Benign, peaceful subject in time for the holidays, or metaphor of recent world turmoil and change as 1962 drew to a close? Insightful observation or groping for a larger meaning where there was none? It could go either way, or neither way, but that was the cover story for this double-issue. Life ended up taking the subject in both directions after all: as political paradigm of the "new" Cold War battleground, and as globe-dominating natural wonder that sustains life and offers great photo ops.
This quote is lifted from Romain Gary's preamble to the issue, and it's not a bad summary of the events in 1962, I suppose. One could read the narrowly avoided nightmare of the Cuban Missile Crisis as a prompt for such a declaration: that October, two world superpowers held a staring contest over a Caribbean island to see who would blink first, but eventually decided mutual annihilation wasn't going to solve much. It was a turning point in the Cold War, though far from the last one, but our collective reluctance to push the button did offer some promise of hope for the future . . . how reassuring this event was is difficult to gauge, but living to fight another day beats the flip side!
One one hand, I can say I'm lucky I was born at all, so everything after that is gravy. Then again, much of life before and during '62 was gravy and other assorted side dishes as well, so let's see what else was on the cultural menu in the smorgasbord of Life.
© 2001-2002 scott weitz