How the world can change

There are particular events, certainly, which cause the world to shift, in dramatic ways.  In America, one thinks of the JFK assassination--and how conversations about it continue, regularly, decades later. (Just a week ago, I began reading another book about what took place in Dallas.) There were the deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. And, indeed, the catastrophes of Pearl Harbor, and September 11th. 

There has, most recently, been San Bernardino.  One is shaken by it--reading about it; watching, for hours, the television coverage of the aftermath of the killings; wondering what the tragedy could conceivably portend, for the country.

There are also, of course, positive moments of great significance, as well:  three months after JFK's death, for example, The Beatles appeared on American television.  It was thrilling, world-changing.

And then, years later--thirty-five years ago today--John Lennon was killed.  That night, you heard the news of what had happened, and in an instant, the world was not at all the same.