To Every Thing, There IS a Season

On October 1, 1965, the American rock band, The Byrds released a song that would, at least for me, define the music of my youth, music that I still listen to today. The song was, of course, the classic, “Turn, Turn, Turn”. It was released as an anti-war anthem, released against a backdrop of nightly news coverage of Americans fighting and dying in what Americans called the Vietnam War (what the Vietnamese called “The American War” and what I will leave to other, future, historians to identify).

Decades late, as a young Petty Officer and later a young Naval Officer, leading and training even…