Road Not Taken
If Lennon Lived
It’s been 80 years since John Lennon’s birth and 40 years since his death. What would he think about our world today?
What if?
What if John Lennon had not been murdered forty years ago this coming December? If he’d kept his health, he would have been 80 years old on October 9th.
Just like his bandmate Ringo Starr turned 80 this year, and it seemed so right and normal.
If that octogenarian John were still with us today, he would be talking about Ringo’s favorite “peace and love,” but also Trump’s election freak-out, the politics of pandemic, Black Lives Matter, climate change, nuclear stockpiles, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and how our inhumanity to humanity was going to kill us all. He was the political Beatle and he would still rate that distinction.
Grow old with me
We all have our stories — those of us who were alive — just like others have had about the Moon landing, JFK’s assassination, and 9/11.
When Lennon died, I was a newly minted correspondent at CNN’s Hollywood bureau, probably the youngest network on-air journalist in the country at the time. In the office that day, his murder hung heavily over everyone. It…
