Yesterday, as I was driving through LaGrange, I noticed the flags were at half staff. At first I wondered if someone had died, and then I thought about it being Pearl Harbor Day. That is telling; I am 66 and my first thought was not of Pearl Harbor Day. When I was young, the question asked by a lot of my elders was, “What were you doing on Pearl Harbor Day?” I heard so much talk about it, I sometimes thought I could remember.

Then it was about JFK and now the September 11, 2001. As my mother watched the coverage of the latter, she remarked over the phone to me, “This is what it was like when Pearl Harbor happened.” She recalled the students being called into the gym on the following day to listen to FDR speak over the radio.

It sometimes feels as if the smallest things are disasters; I need to keep my perspective.