The 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination finds his family, and the country, at a moment many would not have imagined in JFK's lifetime.

When it gazes into the mirror, the United States does not generally see a land of process and procedure. The bold, splashy storylines that Americans crave, and have used to construct their nation, don't always play well with repetition and routine. That's where process, procedure and ritual come in. And that for every deafening moment that lurches the nation forward, there are countless procedural ones that inch it along. For one moment, whatever kind of American you are, whatever you’re upset about and however you voted, this land was incontrovertibly your land.