{"id":58962,"date":"2025-10-09T00:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T00:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58962"},"modified":"2025-10-09T00:00:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T00:00:12","slug":"landmark-birthday-for-the-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58962","title":{"rendered":"Landmark birthday &#8230; for the ages"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n\r\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">I think of landmark birthdays when they arrive on the calendar and I miss the people who would celebrate them were they still around.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>One such person&#8217;s birthday comes up on Oct. 9. That&#8217;s today. He would be 85 years of age. He&#8217;s no longer around to mark the event. He was gunned down at 40. Far too young. He was John Lennon.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Of all the assassinations we have endured over the years, this one made the least sense of all of them. John Lennon&#8217;s killer earlier in evening of Dec. 8, 1980, had gotten the ex-Beatle&#8217;s autograph. Then he waited for John and his wife to return home to their apartment in New York City. He pulled out his pistol and then &#8230; well, you know the rest of it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The shooter is serving a life sentence for the senseless murder of a man who preached the cause of world peace. He had taken a five-year sabbatical from the limelight to raise his young son. John had returned to the studio to make music again.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>John Lennon&#8217;s work already is the stuff of legend. He was one-half of the most successful songwriting team in music history. Only God knows what he would have produced had he been given the chance.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>John Lennon and his Beatle band mates helped raise me. I miss him every day.<\/p>\r\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think of landmark birthdays when they arrive on the calendar and I miss the people who would celebrate them were they still around. One such person&#8217;s birthday comes up on Oct. 9. That&#8217;s today. He would be 85 years of age. He&#8217;s no longer around to mark the event. He was gunned down at &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58962\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Landmark birthday &#8230; for the ages<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2543,4749],"class_list":["post-58962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment-news","tag-john-lennon","tag-the-beatles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58962"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58965,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58962\/revisions\/58965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}