JiFKa: the 50th anniversary of the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

A couple years back, I asked What was the first public trauma – as opposed to a personal trauma, such as a death or divorce in the family – that you recall? And while not my first event, the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, when I was ten years old and didn’t understand what happened next – I was not yet seeped in Presidential succession law – was terrifying. The death itself was already scary enough.

It certainly didn’t help that Miss Oberlik, our fifth grade teacher, told us the news, LEFT THE ROOM, for some reason

Book Review: 11/22/63, a novel by Stephen King

I had never read a Stephen King novel, but due to boredom, I ended up taking out from the library 11/22/63, an 800+ page tome. OK, it wasn’t JUST boredom, but also a near-obsession I have long had with the tragic events of that day, crystallized in my mind; my own long-running curiosity about the various conspiracy theories surrounding John F. Kennedy’s assassination; and what would happen if, somehow, the President had survived the attack. (I’m sure I’ll write more about that next year.)

When I checked out the book – allowed for only 14 days, instead of the usual 28, because it’s a recent purchase – the library clerk, who had read it, assured me that it wasn’t one of those King horror books.

Well, no and yes. This is a pretty straightforward narrative about a man and a portal to a very specific time and place in 1958. What I always disliked somewhat in some going-back-in-time stories is

I is for Ides

Vincenzo Camuccini-The Ides of March. 1800.

When one hears of ides, it is almost always the Ides of March, which is March 15. And when thinks of the Ides of March, one inevitably contemplates the assassination of Julius Caesar by his foes and so-called friends in 44 B.C.

Of course, the telling of the tale by William Shakespeare is the most well known portrayal of the leader’s murder. There are at least 27 different movies and TV shows named Julius Caesar in the IMDB.

An iteration of Caesar’s death I hadn’t been famiiliar with