Rick Allen's blog

NOTE: As he was to most people of my generation, John Lennon was an influential and inspirational person in my life. His death hit us all. Hard. This is an article I wrote for our partner station WABX two years ago today on the thirtieth anniversary of John's death. If you enjoy it, I hope you'll click the "LIKE" button underneath the headline and pass it on. Thanks, Rick

December 8, 1980.

I know all too well what that date signifies. I don't have to depend on news reports and tributes to remember John Lennon's life and death.

Whatever plans you have, I hope Thanksgiving is a special time for you. Eat too much. Sleep a lot. Hold your tongue around the relatives.

Give thanks. Think. Pray. Question everything, for therein lies the path to understanding. But know that you will never completely understand, and therein lies the path to faith. Reflect on the days you were cold, and those times that your soul felt barren.

CNN spent Valentine's Day with lots of love songs, and the woman who brings them to you every night on WIKY, Delilah.

 

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My best friend Cathy turned to her husband with a knowing look.

"He doesn't have a clue," she said.

She was talking about me.       

I have read many books and seen many movies which tried to anaylize the plight of the hopeless fool barreling headlong down the road of good intentions. In her bemused frustration, Cathy summed it up better than any of them, in only five words.

I knew about Roberts Stadium long before I ever set foot inside. As a youngster, I used to read about the EC Aces (it was Evansville College then) and see the newspaper photos of the games, and what looked to be dozens upon dozens of rows upon rows of seating. Later, when my parents were tolerant, or already asleep, I would stay up late when the games were televised on delay, watch in palyers wearing those jerseys with the sleeves (beyond cool).

The thoughts of World War II should not be allowed to pass gentle into that good night. Will you help preserve them?

There are defining moments shared by all humanity, benchmarks in time burned into the collective memory. Among those, there stands one day, one point in time when life changes forever. In the lifetime of my parents and grandparents, that moment came on December 7, 1941. The "day which will live in infamy" plunged America headlong into World War II. No one would ever be the same.

And there are no happy endings.

If this weren't so sad, and so amazingly stupid, I'd laugh.