won his third term, though not consecutive. More than 600 complaints of voting irregularities have emerged so far.

The New York Times reported that Ortega proved to be a shrewd political strategist. He adopted policies aimed at pleasing his base of poor and working-class Nicaraguans, including supplying them with government-donated food. At the same time, he actively reached out to independents and conservative business leaders with his free-market approach to the economy.

Much of his support, the newspaper reported, was due to an alliance with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, which brought about $2 billion to the Nicaraguan economy over the past several years. If Ortega makes it this time, he becomes the first president in Nicaragua’s modern history to serve three terms. 

As I look back to that time, I have mixed feelings and one genuine souvenir. When I entered Nicaragua, my passport was stamped with General Somoza’s government insignia.  When I left a couple of weeks later, a line was crossed through the stamp and the letters FSLN were written with a magic marker.  The new government hadn’t had time to make up new emigration stamps yet.

Reel Grrls Learn Real Media Lesson

Cable giant Comcast, at the depths of its slimy operations, can’t seem to do anything right. First, they hire a Republican FCC commissioner who voted only months ago for its corrupt deal to buy NBC Universal. 

Then, when Reel Grrls, a Seattle group that runs a summer camp teaching media skills to teenage girls, criticized the move, Comcast pulled their annual $18,000 corporate contribution. Rather than apologize, Reel Grrls stood tall and refused to retract a single word.

Some good news came from this fiasco. Reel Grrls has now raised enough money to tell Comcast to shove it and keep its contribution. The money that Comcast gave the group has been replaced by donations from real people outraged by the company’s actions.

The subject of the Reel Grrls' criticism was the announcement by Comcast last month that it is hiring FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who recently voted to approve the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal. Following Reel Grrls' post on Twitter, a local Comcast vice-president immediately rescinded its annual donation to the girls' program. 

Then when the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Associated Press got hold of the story, Comcast suddenly changed its tune. Comcast then apologized, calling it an action by an "unauthorized employee." 

By then, public support for the young women came pouring in. Reel Grrls quickly raised $14,000. The group is still sticking to their principles and apologizing for nothing. They told Comcast to keep its money if it’s going to try to censor what they say.

This story is a real breath of fresh air in today’s America. Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the Obama administration didn’t have the guts to take on the bad guys. That was left to the kids. These girls are the real future of media, which is now so corrupt in its desire to generate money that it will never change.

To take on Comcast, the solution is simple. Turn off cable television. Simply quit subscribing. Tell them no. Everyone today can get television from the Internet. I did it years ago and feel good I no longer pay for television.

Of course, they still control the Internet. But competition to that technology will come as well. When it does, just say no.

South Carolina Holds Its Confederacy Ball

Last night, South Carolina began its government-supported celebration of the 150th anniversary of the signing of documents that plunged the nation into the Civil War. More than 400 people attended a Confederacy ball in Charleston, S.C.

Though the celebrants who dressed in civil war costumes claimed to be celebrating their state’s history, what they were actually celebrating was a document that showed their primary reason for leaving the union was over the Northern states' opposition to slavery. But facts generally mean little in South Carolina.

At least, the NAACP, on the steps outside of the Gaillard Auditorium in Charleston, protested the event for what it was: a celebration of slavery. The ball was just the beginning of a series of events by a state that still flies the Confederate flag over its its statehouse grounds. Rather than just protest slavery, the state’s black population should rise up and end it forever. 

South Carolina Continues Racist Celebration of Civil War

Robert Ford, a black South Carolina state senator, once said of the continuing dispute in South Carolina over the Confederate Flag that the issue would take a long, long time to resolve. 

“These white men in South Carolina in 1861 started a civil war that lasted five years without a navy, army, air force or marine, because somebody was trying to tell them what to do,” Ford said. “This is South Carolina—[home of] the meanest, toughest white men on the planet.”

The civil war continues into the third millennium in South Carolina. Now the state is making news again as it plans to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the never ending struggle. Even though the state is among the poorest in the nation, it found the money to hire a coordinator and establish a website for the celebration.

Tonight, in Charleston, a secession ball will be held. Ball attendees will pay $100 a ticket, don formal, period dress, eat and dance the Virginia Reel as a band plays “Dixie.” The evening’s highlight will be a play reenacting the signing of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession 150 years ago, which severed the state’s ties with the Union and paved the way for the Civil War.

Earlier in the day, the white celebrants will watch the 1915 silent film, Birth of a Nation, a film that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heros. The president of the State Senate, Glenn McConnell, will be there in full civil war regalia. It’s vintage South Carolina, a place where the Confederate Flag still flies on the statehouse grounds.  

The state’s NAACP will rightly boycott it all. They accurately call it—pure and simple—a celebration of slavery. The whites who do the celebrating call it history, but most of us know better. As one born in South Carolina, it has always been very clear to me. Why it goes on is beyond me.

South Carolina seems to never change. It is a place frozen in time and prejudice. They simply hide behind an ever changing parade of masks, hiding the racism that still thrives there. It’s a sad, but seemingly endless story.

 

All My Life’s a Circle

This week I was invited to Peter Yarrow’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for a party on behalf of World Hunger Year. Peter, of Peter, Paul and Mary, and Tom Chapin, brother of Harry Chapin, were both incredibly gracious hosts. Though I had only recently gotten to know both of them personally, as we talked, I realized how important both of these men have been my in life for many, many years.

Of course, we all grew up with the music of Peter, Paul and Mary. To hear Peter’s many stories, though, I felt as if I knew them personally through the years. He’s a remarkably friendly and personable man who wears his politics on his sleeve and doesn’t care what anyone thinks about it. I really like that trait in the man.

I first saw Tom Chapin on stage with his brother, Harry. I later shot video with Harry and his young family on a Florida beach. Harry would always end his concerts with All My Life’s a Circle, one of my favorite of his songs. When Harry died in a car crash in 1981, I was distraught for days.

Tom told us how Harry had actually written that song for him when he was doing a children’s television show in the early 70s. It became an unexpected hit for Harry. I suspect that’s because it has affected so many people over the years as a work containing so much truth.

When Tom sang “Circle” in Peter Yarrow’s living room, it affected me in a profound way.  Somehow, I felt the circle had closed a bit for me at that moment. It made me realize how my life has so many incredible connections that have kept building and interweaving through the years. “Seems like I've been here before, and I well remember when…”

 

When Tom introduced Jorma Kaukonen, he noted that the last time he’d seen him was with Harry at the Fillmore in San Francisco when Jorma was guitarist for Jefferson Airplane. It was exactly the same way I was introduced to Tom—on stage. Harry and Tom had both been fans of Jorma. 

Tom also sang a song inspired by the Rev. Gary Davis, a man who taught both he and Harry how to play the guitar. The Rev. Davis played on the streets of my own hometown, having been born only 40 miles away in Laurens, South Carolina. He’s still unknown in South Carolina—but certainly not to some of the world’s greatest musicians, including Bob Dylan.

 Peter Yarrow, Tom Chapin, Pete Fornatale and James Gavin

The Yarrow party was remarkable for me on many levels. The song says it all:

All my life's a circle, sunrise and sundown

Moon rolls through the night-time till the daybreak comes around

All my life's a circle I can't tell you why

Seasons spinning round again, the years keep rolling by

Seems like I've been here before, and I well remember when

I've got a funny feeling that we'll all be together again

No straight lines make up my life, all my roads are bends

There's no clear-cut beginning and so far no dead ends

I've found you a thousand times, I know you've done the same

Then we lose each other, it's like a children's game

If I find you here again the thought comes through my mind

Life is like a circle, let's go round one more time