One reason the comment struck a chord it was more spot on than he or she realized, because I've actually been obsessing about the 1960s more than ever in the last year. Some of the reasons are surely just personal: The arrival of mid-life (heh, if I live to be 108) has caused me to think back more and more about the things I've seen along the way and how the scenery has changed. In a few months will be the 50th anniversary of my first political memory -- a 4-year coming in from the chilly yard and seeing his mother weeping, and trying to understand the incomprehensible notion that someone had shot the president. At some point when I wasn't paying attention, the 1960s went from a wired near-present to an unplugged past on the other side of something, an era that comes to me now so distantly through the AM radio static of a Galaxy 500, fading echoes of "Mr. Tambourine Man."