Irresistible

I had nothing in particular on the agenda one day, so I considered watching paint dry. It’s the definition of boring, because I know I can’t see it happening. I may even get a little impatient with the time it takes, but I trust the process, at the end of which I can move on to use the thing that was once wet.

Life’s processes often take much longer. I drove through L.A. this past week, and noticed that I could see the surrounding mountains. This used to be a rarity years ago because of the smog. But now, generations of cleaner-burning cars have filled the roads. There are so many of them – it’s Southern California – that I didn’t get anywhere fast, but at least the scenery was nicer than it used to be. The clearer skies seemed like a sudden event, because I don’t live in L.A.

The past couple of weeks in this country have been dazzling indeed. “Sea change” doesn’t begin to do it all justice. Same-sex marriage is now legal, and Confederate flags are being erased from view. The U.S. and Cuba have agreed to open embassies on their respective soils. Those still alive in future decades will be telling grandchildren where they were when the news of these things broke.

But unless we live with a process daily, we forget that it took an enormous struggle for these things to happen. In the case of gay marriage, it started with Stonewall in New York almost half a century ago, followed by hundreds of legal and social battles. It was just plain time for the Supreme Court to do what it did.

Since the end of the Civil War, the Confederate flag has been a symbol that most Americans have tolerated as a quirky Southern historical symbol, one that many Southerners still embrace. Now it is a symbol of racial oppression. The Civil War was a necessary event, but of course, it didn’t settle everything. We often forget that the process seemed to begin with the Abolitionist movement that started decades before in New England -- all of this leading up to 2015.

And Americans will soon be traveling to Cuba in large numbers, and vice versa. It seems like yesterday that Cuba was a mortal enemy, once a direct threat to our survival. But the thawing of hostility was a half-century process, and people actually had to get old or die off to allow it to happen.

Evolution is a logical and methodical process, but it’s usually long, sometimes invisible, and almost always painful, even on an individual level. Someone we thought of as a close friend evolves into a different person. It may be time for a connection to end, but we may resist the process, not recognizing that we have changed too. Evolution is inevitable, and resisting it often results in pain. Not everyone is pleased with the outcome, at least for the moment.

But if you are allowed to stay on this planet long enough, the threads become more and more visible. You begin to see how the dots connect. A little knowledge of history helps you accept, and hopefully appreciate, the process when it involves positive movement. And you realize that a milestone is just a marker on what is a very long path.

The Missiles of October

I hope the creators of the movie don’t mind my borrowing the title for this post, but I’m too lazy to think of anything clever, and of course, now you know what this is about.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Being now old enough to play the “I was there” game, this is what I remember about it.

In those days, I was a student at one of those fancy New England prep schools, at which I received a great education, partly because TV wasn’t really an option. The television was in the housemaster’s quarters, and only rarely were we allowed to watch. Certain exceptions were made occasionally, though, for stuff like “The Andy Griffith Show.”

But the days in question were unusual. There was one night -- October 22 -- when we were required to watch TV. We all assembled in the various housemasters’ apartments around the school to hear JFK deliver his now-famous address to the nation, warning the Russians not to station missiles in Cuba. You can find this easily on YouTube, but here’s an especially memorable line:

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

Yes, that gets your attention! Sounds like something Harrison Ford might say, and probably has said, in one of his movies. But this was no movie. Nowadays, people who worry about the end of the world are considered one beer short of a six-pack, as they say – but for a few days, we actually had to consider it a real possibility.

I don’t remember much else about the experience at school. The headmaster was a minister, and there were daily chapel services we were required to attend, and the sermons at that time, as you can expect, were pretty heavy. And as President Kennedy actually had attended the school himself as a student, his address had a special meaning for us.

Since I’m able to write this, the world did not end. The Russian boats turned around. While the President got kudos for standing up to the Soviets, we all know now that there was a backroom deal: our own missiles in Turkey, which upset the Russians, had to go away. Even so, those are the times when you really appreciate a President with a brain.

As for movies, well, we needed some lightening up, and Stanley Kubrick gave us “Dr. Strangelove” a few years later. As I recall, it wasn’t until 1974, though, that “The Missiles of October” was shown on TV, and by then I was old enough to decide for myself what to watch. All I can tell you is, no actor has ever done as good a JFK as Bill Devane.