Of Scrapbooks and 1980s Pen Pals Here is my old scrapbook from my high school and college days. The days before mounting squares and acid-free paper were easily found. I glued and Scotch-taped cards, letters, pictures, track ribbons, corsage ribbons, and ephemera to the gray, construction paper pages. This is where I’ve kept Helga’s letters […]
OKC Bombing, Berlin Wall Among Top Historic Events for Generation X
The Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Oklahoma City Bombing and the Challenger Disaster are among the top 12 historic events for Generation X, according to a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with A+E Networks’ History. Here are the events in order of their significance to Generation X: September 11, 2011 (9/11) Obama […]
25th Anniversary: Fall of the Berlin Wall, Google Doodle
Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the top 10 most defining moments for Generation X. Google has put together a “Google Doodle” to mark the occasion. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a defining moment for Generation X. The Christmas after the wall fell I bought […]
Thawing of Cold War Precipitated Hundreds of Base Closures
In the spring of 1993, thousands of people of all ages held hands and formed a circle around Tinker Air Force Base. They gathered outside the fence wearing T-shirts that said SAVE TINKER and waved flags and held signs. In just a few days they would discover Tinker’s fate when the Base Realignment and Closure […]
20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Soviet Union
1985 USSR, originally uploaded by Roman on flickr. What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” — From Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Brothers Karamazov Fall of the Soviet Union I’ve been meaning to write about the 20th anniversary of the fall of Soviet Union, which the New York […]
Berlin Wall film premiers on PBS | The Wall – A World Divided
A new PBS film about the Berlin Wall, The Wall: A World Divided, has brought back memories of my German penpal. Read on to learn more. My Pen pal Helga Hosch In the 7th grade, nine years before unrestricted access between East and West Berlin was granted, Helga Hosch became my pen pal. She lived […]
Stanislav Petrov Day, Generation Kill + More Gen X Headlines
Naomi Kritzer has written a post about nuclear war from the Generation X childhood perspective. On September 26th, 1983, I was ten years old and living in Madison, Wisconsin. As a child, I actively feared nuclear war; it bordered on an anxiety disorder at time, to the point that my parents refused to let […]