Sunday, October 14, 2012

Memories of Fear

I know, I know....Nobody does a blog two days in a row but here I am anyway.

     This morning I watched the CBS Sunday Morning Show and they did a piece on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It took me back to those days when I was a freshman at St. Hubert's and the real dread I lived in that October. But then I wasn't the only one living in fear. The entire nation was in the same boat.
     We were watching shows like 'The Jetsons', 'The Lucy Show' and 'The Beverly Hillbillies' on TV. They were all brand new that fall. Shelly Fabres was singing 'Johnny Angel' and Acker Bilk was playing 'Stranger on the Shore'. People were going to the movies to see 'The Longest Day'.
     I had to use Google to remind me of the TV and music and the movies of that year but I remember the fear on my own. I had nightmares for years about a sky full of planes heading south to defend us all. There was a real and palpable fear that the world could come to an end. Mine was the first generation who grew up under the cloud of nuclear war. We saw the power of what a single bomb could do in the photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We went through bomb drills in school.
     So many years later a touch of fear is still there. Not as bad as it once was but it hasn't completely gone away. The dream of all those planes does not come with the frequency it once did but it does show up every once in a while. When I see movies and TV shows that talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis I am reminded of that kernel of fear that resides in me and is mostly dormant now.
     I think of the history I have seen since that long ago October. A president and his brother were assassinated and so was MLK. We lived through the hell of Viet Nam and the horror of 9/11. We have had embassies and consulates attacked and Americans killed all over the globe but we have not been as close to the precipice of total destruction as we were that October so long ago.
     Thank God that cooler heads and diplomacy prevailed that October. Thank God that FEAR did not win.

  




     

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Mid-October Rant, et cetera

     It is hard to fathom that it has been nearly a month since I last made an entry here but the calendar does not lie and it has been that long.
                                                             
     We are approaching the middle of October. Sometime in the next week we will welcome a new member to the family. My beautiful niece Elizabeth and her husband Will are due to become parents any day now. I'm thrilled that my brother is going to be a Grandpop. He'll be good at it.

     The other major event on my radar is the upcoming election and the divisiveness that is being engendered by it. I know that there are things I see in ads that make me want to scream because they are so patently false. Each side calling the other liars is to be expected. It has been going on since the birth of the country and the election of John Adams. What I truly resent are the lies that contend the president is either a Muslim or that he is not a citizen at all. I really thought these attacks were beneath contempt but they keep surfacing.
     The irony of the questions being raised about the President's religion makes me think of all the talk during the primaries of the problems that would be faced by Mr. Romney because he is a Mormon. I have not heard or seen a single thing attacking Mr. Romney's faith. Yet a man who has been a practicing Christian throughout his adulthood is having his beliefs questioned. With the questions about his faith and religion the haters are saying that the Muslims in this country are less. That they are to be feared and that they are terrorists bent on destroying the country. This couldn't be further from the truth. It is akin to the accusations raised in 1960 that the Pope would have a line direct to the White House should JFK be elected. We all know how that turned out.
     The accusations that the President is not a citizen are so ludicrous they should not need to be addressed but there is a certain millionaire who, whenever he is on TV, manages to cast these aspersions. I doubt that there is a person in the country who has had his citizenship more closely reviewed. If there was anything that could have been found or proven it would have been long before election day 2008.
     Personally I don't care what your politics are. Your politics like your religion is your own. The only thing I ask is that you vote your convictions and not your hate. And I ask that you vote. If you don't vote you have no right to complain about what might happen
     And that is the end of my rant.

     What other fun things have been going on? Well the new TV season is well and truly underway. And my guilty pleasure this season is 'The Neighbors' with Jami Gertz. It is dumb and silly and it makes me laugh. But then I do like Jami. Her comic timing has always been great. I also like 'Partners', 'The New Normal' and 'Go On'. None of these shows will go down in history but they all make me laugh and that is a blessing in this day and age. And if you're wondering about new dramas....well nothing new on the radar. I haven't been impressed. If there is something I'm missing just let me know.

     One final thing, I'm loving the Spotify music app. I make playlists that I can share with my friends and with the cost of only a few moments of commercials in the course of an hour it is priced just right at $0.00. If you like music and hate paying for it then check it out. You could do worse.