Resonance. Vibrations. JFK in Dallas. Martin Luther King in Memphis. 9/11.
I was sick, resting at home, and reading Le Morte d’Arthur. I know. There it was, the open Lincoln convertible with Jackie holding a slumped over JFK. Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. The Texas Book Depository. I watched until my eyeballs went dry.
Later, LBJ. Model Cities. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Then, sadly, Vietnam.
King on the Lorraine Motel balcony with Abernathy. James Earl Ray. A bullet severing King’s spinal column. Abernathy cradling his head. MLK had come to support striking sanitation workers. I loved this, seeing King make a turn toward economic justice issues. He had also recently come out against the war in Vietnam.
In King’s place Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and John Lewis carried on his work, but MLK’s gravitas and personal power died with him.
Then. Look at this! What? I saw, along with millions, the hard to grasp scene of a passenger jet plowing into the World Trade Center. At first my brain had trouble accepting that scene as real. Later on fire, smoke, people plummeting to the ground. Flight 93. The Pentagon.
Bush’s declaration of a war on terror. Forever wars. Afghanistan. Iraq and Kuwait. Shock and awe. Twenty-five years later: Iran, Lebanon, Gaza all roiled up in the aftermath of 9/11.
Personal: Joseph. A freshman at the University of Minnesota. Pre-med after two trips to Guatemala with his step-mother/second mother, Kate.
A complicated emotion surged through him mixing pride in his adoptive nation and anger, yes, but more, surfacing a warrior spirit perhaps prefigured in his skiing, his running. He felt the powerful call of a patriot determined to protect his country.
Soon he had visited a recruiter, switched his major to Astro-physics/Physics, and turned himself toward the military. Twenty-five years later he’s in command of Cobra Squadron on Osan AFB in South Korea.