What Day Is It?

      It's Star Trek day, among other things, the day the first episode of the series aired on NBC, the first step in a long cultural arc that took science fiction from being that crazy stuff your parents razzed you for watching and your English teacher despaired of you reading* to a cherished institution featuring Star Wars day every May and Star Trek day as summer comes to an end.

     Fun stuff, but it's a reminder that every day is History Day.†  I was reminded of that more forcefully while listening to a radio news piece from Kyiv this morning, covering the Russian drone strikes in that city.  The reporter had been awakened in the night by the sound of incoming Sahed drones and recorded parts of her story with the engines of the weapons throbbing in the background.  It's an eerie sound, and reminds me of Edward R. Murrow of CBS, broadcasting live from a London rooftop during the Blitz.‡  Or, much later in that war, the guttural buzz and sudden halt of an incoming V-1.

     We're in the run-up to World War III, or at least to a wider European War.  This time, America First holds the White House and Congress; Zelenskyy is no Churchill, nor is Putin Hitler: history does not repeat.  But it does rhyme, and the present verses carry a familiar rhythm.

     I hope I'm wrong, but there's a chill in my bones that freezes optimism.
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*Not quite a decade later, my high school offered a class on "Science Fiction."  But the English department was pretty desperate, in that huge Sports, Shop and (slightly) Math-heavy high school.  My Dad, on the other hand, never stopped regarding it as silly stuff, unworthy of adult interest.  He preferred Westerns.
 
† Is there a history Day?  Well, yes and no.  It's not just one day.
 
‡ At first, BBC didn't want him up there, and refused use of the roof of their main studio location, Broadcast House, fearing Germans might use the sound to fine-tune their bombing.  Eventually, someone realized the value of broadcasting live coverage of the attacks, and British resolve in the face of them, to the then-neutral United States.