Just like before, "this too shall pass"

It's Saturday morning and I thought while drinking my coffee I would muse on the topic of "this too shall pass."

Any event that shakes our emotions to the core leads us to believe that this must be the end times. I'm in my seventh decade and have lived through many newsworthy events, a number of which might be considered by those of us who were there to be as traumatic or even greater than the election this past week. So I thought I'd just take stock of what some of those were in a "short" listing below. Now I'm sure whether the event was negative or positive depends on your point of view and I respect that. The list is in no way comprehensive and I apologize if I didn't include something that was or is important to you.

Oh, and a few are included for a little humor because this list can be somewhat depressing.

·      The anti-communist “Red Scare” and “un-American activities” witch hunt.

·      The Soviet launch of Sputnik 1

·      The Vietnam War (1959-1973)

·      Suez Canal Crisis and Algerian War

·      Cuban Revolution and Castro’s overthrow of Fulgencio Batista

·      Creation of NORAD

·      Playboy magazine and empire

·      Rise of Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev

·      Hurricane’s Diane and Audrey

·      First tests of the hydrogen bomb

·      Soviet opening of the first nuclear power plant

·      James Dean and Rebel Without a Cause

·      Beginning of the effects of the so-called “Golden Age of Television” and its impact on what we wear, listen to, eat, and the news we receive

·      Vice President Nixon

·      Federal troops sent to Little Rock, Arkansas

·      Dr. Benjamin Spock

·      “The Day the Music Died” and the death of Superman (George Reeves)

·      U-2 incident

·      Soviets put first man in space

·      The Berlin Wall and the faceoff at Checkpoint Charlie

·      Senator Barry Goldwater

·      Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King

·      President Johnson, Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

·      The draft

·      Bay of Pigs Invasion

·      Indo-Pakistani War

·      Arab-Israeli conflict and the Six Days War

·      Rise of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya

·      Cuban Missile Crisis and near-military confrontation between U.S. and Soviet Union

·      Duck-and-cover drills in schools

·      France and China detonation of first atomic bombs

·      Governor George Wallace

·      “The whole world is watching” demonstrations during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago

·      Czechoslovakia’s “Prague Spring” and subsequent Soviet invasion

·      Recession to begin the 60’s with resulting inflation and rising unemployment (dubbed the “misery index” which hit 10%)

·      The “New Math” movement

·      Assassinations of Ngo Dinh Diem (South Vietnam), Malcolm X by the Nation of Islam, and Che Guevara by Bolivia (allegedly aided by the CIA)

·      Good Friday earthquake (Alaska) and Hurricane Camille

·      The “sexual revolution”

·      Timothy Leary and LSD

·      Antiwar movement

·      “New Left” post-war growth of Marxism in America

·      SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)

·      Space race

·      Apollo 1 disaster

·      Apollo 13

·      Influx of cheap Japanese “stuff”

·      Invention of the first computer video game, Spacewar!

·      Summer of Love (1967) and Woodstock (1969)

·      Hippie movement

·      War on Poverty

·      Draft card burning

·      Free Speech Movement

·      Unsafe at Any Speed

·      College campus takeovers by students

·      “Beatle backlash” in the south

·      Black Panther Party

·      Detroit Riots

·      Palm Sunday Tornado

·      Vietnam Veterans Against the War

·      Muhammad Ali found guilty of draft evasion

·      The Tet Offensive

·      My Lai Massacre

·      LBJ forced out of running for a full second term

·      Anti-war and civil rights riots in major cities

·      Rise of feminism

·      President Richard M. Nixon

·      National Guard sent into cities and college campuses to put down protests and takeovers

·      Vice President Spiro T. Agnew

·      Occupation of Alcatraz

·      Flint War Council

·      Nixon’s secret war operations in Cambodia

·      Student Strike of 1970 and Hard Hat Riot

·      5,000 National Guard at Ohio State University

·      Black Liberation Army

·      U.S. Capitol bombed by war protesters

·      Pentagon Papers

·      Governor Wallace is shot

·      Jane Fonda visits North Vietnam

·      Wounded Knee

·      Watergate and the Senate Watergate Investigation

·      Resignation of President Nixon

·      Patty Hearst kidnapping by SLA

·      Watergate conspirators found guilty

·      Weather Underground bombs U.S. State Department

·      Presidents Ford and Reagan survive assassination attempts

·      Death of Elvis Presley

·      Murder of John Lennon

·      Runaway inflation of 1970s

·      1973 Oil embargo

·      Corn subsidies and the unhealthy rise in use of cheap corn syrup

·      The Cold War

·      Soviet War in Afghanistan

·      Yom Kippur War

·      Assassination of Sadat

·      Pol Pot regime

·      Yugoslavia dictator Joseph Tito

·      Uganda dictator Idi Amin

·      Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes

·      War in Northern Ireland

·      1979 energy crisis

·      Rev. Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre

·      Saddam Hussein

·      Khmer Rouge

·      Lebanese Civil War

·      Sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald

·      AA Flight 191 air crash

·      Iranian revolution

·      Stagflation

·      1978 Blizzard

·      Three Mile Island

·      Chernobyl nuclear disaster

·      By 1980, misery index reaches all-time high of 21.98%; inflation at 21.5%

·      Production of the AMC Gremlin

·      Launch of pay television

·      Bell-bottomed pants, leisure suits, and platform shoes

·      Lava lamps

·      1982 Lebanon War

·      1983 Beirut Barracks bombing

·      Iran-Iraq War

·      Iran-Contra

·      War on Drugs

·      Fall of the Berlin War

·      Fall of the Soviet Union

·      U.S. Drought of 1988

·      Mount St. Helens erupts

·      Exxon Valdez runs aground

·      Attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II

·      Anwar Sadat, Benigno Aquino and Indira Gandhi assassinated

·      Marvin Gaye murdered

·      Challenger disaster

·      Late 1980’s severe global recession

·      Free trade agreements

·      Savings and Loan Scandal

·      1980 Moscow Summer Olympics boycott

·      The Congo wars

·      First Gulf War

·      Chechen wars

·      Kosovo War

·      Breakup of Yugoslavia and resulting wars

·      1993 World Trade Center bombing

·      Oklahoma City bombing

·      IRA bombing of Manchester, England

·      Monica Lewinsky scandal

·      North American Free Trade Agreement

·      Rise of the Palestinian National Authority (PLA)

·      North Korea

·      Breakup of the Soviet Union and destabilization

·      Murder of pop singer Selena

·      Hurricane Mitch

·      “Irrational exuberance”

·      Japanese economic disaster

·      Chrysler bailout

·      Genetically engineered crops introduced

·      Columbine

·      O.J. Simpson murder case

·      John F. Kennedy, Jr.

·      Assisted suicide

·      Jonbenet Ramsey

·      Boy bands and young pop stars

·      Rap

·      CNN, MSNBC, Fox News – all news, all the time whether it’s true or we have to make it up

·      Athletes and drug use (too many to name)

·      2000 Election and “chads”

·      September 11, 2001

·      Osama bin Laden

·      Anthrax

·      War on Terror (ongoing)

·      War in Afghanistan (ongoing)

·      Second Iraq War

·      Saddam Hussein

·      Arab-Israeli conflict (never ending)

·      Israeli-Palestinian conflict (never ending)

·      Second Congo War

·      Second Chechen War

·      Mexican Drug War

·      Columbian Armed Conflict

·      Angolan Civil War

·      Somali Civil War

·      War in just about every central African nation

·      Haitian coup

·      Honduras coup

·      Antibiotic resistance

·      Swine flu

·      AIDS

·      Hurricane Katrina

·      Housing market collapse

·      Wall Street corruption

·      The Great Recession

·      Dot-com bubble burst

·      “Shovel-ready” projects and bailouts

·      Rise of the robots and second machine age

·      Disappearance of the middle class

·      Obesity and rise of Type II diabetes

·      Climate change (or not)

·      Grid-lock politics

·      Polarization of America

·      Privacy concerns

·      Domestic and international terrorism

·      Political correctness

·      Social media

·      Clogs

·      Botox

·      Immigration wars

·      New segregation

·      Attack on public education

·      Inequities of school funding

·      Lead in our water

·      Deterioration of infrastructure

·      Anti-tax movements (or something-for-nothing club)

·      Military intervention in Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, and Syria

·      ISIS, ISIL or whatever you want to call them

·      Mogadishu

·      Arab Spring

·      Cyber War

·      WikiLeaks

·      Edward Snowden

·      Anonymous

·      The seemingly irrelevance of the United Nations and NATO

·      2011 tornado outbreaks in U.S.

·      Hurricane Sandy

·      2016 Louisiana floods

·      Cubs won the series (and cats and dogs began living together)