TURNING POINTS

    With the recent 70th anniversary and remembrances of the D-Day invasion of World War II, I was also thinking about my grandfather who fought in the First World War. I recently obtained a photo of him in his Army uniform. I also pulled out a yellowed newspaper clipping of his obituary, which I hadn't read in a long time. The article recalled that my grandfather was the only survivor of his machine gun battery.

    The only survivor. I suddenly realized that if he hadn't survived that battle in France, my mother would not have been born, nor would I have.

Mom on left

    Points in time that turn the stream of existence or of the psyche one way or the other. I began listing those global moments during my lifetime that are indelible.

    The first of these that I can remember is the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. Being 10 years old, I had never imagined a bombing threat to the U.S. or to California, but our grade school teachers were giving us instructions on what to do if a nuclear blast coming from Los Angeles hit our school. The grocery store shelves became barren as our mothers all rushed to fashion bomb shelter areas in our homes. Because of this experience I had occasional but recurring nuclear attack dreams until I was around 30 years old.

    Then a little more than one year later, again in our grade school classroom, our teacher pulled a big lumbering TV cart to the front of the classroom and turned it on for our twice a week Spanish lesson. Instead we got the news that the president had been shot and killed. I remember thinking that things like that were not supposed to happen in the United States.

    But the next thing we knew, the British came along to lighten our spirits. In 1964 I begged my parents to get us home in time to see that first appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, even though I had no idea what I would be seeing or hearing. I became a lifelong fan. Thank goodness for them and all the other music groups that came along and were inspired by the creativity and success of the Beatles.

by Tad Grabnik 

    Year by year the U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia became bigger and uglier. Not being a fully formed individual yet, I had a hard time knowing what to think or feel about it. That is, until just before my high school graduation, in May of 1970. Four student anti-war protesters were shot and killed by National Guardsmen on the Kent State college campus. Rip. That was it. Our generation versus their generation. Completely torn apart.

moments before

    So we all do some growing up and years go by. Then the fantasies of our youth are suddenly demolished when a madman kills our icon, John Lennon. Dead. Gone forever. No more. We are all kicked in the gut.

earlier that day, by Annie Liebovitz

    Years and years, many events, life evolves. I turn on the TV one morning as my son is getting ready for school, and I see both World Trade Center buildings with copious amounts of smoke billowing up from them. We figure out what was happening, and as we sit on our couch mesmerized, the first building goes down. In horror we realize that we have just seen thousands of people die.

by Amy Sancetta

    I used to watch the TV series "24" with much enthusiasm, and I used to think to myself, "Wouldn't it be great if the United States would elect a black president, like President Palmer?" I didn't see it coming though. I didn't have faith that the American people would really elect Barack Obama, especially with that funny name. But I cried like a baby when he and his family walked out on that stage on election night.

by Patty Vicknair

    My family and I speculated for years about how American families were making it. It seemed that it was a must that both members of a couple had to have a good job, and people were taking out huge mortgages for ever more expensive houses. And they were leveraging out any gains they made on the value of these homes. I remember saying that a lot of people were making a big bet that nothing was going to go wrong. No one would get sick. No one would lose their job. Well the greedies knocked down the house of cards, and I think just about everyone has paid one way or the other. And we're mad as hell. Still.

    The combination of the rise of technology and the fear of Obamacare has turned my own life around. The department I worked in for many, many years was eliminated because much of our work was now being done by physicians at computers. Add to that the fear of the coming Obamacare that our organization had, and we were goners. The irony is that now I am being taken care of by Obamacare.

    These turning points in our lives, sometimes there are hints that they are coming, sometimes they arrive like the blow of a sledgehammer. The road turns and we must travel around the bend.