Black Swans

I was driving to work on a Saturday morning, leaving my 8 a.m. Bible study early, and listening to an all-talk sports show. (Following sports often helps me escape from real life.)

But not that morning.

The radio jock-talkers were fumbling, saying things like. "Ah, that's bad. Could anybody survive that? That makes me sick to my stomach." Things like that.

It took me awhile to piece together that they were talking about the shuttle Columbia, just 16 minutes from its landing in Florida. The news wasn't good.

I called my wife, asking her to switch on the TV, and flip to CNN.

She filled me in.

I longed to get home and play news junkie, frantically switching channels to get the whole picture, but work beckoned. I flicked on the black plastic GE AM-FM radio that I keep near my desk and tuned into National Public Radio. Then I did some quick surfing at Web sites I so often frequent: CNN.com, ABCNEWS.com, MSNBC.com. Yahoo.

The news was bad -– and getting worse.

In between snippets of work, I was getting the story, and a headline began forming in my head: "Shuttle apparently disintegrates; 7 astronauts presumed lost."

The Black Swan had made an appearance.

I had observed its flight before.

November 22, 1963. It was a Friday. A motorcade snaked through the streets of Dallas. Loud bangs echoed through the city's concrete and brick canyons. Radio announcements cackled from the static-snarled PA system at my school. "The president's been shot." I was a senior.

The man I'd pinned my hopes on for a changed world, a new generation. Gone. A Catholic. Dead. A child of immigrants. Lifeless. Then Sunday morning, coming home from Mass at St. Anthony's, my Uncle Angelo (who did not go to church) shared the news.

"He's been shot," he said.

"Who?"

"Oswald."

Two flights of the Swan – so close together. The first two I can remember.

Years later, in 1968, another flight. Martin Luther King Jr., shot. An articulate minister who'd mixed the Gospel with passive, but passionate, protest. An American Gandhi from Atlanta. At the time, I was stationed at Memphis Naval Air Station in Millington, Tennessee, just miles away from the shooting. Had the whole world gone mad? This time the Swan was close. Too close. Its black wings of death spread broad over an entire nation. I could almost feel its shadow. Then, a few months later, Bobby Kennedy. Shot. Another hope cut short. I can still see the flickering black and white images of Bobby, collapsed on his back. Life in exodus from his face. Tombstones in his eyes. And puddled blood, like thick chocolate syrup, spreading slowly from his wound. Surrounded by a web of people.

1968 seemed to produce a flock of Swans: The TET offensive. LBJ’s decision not to run for re-election. The riots engulfing the Chicago Convention, where moving snapshots of hopeful politicians were interspersed and choked by a panorama of smoke-filled fighting in the Second City's streets.

And the election of Nixon.

There were probably flights of the Black Swan that I missed –- or simply can’t remember.

But I remember Tehran in 1979, and the 444 days that followed: "America Held Hostage," day (fill in the blank) and counting.

And the Challenger disaster -- a "major malfunction," exclamation marked by upwardly spiraling, tubular twin clouds that pirouetted over the sky of Cape Canaveral.

And who can forget 9-11?

My mother called to tell me that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers. An accident, I thought. Probably some single-engined civilian aircraft that had gotten off course. Until, in "real time," live and on TV, I saw the second plane hit the second Tower. Then I saw the instant replay. Over, and over, again.

Eternal minutes later, with Brokaw, I watched the Towers collapse -– one by painful one -– spewing a darkly menacing army-like cloud that marched boldly through the streets of New York.

All flights of the Swan. Big Black Swans.

* * *

The 16-day STS-107 mission seemed to start well. Except for a small piece of foam that left its perch on the external tank, just 82 seconds after liftoff on January 16. It harmlessly glanced off the underside of the shuttle's left wing.

A piece of foam. Like you find in cheap coffee cups at 7-11.

I can crush cups like that in my hand. So could you. Right?

* * *

Psalm 144, verse 4 says, "Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away."

And Ecclesiastes, chapter 2 verse 23, concurs: "For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night."

But Job 10:22 says it best: "A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness."

Imagine a land "where the light is as darkness."

But that's what happens when the Black Swan flies.