A bittersweet November and thoughts of presidents past
Roses in the wind, waving before winter's cold comes. They signify our bittersweet November perfectly. The sky grows dark early, but with a burst of beauty on the bleak political front, thankfully.
The anxious capital is counting the days to Joe Biden's presidency. The torch will be passed on Jan. 20. We're also counting coronavirus cases, past the 12 million mark now. Bittersweet doesn't get better than that.
November called up memory of past presidencies.
For Americans older than 3 on Nov. 22, 1963, the tragic murder of John F. Kennedy in Dallas is lodged like a bullet in their brains. Kennedy was so witty, youthful, bright, charming and eloquent that it didn't seem possible that he was gone in a flash. Men, women and children wept. For the rest of time, they could say where they were frozen when they heard the news.
The early '60s, bright days, were shattered.
Passing strange that the Yankee president, dashing Jack Kennedy of Massachusetts, was slain in what was the largest Confederate state, known for a swagger. Blood spilled on Mrs. Kennedy's pink dress and history's hands.
On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln had traveled to Pennsylvania to deliver a brief address at the Gettysburg battlefield. Remarkably, it was 100 Novembers apart from the 1963 assassination.
Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln are tied together in an autumnal rhyme.
The three-day July battle in rolling farm country, epic in its casualties, turned the Civil War. The Union army won, thankfully, against Gen. Robert E. Lee's forces, which had never ventured so far north. It was a matter of time before the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865, if it ever did.
In the darkest days, Lincoln's words at Gettysburg changed the war's meaning in majestic presidential prose. It wasn't only the country map anymore, but "a new birth of freedom," declared the man who freed 4 million enslaved people. American democracy expanded. The somber setting spoke of the high cost in suffering and loss.
When Lincoln was murdered one April Friday night in 1865, days after the war ended, the nation's grief was great, an ocean of tears as lilacs bloomed. He was the Civil War's final casualty.
"We want the sun to be darkened, and the moon not to give her light," said Lucretia Mott, the famed Philadelphia Quaker. It was the first time an American president was violently cut down - by a brazen actor and Southern sympathizer. As the Lincoln funeral train took him home to Illinois, there were many stops for mourners.
Jacqueline Kennedy designed her husband's farewell with Lincolnesque echoes, such as a riderless horse. The world's heart broke.
Running for Congress, Lincoln opposed admitting Texas to the Union as a slave state. Even with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the civil rights movement and visiting the White House, Kennedy still felt he needed to win the huge Jim Crow Southern state for reelection in 1964.
That's why the president went to Dallas for that November noonday parade, despite warnings of danger.
We have Lincoln to thank for Thanksgiving. In 1863, the Civil War president proclaimed the New England custom a national holiday. It was a way to heal wounds and unify the people - across states, even at sea - with glimmers of gratitude for "fruitful land" and other gifts.
And a prayer for peace. Things were darkest then, but Lincoln saw some light.
Kennedy's 1963 Thanksgiving proclamation, just before his death, noted Lincoln's civic wisdom "in the midst of America's tragic civil war." He declared, "Our forefathers in Virginia and Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving." The first was celebrated with Wampanoag Indigenous people.
Kennedy urged us to share across the world the pursuit of "the great unfinished tasks of achieving peace, justice and understanding."
Bittersweet November, with roses in time's wind.
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