Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 192

Santa Cruz News Features Nicole Sallak-Anderson's eHuman Dawn

eHuman Dawn: A Santa Cruz author’s first scifi novel hits e-bookshelvesDecember 5, 2013 Nicole Sallak Anderson has always loved writing, but at 18, when she was going to college, her father wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of pursuing it as a career.

Instead, she earned a degree from Purdue University and became a software engineer – a field she loved – and worked in encryption and network security software for years.
She never gave up her dream of writing though, and now she’s found a way for her two interests to intersect.

About three years ago, she woke up with an idea for a science fiction novel after a vivid dream. She wrote down some notes and when her two sons — now ages 12 and 14 — headed back to school that fall, she started writing what would become her first published novel. At first she wasn’t necessarily intent on getting it published, but the more she wrote, the more she became determined to get it out there for others to read. A writing conference in San Rafael helped her get a better handle on how to pitch an agent and she also got herself a writing coach and an editor. After pitching numerous editors, she finally got a bite.

Her book, eHuman Dawn, is now available for purchase as an e-book, and it’s just the first in what she says is a trilogy.

Deciding to go the e-book route first appealed to Nicole because she liked the immediacy and she liked the idea of not having to wait for a book to come out in print edition first. And given the topic of her novel, the medium seemed contextually appropriate.

So what’s eHuman Dawn about? Well, to put it simply, it’s about the future possibility in a post-singularity world, says Nicole.

Here’s the blurbage from the publisher:

The Great Shift is coming…. are you ready to jump?

Fast forward to the year 2242–a world in which death, disease, war and famine have been conquered, and where everything, including humans, are devices on Neuro, a complex network operating system that is controlled via human thought. Adam Winter has lived for nearly two hundred years in an eHuman body–a man of metal, fiber optics and plastic, on a world where no one dies and no one is born. Paradise on earth–until Adam discovers that the World Government is cutting power to entire cities, and his own city is on the list! 

Trapped in a body that must recharge on the network, Adam is swept up into the underworld of an eHuman anti World Government resistance, led by Dawn, the very first eHuman created. While the Resistance wages war against those in power, Dawn reveals to Adam a shocking secret about their past that not only bonds them together, but is also the Resistance’s ticket to gaining control over Neuro and taking down the World Government once and for all. Caught between the past and the future, Adam must rise up, claim his inheritance, and face his destiny– before eHumanity is powered down, forever. 

Essentially, the story is set in a world where we no longer have humans in the way we now think of that term. Instead we have non-carbon humanoid forms, aka “eHumans,” who lack flesh and must be recharged like an electronic appliance. Memories and thoughts are produced and controlled by software and other programs provided by one overarching network.

Protagonist Adam Winter is approached by a member of the resistance, a group of eHumans who come together and determine they don’t want their thoughts, desires and wants to be controlled by this network any longer.  Winter, a journalist, becomes intricately involved with the movement and with Dawn, the first eHuman ever created and the woman who initially approaches him.
The book explores the role of emotions and sex in a world where technology is the leading power, but it isn’t a romance novel per se. The romance is there, Nicole says, but it’s balanced with discussions of science and technology and its role in our lives.

Nicole says she had started thinking a lot about our connections to technology and our attachment to the electronic devices we’ve come to rely on. What would happen, she wondered, if we became the devices ourselves – providing us with a sense of immortality but also subjecting us to the limitations of technology? The intersections of technology and human consciousness are something she contemplates often.

“I’ve just always had a fascination with the technology and the mind – as well as the body and feelings, and the concepts of how the body works,” she says.
She also adds something that’s largely missing from the science fiction and technology world – a female voice.

eHuman Dawn is currently available on Amazon and it it might make a great gift for your science-fiction loving and eReader-owning friends and family, hint hint.

Be sure to check out her Facebook page, blog and Twitter feeds too, where she actively writes and interacts about many of the same topics she focuses on in her novel. And don’t worry – she’s already got most of the sequel written.

Reposted From Santa Cruz News

Angie's Diary Reviews The Messiah Matrix

A matrix is defined as “ A situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained.”

Within the pages of this intricate novel we learn about the origins of situations in the past the have reflected themselves in the present as the author takes us back in time to 70A.D. when Flavius Josephus the Historian decided to add 100 words that would change the course of history and the perspective on the existence of one man who was and still is crucial to the Church and Christianity, Christ. Did he really exist? Why is that so many scholars, writers never make mention to actually seeing Jesus in person.

The Messiah Matrix by Kenneth John Atchity The Messiah MatrixThose investigating this issue found one physical reference in a document titled: Testimonium Flavianum added to an edition of his book: Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, where he makes mention of his existence. Antiquities 18.3.3. “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.”

According to history Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to his death. Some who became his disciples did not abandon him. Some reported that he appeared three days after he was crucified and he was the Messiah.  But, our novel begins with the murder of a Monsignor authorized we are told by the Holy Mother Church as related by his killer who seeks redemption from Father Ryan and absolution for his sins. But, no sooner does the young Priest begin speaking to him in the Confessional, this man runs out of the church and finds himself the next victim. Why was he sent? Why would the Holy Mother Church order the death of this great man and what do the final words of the killer mean?

Diving in the ancient Harbor in Israel, Emily, an archeologist and her team are diving below the surface and encounter some rough waters. Hidden below the surface in a boat that has been there for many years is a treasure that will change the course of many lives and endanger those that found it. Two of her student divers remain below the surface during this dangerous storm causing Emily to have to find out their fate. Diving, searching and finally learning the reason why their rise to the surface was delayed she decides to complete what they started. Beneath and stuck in a krater was a gold coin.

But, not just any gold coin one that was enveloped in bronze by its first owner who left it there thinking he might return for it at a later date but never did. “The Augustan Aureus: never released, was sitting in the palm of her hands.” The author vividly describes the coin: the figure portrayed is wearing a crown that appears to look like thorns. His face has a beard and the thorns look like a halo of spikes differing from the coin depicted on the cover of this book. Within the coin the creator inscribed: Chi and Rho, Greek Letters. The discussion was exciting and heated between Emily and her two students as the history behind the coin is revealed, their excitement palpable and the need to protect the coin noted. Meeting a man named Luke who Emily feels might provide more answers and perhaps funding for her team to continue their research in this field.

Father Ryan relates his meeting with our late Monsignor and the fact he too was in search of answers regarding Christ and his existence. Throughout Chapter 10 he relates what he learned about the man, the many scholars who published documents back then but never mentioned seeing Jesus in person and determining how to handle the fact that the killer, an Albanian man died in his arms and whether he should report it. The chapter relates information about Herod, the slaughter of male infants and the rumor of a royal birth. It continues with his meetings with the Monsignor, his lifestyle and wondering what he might have found in the Sibyl’s cave that got him killed.

Three separate plots: two murders, a coin that could change it all and a Priest that wants to find the connection between the death of the clergyman and the secret he might have buried with him. The Messiah Matrix will hopefully answer this question, leave readers asking more of their own and hopefully enlighten everyone about the research and the history related to Jesus and his existence.

Getting to understand Father Ryan we learn just what a threat he seems to be to the Vatican when summoned to the office of the Procurator General of the Society of Jesus and we hear his tone, his threats to Ryan and the end result in being attacked, entombed when looking at the sarcophagus of St. Paul and then bumping into Emily and finding out it is the Bishop and many attached to the Jesuits that are involved. Followed, shot at, attacked and learning the name of the bishop behind it all is not even the tip of the iceberg for these two when they team up to find out what caused someone kill Oscar Isaac their beloved Monsignor. The book is replete in history and the Monsignor found a link between Jesus and Augustus, which is explained in detail.

Next, the cameo of the Emperor Augustus with a crown and holding the royal Roman Scepter carved they think during the time Christ was depicted on the center of the holy cross. This cameo was said to mean that the emperor was the “earthly representative of the almighty power of God.” He was also hoping to find the coin that Emily recovered and he thought his research important for the “origins of Christianity,” dangerous to the church and the Vatican. Finding the coin that was so valuable and the events that followed alerted Ryan to why he had to fear Pimental the Procurator. But, there is much more as the man who cleaned the coin, translated the words for the one person she thought she could trust but not only stole it from her but intended to capitalize on it, realized that on the coin in Greek were the words: God and son of god embossed across from the name: Jasius Augustus.

As you read this novel many different viewpoints come to light regarding Jesus as the Son of God and the Roman Emperor Augustus thought to be the real Son of God according to the Monsignor’s research. If this is true and he is said to be  son of god then the Christian Savior should be considered even more a Son of God which explains the tension that mounts within this novel between the Christian church, the Jesuits and the conflict that Father Ryan and Emily face as they come in contact with those that are behind the events that almost took their lives and did take the lives of three others. The Antiquities of the Jews and the crown that was worn by Apollo and the evidence found in the cave and presented to them will give every reader pause for thought, reason to do the research into what is presented themselves and make your own final decision. The cult of Augustus was “reinstated by Constantine,” and revived in the present. In other words Augustus had “designated a dozen of his pontiffs as August ales, to spread the rubrics of his cult throughout the empire.” In reality what Emily and the Monsignor uncovered is from what is depicted on her coin: the bearded image of Augustus wearing the Crown of Thorns- standing for the golden spiked one worn by Apollo. In reality when they asses what they have found, rendered all of the information in the files found in the catacombs and more the end result is that Isaac surmised that : Jesus was Augustus and Ryan has been asked to continue on with his work called the Messiah Matrix.

Was Jesus a real person? From the research presented within this novel the author relates that Augustus founded Christianity. The story created by Pimental and the Bishop would change the course of history. Stating that the imperial cult of Augustus Caesar was Christianity in itself. As we hear Pimental and Emily speak and the research of the Monsignor revealed we learn what others believe to be the truth: that Jesus Christ was “ simply the imperial cult name for the deified Caesar Augustus and the Church Fathers would later spin the manufactured mythology to create a literal biblical Jesus.” When the truth as they tell it unfolds the answers reflect that a mythology emerged into religious power and housed itself with the guardians and those who related the what they thought the real version of religion. Temptations rise, lives are placed in danger as Emily and Ryan face the challenge of their lives but first they have to escape what has been planned for them by those that appear to want them to submit to their will. A final scene will make readers hold their breath as Emily and Ryan are sent head first into a boiling underground river and hope to emerge unscathed.

Characters that are quite interesting and a storyline you will have decide for yourself whether you believe or not. As you read the final chapters and hear the voices from the past of the Emperors, Virgil as he is honored and allowed to sit with the Emperor. What is truth and what did they decide to recreate and change you will have to read and hear the voices of Virgil, Augustus and those in attendance to find out. Creating a cult, which would unify the people of the empire and bring peace. A document or book that would relate the facts and events the way they had conceived them making one man the true God in the eyes of the people. When Ryan and Emily present their findings and you read the last chapter and the chart they created of the events from start to finish, you the reader will decide: Was the real Jesus the one born in a manger or was Jesus: Jesus Augustus? You decide after reading this outstanding novel whose research and an ending that will bring it all full circle.

Reposted from Angie's Diary

Watch This Great Interview With Dream Expert Gayle Delaney

Dream expert on analyzing nightmares: Dream expert Dr. Gayle Delaney talks about analyzing nightmares.


 
Available on Amazon

Story Merchant Books Launches Nicole Sallak Anderson's eHuman Dawn

eHumans join forces against the World Government in an effort to save the cities of Neuro before eHumanity is powered down.
The Great Shift is coming.... are you ready to jump?

Fast forward to the year 2242--a world in which death, disease, war and famine have been conquered, and where everything, including humans, are devices on Neuro, a complex network operating system that is controlled via human thought. Adam Winter has lived for nearly two hundred years in an eHuman body--a man of metal, fiber optics and plastic, on a world where no one dies and no one is born. Paradise on earth--until Adam discovers that the World Government is cutting power to entire cities, and his own city is on the list!

Trapped in a body that must recharge on the network, Adam is swept up into the underworld of an eHuman anti World Government resistance, led by Dawn, the very first eHuman created. While the Resistance wages war against those in power, Dawn reveals to Adam a shocking secret about their past that not only bonds them together, but is also the Resistance’s ticket to gaining control over Neuro and taking down the World Government once and for all. Caught between the past and the future, Adam must rise up, claim his inheritance, and face his destiny-- before eHumanity is powered down, forever.


Nicole Sallak Anderson is a Computer Science graduate from Purdue University. She developed encryption and network security software for years, which inspired both the storyline and the science behind eHuman Dawning. She currently lives with her husband and two teenaged sons on two acres in the Santa Cruz mountains of Northern California, where she indulges in a variety of homesteading hobbies, from beekeeping and raising chickens and goats, to gardening, canning, spinning, and knitting.

Guest Post: In Praise of Traditional Publishing by Dianna Dorisi Winget

It's incredible how popular self-publishing has become. So popular in fact, that the last several authors featured in my hometown of Sandpoint, Idaho, have all self-published their books. I can't help wondering why so many are choosing this route.

While I understand self-publishing may be the perfect choice for some writers, it bothers me to think they may be choosing this option simply because they feel there are no alternatives.

Maybe they've been told their chance of being traditionally published is one in a million, or that it's just too hard. So why bother? Well, I'm here to show you the other side of the equation. To assure you that being traditionally published IS an option, and to share a few of the many advantages.

Everyday, all year, agents are being found, editors are accepting manuscripts, and deals—many involving debut authors—are being made.

So what's required?

A measure of talent, the willingness to work on your craft until your writing is truly of publishable quality, and then an enormous dose of perseverance.

I'm not going to delve into the craft of writing in this post, because there's an abundance of information in print and online. However, if you're not willing to bring your work up to the highest quality possible, you shouldn't be publishing, period.

What I can tell you about is perseverance. It took eight years to find the right agent and sign a deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for my debut children's novel, A Smidgen of Sky. (Nov. 2012) So was all the work worth it? Absolutely!

The biggest benefit of being traditionally published is that the publishing house will pay YOU for your book, instead of you paying to have it published. An advance often involves several thousand dollars even if you are a debut, or first time author. Though most marketing and publicity efforts fall on the author nowadays, reputable publishing houses carry a lot of clout. They will support you in many ways.

A good editor will offer revision notes, proof read, fact check, copy edit, line edit, and do countless other things to elevate your book from good to great. He or she will also guide, direct, and champion you as one of their authors. The old adage about being overworked and underpaid surely fits most editors, and a good one is a true friend and ally not to be taken for granted.

How do you find an editor like that? Your chances go up exponentially if you have an agent to help you. But wait, you say, do I really need an agent? Not in every case. There are still some publishing houses, especially small ones, which accept unsolicited manuscripts. Nevertheless, more and more are closing their doors to all but agented submissions.

Frankly, there are so many advantages to having an agent I'm not sure why anyone would want to go it alone. Here are just a few:


1. Agents stay on top of the constantly changing publishing industry.

2. They know what individual editors like and are searching for.

3. Agents keep your manuscript out of the infamous slush pile and get it read much faster.

4. They believe in your work and "get" what you're trying to say.

5. They offer encouragement when you feel like giving up.

6. They negotiate the best contract, usually a significant improvement over the boilerplate contract offered to a writer without representation.

It's hard to describe the enormous satisfaction that comes from being able to say, "I did it. Someone considered my work good enough to pay me for it." So before automatically deciding to self-publish, at least give some serious thought to being traditionally published. And don't let anyone tell you your chances are one in a million—the odds are far better than that!




About the Author:Dianna Winget writes both fiction and non-fiction for young readers. Her debut novel, A Smidgen of Sky, revolves around ten year old Piper Lee DeLuna, a young girl struggling with the idea of her mother’s remarriage, and is loosely based on Dianna’s own experiences with the challenges of step-family life. The book was chosen as an IndieBound Fall 2012 ABC New Voices Pick. When she’s not reading or writing, Dianna enjoys working in her garden, taking long walks, and playing with her two canine buddies. She lives with her husband and daughter in the beautiful mountains of North Idaho.

Kirkus Reviews Praise for Story Merchant Client Robin Johns Grant's Debut Novel Summer's Winter

In Grant’s debut novel, a young woman’s fascination with a Hollywood star affects her life in ways she never could have imagined.

For years, 21-year-old Jeanine DeValery has been in love with Danny Summer, a character from a book series, played in a series of films by movie star Jamie Newkirk. Jeanine, in her adolescent confusion, believes that God promised her that the actor—or the character he played—would change her ordinary Georgia life into something more romantic. When the author of the book series dies in a mysterious fire, Jeanine grieves but continues to believe in her destiny. Soon, her dream seems to be coming true, as Jeanine’s adored actor enters her life for real and seems to be falling for her. At the same time, she finds out about plans to restart the film series. But things aren’t as romantic and perfect as she had imagined: Jamie’s former girlfriend suspiciously dies, in the same house in which his mother apparently committed suicide two years before. Both women had similarly shaped burn marks on their skin. Jeanine soon finds out a host of strange things about the people involved in the film series, uncovering other mysterious deaths and battles over money and power. She also finds out that Jamie is keeping secrets about his family—but even after he’s arrested, Jeanine dedicates herself to proving his innocence. This complex story is told in lush, heated prose (“Heaven is as tangible as the taste of a juicy peach on a hot day, as easy and close as stepping out the school door and into another world at recess”), with a clear underpinning of Christian ethics (“Not once in the sleazy motel parking lot had [Jeanine] thought about what God wanted her to do”). Readers drawn to Christian fiction will find much to keep them turning pages. For secular readers, however, some of the story’s coincidences may be a bit difficult to believe.

A passionate, well-wrought mystery by a Christian novelist to watch.


Reposted from Kirkus Reviews

In Grant’s debut novel, a young woman’s fascination with ...

In Grant’s debut novel, a young woman’s fascination with a Hollywood star affects her life in ways she never could have imagined.

For years, 21-year-old Jeanine DeValery has been in love with Danny Summer, a character from a book series, played in a series of films by movie star Jamie Newkirk. Jeanine, in her adolescent confusion, believes that God promised her that the actor—or the character he played—would change her ordinary Georgia life into something more romantic. When the author of the book series dies in a mysterious fire, Jeanine grieves but continues to believe in her destiny. Soon, her dream seems to be coming true, as Jeanine’s adored actor enters her life for real and seems to be falling for her. At the same time, she finds out about plans to restart the film series. But things aren’t as romantic and perfect as she had imagined: Jamie’s former girlfriend suspiciously dies, in the same house in which his mother apparently committed suicide two years before. Both women had similarly shaped burn marks on their skin. Jeanine soon finds out a host of strange things about the people involved in the film series, uncovering other mysterious deaths and battles over money and power. She also finds out that Jamie is keeping secrets about his family—but even after he’s arrested, Jeanine dedicates herself to proving his innocence. This complex story is told in lush, heated prose (“Heaven is as tangible as the taste of a juicy peach on a hot day, as easy and close as stepping out the school door and into another world at recess”), with a clear underpinning of Christian ethics (“Not once in the sleazy motel parking lot had [Jeanine] thought about what God wanted her to do”). Readers drawn to Christian fiction will find much to keep them turning pages. For secular readers, however, some of the story’s coincidences may be a bit difficult to believe.

A passionate, well-wrought mystery by a Christian novelist to watch.


Reposted from Kirkus Reviews

Guest Post: Working with the (former) Kennedy Secret Service

by Penny C. Sansevieri,

Some years back I had the great pleasure of working with two former Kennedy Secret Service Agents. It was quite amazing really.

In recent days I’ve been seeing Clint Hill everywhere and have been reminded of my time marketing The Kennedy Detail as well as getting to know Clint. He’s a pretty remarkable human and it was incredible to meet him, spend time with him and hear his account of history first hand.

 I ran this blog post three years ago, right after the campaign for The Kennedy Detail ended and I thought, given the 50 year anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, that it might be interesting to post it again.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to help our clients, the authors of The Kennedy Detail, host a book signing here in San Diego. We had it at Warwick’s books, and it was fantastic. Author Jerry Blaine was accompanied by Clint Hill. He’s the guy you see jumping on the back of Kennedy’s car after the President was shot. He threw himself over JFK and Jackie as they sped to the hospital. Every time he retold that story, I felt like I was there. Hearing the gunshot, and reliving the moment that none of us will ever forget.

Clint Hill was, understandably, affected by this incident in such a way that for years, he never even spoke about it. In fact, after that infamous “60 Minutes” interview, in which he broke down, he wasn’t seen much again for 35 years – until The Kennedy Detail was released. Throughout the promotion, I wondered how this would affect him. Talking about “that day” over and over again, I couldn’t imagine how he was dealing with it.

Our San Diego event was towards the end of a fairly extensive book tour and I asked his co-author, “How’s Clint holding up…?” Clint later answered that question himself when he told the crowd, “Talking about this day over and over again has healed me in ways that time and years never could.”

Every once in a while, we are blessed to work on campaigns that remind us why we do what we do. Yes, the book was very successful and that’s great. But moreover, it touched people and it told a story. In the end, that’s what this is all about. At the Warwick’s event, a young girl walked up to Clint to tell him that she was writing a paper on the Kennedy assassination and wanted to know if she could quote him. She was 11 years old. She’d never know what the country went through on that fateful day in November, some 30-odd years before she was born. But through the stories, the book, and these brave Secret Service men, that snapshot in history can be shared again and again. In a way, they reminded us of a time when Camelot reigned and the country was still innocent. They reminded us of easier times and simpler days.

Was it ever that easy again? It’s hard to know. Maybe hindsight is 20/20, or maybe when that shot rang out, it really was the shot heard around the world. Nothing was ever the same. After a few years of a sliding economy, high unemployment, and a collapsing housing market, the country is yearning for the days of Camelot; and for a brief evening, these men told stories of working for the Kennedys. Playing touch football with John, Jr, watching out for Caroline, and revealing what a closet chain smoker Jackie was. The audience laughed, cried, and a few conspiracy theorists even shared their thoughts on “who really killed Kennedy.”

As I drove home after Warwick’s, I was reminded again why we’re in this industry: to tell stories. At the end of the day, that’s really all we can do. Help people tell stories. That’s really our job. Often we get wound up in success. What is success? Book sales? A bestseller? An interview on “Oprah?” Well, yes, it’s all those things. But in the absence of those trappings that we hope will accompany our book launches we must remember this: in the end, we are here to tell stories. And hopefully we can enlighten, entertain, help or, in Clint’s case, heal 47 years of pain. Because if we are lucky enough to touch a soul and share a smile, that’s bigger than any number a royalty check can offer.
Altgens’ final photo taken just after the fatal shot shows Jackie Kennedy and Secret Service agent Clint Hill on the back of the Presidential limousine. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


Reposted from Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

Cuba News Reviews George J. Fowler's My Cuba Libre: Bring Fidel Castro to Justice

Guest Post: Why We Still Talk About JFK

Peggy Noonan's Blog
I am on my way from Los Angeles to Dallas, where tomorrow I will appear on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” which will come live out of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. I can’t believe I’ll be inside that place, from which, 50 years ago next week, at a corner window on the sixth floor, Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed John F. Kennedy.

One of the questions we’ll discuss: Why do we still talk about JFK?

From my show notes:

1. We talk still about JFK and his death because the biggest generation in all U.S. history, that part of the population known as the baby boomers, watched it all, live, on that new thing called TV, and it entered our heads and never left. It was the first central historical fact of our lives, so we still read about it, think about it, and watch anything having to do with it.

2. Our parents experienced it as a different kind of trauma. They had lost one of their own. He had fought in World War II, like them. He was still young, like them, and now he was brutally cut down. What a lot of them felt was captured in the famous conversation of the newspaper columnist Mary McGrory and her friend Pat Moynihan. McGrory said: Oh Pat, can you believe we’re at Jack Kennedy’s funeral? “I feel like we’ll never laugh again.” He replied: “We’ll laugh again, but we’ll never be young again.”

3. We talk about JFK’s death because for the 18 years leading up to that point—between the end of the war, as we used to say, and 1963—America knew placidity. Many problems were growing and quietly brewing, but on the surface America was placid, growing more affluent, and politically calm. And then this rupture, this shock, this violence, this new sense that anything can happen, history can be ripped from its rails, that security once won cannot necessarily be maintained. That our luck won’t necessarily hold.

4. And what followed—growing political unrest, cultural spasms, riots at political conventions, more assassinations and assassination attempts—was so different from the years preceding that we couldn’t help look back at JFK’s murder as the breakpoint, the rupture. After that, things turned difficult.

5. Why, after all the historians’ revelations and the stories of the past 30 years—the women, the drug use, the Kennedy White House’s own farfetched efforts to do away with Fidel Castro, the fantastical nature of the Bay of Pigs, the failure of JFK to anticipate and answer the crude communist clichés of Kruschev at Vienna, etc., etc.—why do we continue to hold this special place for JFK? Because in the months and years after his death we fell in love with him as he was presented to us by those who knew and cared about him. Youth, beauty, charm, high intentions, wit, a certain fatalism and, deep down, a certain modesty. “Camelot.” But Camelot isn’t JFK. Camelot is the way we remember America before JFK died. Camelot is the America that existed, for one brief shining moment, before Lee Harvey Oswald began to shoot. a placid-seeming, even predictable place that we have not seen since.

6. We live in now. We live in this world. Right now I can hardly believe it that I am in seat 6B of American Airlines flight 2442, LAX to Dallas-Fort Worth, a few hundred miles east of Los Angeles, mountains and desert stretching below—and I am typing on an iPad, and will press a button, and my editor in New York in just a few seconds will read this and post it on The Wall Street Journal website and you will read it. It still takes my breath away. This is “the age of miracles and wonders.” Some child born now will look back on these days as Camelot. 

Reposted from The Wall Street Journal