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Early Addition
Yoko Ono has taken out a full page ad that is running in today's New York Times, which you can find in the back of the Week in Review section. The ad (above) asks that December 8th, the day that John Lennon was killed, become a day of healing and helping others. She writes:
"Every year, let's make December 8th the day to ask for forgiveness from those who suffered the insufferable. Let's wish strongly that one day we will be able to say that we healed ourselves, and by healing ourselves, we healed the world."
In March of 2003, Ono took out full page ads in major newspapers urging the US not to go to war. They read "Imagine Peace...Spring 2003". And of course, in the winter of 1969 Lennon and Ono had their "War is Over! If You Want It" billboard in Times Square (which Ono recreated in 1998/99).
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yes i agree, girls, i needs that healing too, please do email so we all can heal
Just waiting for the bloodthirsty right-wing contingent to chime in on how it's America's right to trample over the globe spreading 'democracy'...
um... who is John Lennon? the only important person to die that day was DIMEBAG!
Beautiful. Thank you to Yoko for her heartfelt message... John will always be in our memories.
I'm not a fan or Yoko Ono or John Lennon at all, but I appreciate her letter a lot -- well said.
Q. What did Yoko say after she heard John was shot?
A. Ono.
What cares about John Lennon, woopie doo ! Now the liberal asshat Yuko Uno is at it again with her leftist rhetoric.
Beautiful ? oh please ! lol
You should be shot Yuko ! Why not write a letter to all the terrorist telling them we are sorry for putting those buildings in your flight path, you pathetic piece of dirt !
personally I think the Beatles stink / stunk !
Hey Yuko remember this line "Imagine no possessions" well your husband wrote it. So why don't you give away your possesions for the good of mankind and stop being a hypocrite ! Loooooser !
geez.. the ad was a nice sentiment.. stop giving her crap about it.
What kind of peace was John Lennon talking about anyway? Its a little vague.
Geez people calm down.
...isn't that also Pearl Harbor Day?
This is great, and also on 50 other blogs. Where is the relevant music coverage ? Lennon was shot, time to move on.
I am a huge Beatles/Lennon fan, but I feel like Yoko Ono is using her husband's death for her own personal agenda and to keep herself in the spotlight. I don't know. I just feel that this could have been done in a more tasteful way.
Heathre, what the hell are you talking about? Yoko and John were huge peace activists and he died violently - she's using the day of his death to promote peace, not herself. She's a relatively low-profile New Yorker who is using her fame in an entirely responsible way. In fact, she's trying to harness the attention to her husband's death to remind us all of people suffering everhwere. As for the forum, perhaps getting the word out is more important to Ono than being "tasteful."
I don't understand how anybody could criticize her for doing this.
props to yoko ono for this. every day as new yorkers and americans we're confronted with images and news of terrible violence, and sometimes it hits us close to home, whether through a mugging, carjacking, a friend or relative killed in iraq, or other senseless violence.
that full-page ad is a reflective and commendable plea for sanity. and what she asks is no small thing: i've had a parent and a close friend murdered in my thirty-some years, and while i experience a lot of emotion around their deaths, forgiveness isn't one of them. but she's right that it has to happen at some point. look, did she have to lay out the dough for this? no.
gothamist provides decent content. i find some pieces more interesting than others; i skim and read what jumps out at me. i really don't get why the comments here tend so heavily toward the spiteful and asinine.
Heather, I don't see how a simple text ad without much embellishment can get any more "tasteful". World peace also doesn't seem like anyone's own personal agenda.
manda,
hair peace
Thank you for posting the full Ad. I looked for the content everywhere and could not find it. I shall direct my blog visitors here to read it ASAP.
Where's Julian?
maybe it is time for the world of John fans to forgive Yoko. Could that be what she craves as well?
I've enjoyed her throughout the years and I agree with her.
The comment above about "imagine no possessions" was very funny but-- come on.... she is only human. She can't give up EVERYTHING! My guess is she gives millions anyway.
interesting smart lady. give her credit. forgive her.
Then again, your guess could be totally wrong. And what's so interesting about her? Her singing voice? Do you know anything about her?
To put her whole ad into a nutshell: Forgive our country for electing such a dimwitted dolt.
What can I say? You either get it or you don't. Forgive her? For what, falling in love? That's funny! Imagine no possessions...I wonder if WE can. ( This was the lyric on one cut...he puts himself and Yoko in the same catagory!) If he were here now, he would have gotten Julian and Yoko together. Simply bad timing. Stop the hate. That's the message! Stop the wars everywhere. Don't worship Lennon! He said himself, he's just a man, an admitted shitty father to Julian, Beatles were just a pop group, nothing to worry about. I believe, knowing what he knows right now, he'd be saying that the "answer" to the meaning of life is loving humanity as did the Christ. Fuhgiddaboddit!!!
Why on Earth would Julian want to be with Yoko? He already has a mother.
There is no hate here... just a healthy disrespect for people who don't know what they're talking about.
Wow how sad. I appreciate The letter from Yoko. May the world someday see peace.
Im gonna be putting this up on my blog as well :)
Helping to spread the message of peace n love!
hey nice comments everyone the beatles are only the most important rock group of all time and will be remembered for centuries long after you assholes die.
It drips like water from the soul. Well the music I mean, the everlasting words of peace, love and understanding. A simple concept so fragile it can only be grasped through feeling.
December Ninth Nineteen Eighty, was the end of all that was beautiful an yet the beginning of a revolution filled with inspiration. Even today the words are touching people beyond the depth of reason. Conceived by idealists, John Lennon a single word IMAGINE.
love for all heal for all peace for all
donny maupin
11/16/85
Yoko's words are beautiful and touch my heart and soul just as so many of John's did. Just IMAGINE if we all read, believed and lived peace and forgiveness.
Thank you Yoko
Pam
12/8/2006
Thanks for the wonderful and hopeful letter Yoko. All the best to you and everyone else that wants it. Too bad that certain people can only see and feel hate. As for peace, think globally and act locally.
Reading these comments gives me pause and sadness.
How can we ever hope for peace and healing when we take any effort a person makes in this regard and personalize it by projecting our own shadow on them. When pointing fingers one always has to point to self. What you are seeing in the other person is a part of yourself you do not want to own. We are not perfect but human beings. When we accept that fact we can begin to show compassion. In other words we can begin to forgive ourselves and others which is what this message is about. Don't get so myopic about it and read into it what isn't there. When you look "the enemy" in their eyes you will see yourself reflexed. Judge not.
I THINK THIS AD WAS WHAT JOHN AND YOKO WERE ALL ABOUT! IT LIVES ON TODAY! YOKO IS JUST REMINDING THE NEW GENERATION! FOR THE FOOLS THAT SAY JOHN LENNON WAS NOTHING, READ YOUR MUSICAL HISTORY FOR IF IT WAS NOT FOR THE BEATLES (WHO WERE MUSICAL GENIUS'S ESPECIALLY LENNON) THERE WOULD BE NO MUSIC AS WE KNOW IT TODAY!!!!! LET'S SEE THOSE PEOPLE WRITE SONGS EVEN CLOSE!!! LONG LIVE THE IDEALS OF A LEGEND!!!!
:) this ad makes me happy.
your hate comments make me vomit.
love
The challenge of the holiday season - as well as every day of our life - involves finding life's beauty - where ever we may be - and elevating oneself to a higher level of being, thinking, interacting, reading, creating, expressing oneself through the arts, and ulitmately living.
Thanks Yoko for doing your part. Healing and peace to you and your family. May evert reader attempt to bring peace into his/her heart and to make this world a better, more beautiful and peaceful place for everyone.
I've more or less been doing nothing worth mentioning, but eh. My life's been really bland today. I don't care. I've just been letting everything happen without me these days. That's how it is.
I haven't gotten anything done today. I feel like a fog, but what can I say? I've just been letting everything wash over me lately, not that it matters. Shrug.
Who needs forgiveness? Is she speaking about the US as in my country? F'ck-Her the world should ask for our forgiveness for constantly taking and never giving anything back. 3000 of our citizens died on 911 and Iraq and IRan and all the rest should be grateful they still exist at all. US has the right to protect our citizens and lands from terrorists and its just to bad that war is distasteful to the likes of Yoko Ono and bleeding libs who are not much more than cowardly shits who dont think anything is worth fighting for just like to hear themselves talk.
Yoko should ask forgiveness for ruining the career of a legend, forcing herself onto his records with her howling and but ugly face and breaking up the greatest band that will ever exist. The woman is a crass, talentless hag, who manipulated a psychotic bi-polar drug addict into making the biggest mistakes of his life, namely marrying her and giving her control over him. His post-beatle career was sad and nothing but a downward spiral that showed that he wasn't the genius he thought himself to be or even special. He was a hasbeen who hadn't written anything worth shit in 5 years, and then did a really poor come back attempt with double Fantasy, which is probaly one of the worst albums ever, the only reason it got any play at all was because it was John Lennon to begin with. But even that she ruined by putting her howling crap on it. John Lennon had the potential to be great but was ruined by the strangle hold the dragon lady had on him by the time he died.