IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE SOMEWHERE

Perhaps the 1960's are not the tumultuous times that they were for us. Perhaps the angels of our better nature recognized and heeded the words of President Eishenhower, and began to view the defense business with some skepticism and distrust. Perhaps the second term of President Kennedy resulted in at first a gradual, then an accelerated pull out from Vietnam. Perhaps an enlightened America recognized the long term harm done to our interests in the Gulf by propping up despots, and so it did not happen . . . imagine the Great Society programs fully funded and successful, and that the generation of real toil and effort yielded the abundant harvest of a truly colorblind society. Alas, that is off, far far away.



As a second hand witness to almost real time gun violence in the latter half of the twentieth century, LOST has awful memories of the deaths of Martin Luther King, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Congressman Leo Ryan, Mayor George Moscone, Supervisor Harvey Milk, and the near killing of Pope John Paul II. Included with these senseless acts which deprived our country and our world with people whose principal shortcoming was in wanting to serve the public and better society, is the senseless killing of John Lennon. He was a musical genius, and an icon for a generation. He was also a sarcastic man with his own set of baggage to be sure. Had he not met up with Mark David Chapman he would have turned 65 today.

God Bless you and save you, John Lennon.