Upper Spaulding Falls, for JFK

It's hard for me to believe that 50 years—a half century—have passed since that awful day in Dallas when John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated by an armed lunatic. I was 13 at the time and home from school with some kind of cold. I slept late, as any teenager, given the opportunity, would do, and I spent the early part of the afternoon watching TV: a soap opera called As the World Turns, to be precise. I was not a big fan of the genre, but our "cleaning lady" Dorothy—what an inadequate term for a sainted black woman who was often our nanny, cook, and comforter—liked to watch these shows while she worked, so I joined her. We were both there when the first bulletin came in, and we comforted each other when Walter Cronkite announced that Kennedy was gone. I felt an overwhelming sadness then—"the day the music died" is an all-too-real metaphor for me—and, at this anniversary, I feel it still. it was appropriately dreary this morning, with a light, chilly rain that precluded much picture taking. I did, however, go for a brief walk, and I managed to capture one image that struck me as entirely apt, personally, historically, and, alas, politically.