This unusual year shows signs of becoming weirder yet. Reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Sea of Glory” about the little-known U.S. Exploring Expedition (or “Ex-Ex”) of 1836 reminded me how 1965 was a particularly strange year for me. That October my family moved from Texas to Vermont, where we were “the Kennedy killers” in the eyes of New Englanders still resentful of the President’s assassination; we arrived the week after a couple named Hill were abducted in neighboring New Hampshire by a UFO; the massive Northeastern power blackout occurred the following week; and I was expelled from school ten minutes into my...