Pause with a purpose   For a long time, I've been curious about
what kind of crisis could be massive enough to make the whole
country pause, for sports events to be postponed, and for TV
networks to suspend regular programming. This is not a subject
people want to talk about in everyday conversation. "How," a
friend chided me, "can a cheery person like you think such
morbid thoughts?"  The answer is simple: Humor is right around
the corner from tragedy.  As someone who works hard to find the
bright side of bad situations, one of my standard techniques is
to reflect on how much worse things might have been.
Recommended: Could you pass a US citizenship test?  And looking
back at the tumult of the past century, I often wondered whether
we might someday experience a truly catastrophic event that
would jolt open a new chapter of American history.  With a
Herman Kahn-like approach, I was still focused on cold war
possibilities, most likely a nuclear detonation in a major city.
Obviously, I was way behind the curve