Witness of History
Jan. 30th, 2009 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scottahillThe Inauguration got me thinking about being a "witness of history", and it made me wonder when I started becoming such a witness. That is, I was alive for the second half of the 70's, but I don't remember anything from it. I remember a lot from the 80's, but outside of the television shows and movies and the toys and whatnot, I wasn't really paying a lot of attention to current events. I knew Reagan was President, but I don't have a lot of insight into his Presidency just because I was alive at the time. When I am old and people want to know what it was like to live through the 1980s, what would I be able to say?
Three things come to mind. The first is that I can remember the Soviet Union. I remember what it was like for the U.S. to have an archenemy. I don't think we were as scared of them as Americans were in the 50s and 60s, when kids had "Duck and Cover" drills and many people expected nuclear holocaust before the end of the century. I specifically remembering seeing a photograph of ordinary Russians in an ordinary room doing something or other, and being somewhat surprised that they looked remarkably ordinary. I thought it might do Americans good to see more pictures of regular Russian people, that maybe we wouldn't hate them so much. (I was a peacenik even then.) I do remember the Berlin Wall coming down (in 1989), and that it was such a big surprise-- it felt like no one had expected it.
The second thing I remember was the start of the AIDS epidemic. When I was in 5th grade, I was terrified of AIDS. Being a nerd, to make myself feel better I actually did some research and wrote a report on it; once I realized it wasn't so easily catchable I felt better. I know that AIDS is still a terrible problem in Africa, and certainly no picnic for people in the United States who have it either, but it was so much scarier back then, when no one really knew what was going on. I remember when Magic Johnson "came out" as having AIDS (that was in 1991); I would never have expected him to be alive 17 years later.
And the last thing I remember that might interest my great-grandchildren was the Challenger explosion. I was in 5th grade, in class, when my friend Kyle Keller (who had been down at the nurse to get some medicine) ran in and said "The Space Shuttle blew up!" I remember all the bad jokes ("Need Another Seven Astronauts", "One blue this way and one blue that way", etc.) Maybe it wasn't JFK, but it was probably our defining childhood tragedy.
So I know all my flisters [sic] are the same age as I, more or less. What do you remember of history that might be interesting to the future?
Three things come to mind. The first is that I can remember the Soviet Union. I remember what it was like for the U.S. to have an archenemy. I don't think we were as scared of them as Americans were in the 50s and 60s, when kids had "Duck and Cover" drills and many people expected nuclear holocaust before the end of the century. I specifically remembering seeing a photograph of ordinary Russians in an ordinary room doing something or other, and being somewhat surprised that they looked remarkably ordinary. I thought it might do Americans good to see more pictures of regular Russian people, that maybe we wouldn't hate them so much. (I was a peacenik even then.) I do remember the Berlin Wall coming down (in 1989), and that it was such a big surprise-- it felt like no one had expected it.
The second thing I remember was the start of the AIDS epidemic. When I was in 5th grade, I was terrified of AIDS. Being a nerd, to make myself feel better I actually did some research and wrote a report on it; once I realized it wasn't so easily catchable I felt better. I know that AIDS is still a terrible problem in Africa, and certainly no picnic for people in the United States who have it either, but it was so much scarier back then, when no one really knew what was going on. I remember when Magic Johnson "came out" as having AIDS (that was in 1991); I would never have expected him to be alive 17 years later.
And the last thing I remember that might interest my great-grandchildren was the Challenger explosion. I was in 5th grade, in class, when my friend Kyle Keller (who had been down at the nurse to get some medicine) ran in and said "The Space Shuttle blew up!" I remember all the bad jokes ("Need Another Seven Astronauts", "One blue this way and one blue that way", etc.) Maybe it wasn't JFK, but it was probably our defining childhood tragedy.
So I know all my flisters [sic] are the same age as I, more or less. What do you remember of history that might be interesting to the future?
