John Lennon remembered

It was twenty-five years ago today that John Lennon was killed. Mention was made several places. Ann Althouse put together a deeply personal and memorable post. It's not too long.

...I was a law student at NYU. I remember dragging myself in to the law review office and expecting everyone there to be crying and talking about it, but no one was saying anything at all. I never felt so alienated from my fellow law students as I did on that day. I was insecure enough to feel that I was being childish to be so caught up in the story of the death of a celebrity long past his prime. I didn't even take the train uptown to go stand in the crowd that I knew had gathered outside the Dakota. What did I do? I can't remember. I probably buried myself in work on a law review article.

Be sure to read the comments as well.

My own musical experience was by then going to sleep. And my youthful idealism was taking second place to rearing a family. I didn't have the luxury of grieving as I had when King and the Kennedy brothers were killed. I was as intimidated by the expectations of the working world as she seems to have been. Only later did I come to the point where I understood that work is a means, not an end. Maybe that's why I can relate to her post.

To complete the picture, go to Richard Lawrence Cohen's account of the same day. If this were not the internet with the images being shared by the characters themselves, reading these two reflections would seem almost voyeuristic. Remember, these two were married at the time. Even in the afterlife of their marriage each retains an admirable respect for the other.

The clock radio woke us, and the first sound that came over it was an announcer’s voice: “We’ll have more about the murder of John Lennon after this.”

We sat bolt upright in bed. Had we heard correctly? It had come to us at the tail end of sleep, maybe he had really said some other name, or not the word “murder.”

But when the commercial was over, we learned that it was true. Then we remembered hearing an unusual storm of sirens when we’d gone to bed around midnight, sirens which we now learned had been a couple of miles north of us.

Again, read the comments...