Coming down, to the ground  Is it possible to feel nostalgic
about something you’ve never actually experienced first-hand?
Can you rue the loss of something you never really had?  I think
you can. When I put a Vera Lynn or a Benny Goodman record on my
turntable, I find myself wistful for a period of American
history that probably never really existed, but one that to my
mind, feels innocent and wide-eyed and filled with possibility
and very, very real. It was pre-war and post-war at the same
time, idealistic men and women standing up to some outside evil
and through the sheer force of their moxy and their belief in
one another and the cause that united them, they triumphed over
that evil. They shut it down. It was no longer a threat to the
good people of the world.  As a people, we saw a very bad thing
looming on the horizon. As a people, we fought back, and made
the necessary sacrifices, and stopped that Very Bad Thing from
being something that our children and our grandchildren would
have to live with.  Wit