Under the baobab: Holidays are a time to reconstruct our shared community experiences
I wish you happy gathering, sisters and brothers, as we attempt to replace pieces in our jigsaw world. Coming together on these special family days to share personal and collective memory, to light candles, helps to reconstruct our shared community experiences. They are not all pleasant but learning to cope with them helps us evolve.
Catastrophes can transform community, country and the world. For my parents, Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, changed the world. Our country rose from being an isolated second-rate power to becoming a primary protagonist in two wars, one on the Pacific Front, the other in Europe. My father, like millions of other men, joined the army to defend America and to defeat fascism. My mother went to work to help build the most powerful and productive industrial apparatus the world had ever known.
I believe the most significant day for our baby boomer generation was Nov. 22, 1963, when President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald. It altered the arc of world history. Last week the National Archives released 13,000 previously classified documents directly related to that day in Texas, which may begin to peel the onion to reveal the totality of what happened. There is no question that the events that followed — the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, to name a few — would have unfolded differently had Kennedy not been killed.
On Christmas Day 1991, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev resigned as the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union. It was the official end of the Cold War. It was the primary transformative world experience for Generation X. It spurred on the emerging U.S. conservative political movement.
The Millennial’s world was transformed on Sept. 11, 2001 when 19 disciples of Osama Bin Laden flew planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed a fourth into the fields of Western Pennsylvania. It ignited the Afghan and Iraq Wars, which ended last year after 20 years.
The transforming phenomena for this present generation has been the COVID pandemic. Over 1 million Americans have died from this dreaded disease. Nearly 7 million people in the world have perished. It has had the most significant effect on the mortality of the world’s people since World War II.
Sometimes the beginning or passing of an epoch can be manifested in the passing on of a single person. Rep. Nancy Pelosi has stepped aside as Speaker of the House but not before she mentored and opened the way for Hakeem Jeffries to be her successor as leader of the House Dems. Jeffries will be the first African American to lead a major party in the Congress. Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose portfolio goes back to early HIV/AIDS crisis, will also be standing down after a long career in public service. And Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, Leonard Pitts, is moving on to other pursuits.
Locally, long-time community leader Barbara Farmer is stepping down as the chair of the Borough’s Martin Luther King Jr. Committee, as is Pam Robb, chair of the Patton Township Board of Supervisors. Kevin Kassab, State College Borough’s community engagement manager, is retiring after a long career of service.
The moving on of these public servants will leave holes in the fabric of civil society. Those vacuums will be filled by capable replacements bringing new and transformative ideas to our community and our country. Two steps forward but there will be steps back.
We will suffer unforeseen disasters and tragedies. They will be devastating. We will survive them. We already have. Have a blessed and loving holiday. Hug somebody, we all need it.
Ubuntu !