Yep, the presidential election of 2016 will be here and gone in just a few weeks. As I do some final research for my novel, Stuck in the Onesies, I’ve been hanging out in the ’60’s and the election of JFK, among other events. What an unusual decade the ’60s was. So many changes, so fast. For one thing, we started out in black and white, and ended up in living color. Now, that was progress!

I doubt we would hear Jackie Kennedy talking about what the other presidential candidate said or why (she was more inclined to talk about the remodeling of the White House)…but those were different times and that’s a lot of what Stuck in the Onesies is all about.

For those of you that remember the 60’s (or at least bits and pieces…), you know how events seemed to ramp up from the almost boring year of 1960 to the end of the decade. There were so many country-changing events such as the assassination of many great men, JFK, MLK, and RFK, just to name three, protests about civil rights, Viet Nam war, women’s rights, the list goes on.

Living in the DC suburbs was my “normal” and while growing up there, so much of the unrest occurred in our backyard, marches, riots, funerals, you name it. I can remember seeing the smoke from our front porch as DC burned during the riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated.

As we move towards the 2016 election, we as Americans have the assurance that our lives will go on, no matter the outcome. However, we need to learn from our past. We’ve come so far since those days of segregation. Let’s link arms with our neighbors, whoever they are, and share some of  that ’60s love with one another. Let’s refuse to step backwards and learn from our past and remember that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana, 1905).