It didn’t start out that way, that day. Or, for that matter, not any other day started out that way. No-one openly invites tragedy to take over, do they? 

I recreate that day over and over again in my mind:

IT is a Friday, the 165th day of the year and the 24th Friday so far of the year. There’s going to be a total lunar eclipse (ironically - Blood Moon!) tonight.

So far, today, it’s an everyday kind of day. Nothing stands out as noteworthy. Well, there is that one thing…but, we’ll get back to that. I’m five days short of my fifth birthday, out on one of my regular, always cherished walks with my father in the woods in back of our two-story, ice-box refrigerator, coal-fueled cooking stove and people-heater farmhouse in rural New York.  We’ve already passed the pond where my father had recently sworn he’d seen the shadow of a snake swimming ominously about what was now nevermore to be a place of fun and frolic for our family.

 NO more swimming in the pond! was the ensuing edict.

I feel a shiver sliver throughout my body as we pass the pond today. And…I hear, yes, I hear…That fun-annihilating, slithering, slime-spitting snake laughing.

WHAT time is it, Daddy? I ask. 

Moderately perturbed at having his sacred woods-walk serenity interrupted, he pulls his pocket-watch from its nest in his vest pocket and quickly checks the time:

10:54 AM. Why?

I dunno.

June 14, 1946 at 10:54 A.M. Donald John Trump was born. 

70 years later the Tragedy of that day struck.

New York Times Headline November 9, 2016:

Trump Triumphs!

Outsider Mogul Captures the Presidency…

The slithering goddamn fun-annihilating, slime-spitting serpent continues to laugh. 

WE who care about our sacred serenity  - are not laughing.

By Fran Pearce

From: United States