Day 342 - November 22

I always try stop by and visit Dealey Plaza on November 22. Aside from paying my respects to perhaps the last president who was ever able to unite the country on anything, it is always fascinating to see who will show up. When I first moved to Dallas, there were still quite a few eyewitnesses who would stop by and tell their side of the story. Most of the eyewitnesses have died unfortunately. In recent years, you are just as likely to talk to people who think they were abducted by aliens. Dealey Plaza has become a Mecca for every type of conspiracy theorist you can imagine.

I certainly wasn't disappointed today. I met a guy who told me he was going to faithfully recreate the famous Zapruder film using one of the last remaining Bell and Howell Zoomatic cameras in existence and a roll of the same type of 16mm Kodachrome film that Abraham Zapruder used himself. He said he had to finish his project this year because the last lab in the world that would process Kodachrome film was shutting down. His goal was to see if modern film processing techniques would reveal details that were invisible in 1963. The filmmaker seemed to have thought out his project in meticulous detail. There was only one little fly in the ointment. Kennedy wasn't there today.

I've written about Dealey Plaza before and I'm sure I'll visit the place again in years to come. This annual town hall meeting of lunatics is as close to pure Americana as I've ever been able to find. This year there was even a huge yellow banner on the Grassy Knoll, announcing to the world that the small hill behind the Texas Book Depository was indeed the infamous Grassy Knoll. As if everyone didn't know already.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I took some pictures at a client's office. I returned phone calls and made a few doctor's appointments. I even learned something new about Facebook. While I was at Dealey Plaza, I tried out Facebook's "location" tab for the first time. I never really knew what this feature was for. When my iPhone identified Dealey Plaza as my location and I clicked "OK to Share" something surprising happened. Ten or twelve Facebook profile pictures immediately appeared on my screen. These were other people who happened to be in Dealey Plaza using Facebook on their laptop or smart phone at the same time I was. This just blew me away. It wasn't surprising that everyone had a camera with them. It was a bit surprising that dozens of people standing right next to me were beaming pictures to their own Facebook pages at the same time I was. I guess I could chat with these people by clicking on their picture. Why would I do that though? I was standing right next to them.

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