anniversaries

Here we are headlong into the 2nd month of 2009 and we pause briefly to consider some of the momentous anniversaries of this year. 20 years ago we moved to Oak Park from Ann Arbor; the same year that the Berlin Wall came down and Exxon Valdez spilled a billion gallons of crude oil in the Alaskan Wilderness, and the earth quake in San Francisco interrupted the World Series. 40 years ago-- Woodstock, man on the moon, Altmont (Give Me Shelter) and the passing of my mother. 50 years ago-- the day the music died. Each of these events elicits a cascade of memories. Well, Buddy Holly dieing did not evoke much in me at the time (I was 5 years old), but the 1971 Don MacLean song sure did make an imprint. I remember so clearly 1969 and what a tumultuous time it was. As I sat on my mother's bed in the hospital watching the news cast of "one small step for mankind..." the cameras panned over the US soldiers in Viet Nam, sitting on their tanks and in their bunkers listening to the radio broadcast of those generation defining words. The Woodstock-- watching the Tonight Show with Crosby, Stills and Nash visiting Johnny Carson, talking about going to Woodstock and what it was all about. I suppose had my mother not just died I might well have been among the multitude in the mud in upstate New York, but then again, maybe not. I was, after all, working on my candidacy to the US Naval Academy... but that is another story. And Altmont. The horror of the Hells Angels beating hapless hippies to death while the Rolling Stones rocked on. I had no affection for the Grateful Dead, yet at the time, but remember hearing that they decided the vibe was just too awful there and they left. And then it was 1989... Maggie Thatcher was the Prime Minister and George H Bush was President. The wall fell and a piece was delivered to Ronnie at his California home. The Exxon Valdez crashed and spilled all that oil because the captain was drunk. Then we moved to Oak Park and we sat watching the World Series listening to Al Michaels make the call when he suddenly had to become a news anchor instead of a sports announcer. Many years hence we will think back on 2009 as the cruel harsh last winter in Chicago, the beginning of the Obama era, the year Blagojavich was impeached, the year I became Chair of the department at SIU and we moved to our new palatial estate.....

other anniversaries of note: 1959 Kind of Blue, Miles Davis the quintessential Jazz album; 1979 Shaw of Iran exiled and the Ayatollah Kohmeni takes over as the US hostages are taken into captivity. And I moved from Boulder to Denver.....