A little of this and a little of that...

[susandennis]

My swim music this morning landed on a bunch of protest music from the 60's and 70's. The Vietnamese war colored so much of my young adulthood. I wondered this morning how we would feel now about the middle east if we still had the draft. That was the killer for me growing up. The war was unfair, sure. But what was incomprensible to me then (and, frankly, still) was that all my contemporaries who owned penises were required to go there and shoot and get shot. And those of us without penises were just totally off the hook.

My Mom's growing up (in Oklahoma in the 30's and 40's) were colored by the dust bowl and the meager economy left from the depression. (We did not grow up with stories about how my parents walked 5 miles in the snow to get to school. But, there was nothing that would bring our groans on faster than one of Mom's dust bowl stories!)

There's the 9/11 generation...  But there are large groups of people for whom there is no real defining of the time when their were just forming into adults.

Swimming brings on the most random of thoughts.  Also today there was the thought that for the next suit, I think I can cut the armhole just a little further down. And what about a two piece suit?

There was no sun's glare today which made the swim just ever so much better.

I should have stopped for gas coming home. I should have stopped for a haircut (just down from the gas station). I didn't.

I'm going to roast some chicken thighs in the crockpot today.

And that's all I got so far today...  I'm on to the sewing machine now...

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the defining moments of a generation are not obvious to people not of that generation... Maybe they identify with things that us older people wouldn't spot.

(I was born in the 70's, and I'd guess the equivalent thing that defined my growing up in the UK was probably IRA terrorism.)

[susandennis]

OMG yes! The IRA. That was certainly a giant milemarker.

[silverthief2.livejournal.com]

9/11 was my third week of college, and it felt defining for sure.

But the other event that my classmates and I really seemed to remember was the 2000 presidential election, when we were this >< close to being old enough to vote but weren't, and had to sit through weeks and weeks of headlines about how close the results were. Of course we didn't live in Florida, but New Mexico actually did conduct a recount and Al Gore won by some tiny margin like 366 votes out of 600,000 cast. It was sufficiently frustrating that I have voted in every election since I turned 18.

[susandennis]

That's wild about the 2000 election. I feel like it was a blip. Only even mildly interesting. A fight between white guys where the more obnoxious one would win again.

Your perspective is fascinating. And what a valuable outcome!!

[letmesaythis.livejournal.com]

GRID/AIDS/HIV....not politics, terrorism or war but it was most def huge for me at 18-21 and beyond.

[susandennis]

Interesting. I think you nailed the age range that gets this kind of definition.

I never actually isolated it that way but that's really what makes the difference, I think.

[shutterbug.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that you wrote this entry earlier in the day before the Paris thing.

[susandennis]

Creepy!

[dietcokewithice.livejournal.com]

I was born in '72. I remember when Reagan was shot and the shuttle exploded.

[susandennis]

Were those life changing moments for you? Or just significant memories?

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

I grew up seeing those trident submarines on a regular basis and that aspect of the cold war was this scary presence. "You will be the first to go." Which was very much like my Mom's childhood. (She grew up near Paine field and during the Cuban Missile crisis the planes would fly all night long. It caused her to start sleep walking.)

And then when I was twenty one... there was 9/11. And one felt this shift and it was funny because I began to read about it, and so many of our present problems in the middle east are related to the cold war. This constant game of "so... who is gonna blink first" creating all kinds of odd trauma for decades and decades.

[susandennis]

Which reminds me of the Cuban Missile Crisis that happened when I was in grade school. We were told that Cuba was going to bomb us. We learned to drop duck and role and that only those with bomb shelters would survive.