Thursday, August 27, 1964.

It was as if he had wandered into my dream . . .

—Rich Cohen, Lake Effect.

. . . a dream that led me to . . .

—Carolin Pereira, Destinations and Destiny: a Guided Journey to
Love and Life.

. . . the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.
—Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

In the beloved poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,”

the narrator, a lone wagon driver, pauses at night in his travel to
watch snow falling in the woods. The narrator reminds himself
that, despite the loveliness of the view, he has obligations to
fulfill. I first learned of the Robert Frost verse at age ten while
watching the Democratic National Convention, broadcast from
Atlantic City on this late summer night. President John F.
Kennedy had been assassinated less than a year before and his
younger brother, Robert, then U.S. Attorney General, quoted the
notable final lines of “Stopping by Woods” in a homage to JFK,
delivered to convention delegates.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Later that night, then President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the
Democratic Party’s nominee, was presented a birthday cake
fashioned in the shape of a map of the United States in honor of
his fifty-sixth birthday. Comically playing up his Texan-ness, LBJ
took hold of a knife and carved himself a slice of his native state.