Of Boomer Things: "Hair" and an American Hero

          Sometimes when my past and present collide, I feel compelled to write about it.

          Long before the 24-hour news cycle with its nauseating repetition of stories,
          Long before this time when it seems people can't work together to accomplish anything,
          Long before reality television and weird people wanting to cash in on their 15 minutes of fame (unless they can string it out longer)...

          ...there was a strange time of riots on college campuses and in large cities, a war in Viet Nam and its accompanying demonstrations at home, assassinations of political leaders, the Civil Rights Movement, beehive hair styles and Afros, mini-skirts, love beads, and bell bottom pants. [I'm exhausted just describing that much of it.]

          Tonight I get to revisit that time when I see the musical "Hair" at the Corn Stock Theatre in Peoria. I'm sure it will be an amazing production since I know a few of the talented players. When I first saw "Hair" in Chicago in the late 60s, I was living the time. The players tonight have read about it in books. That's fine--education is a beautiful thing. A world of peace and love is hard to find in an increasingly technological world where face-to-face conversations are disappearing.

          Sometimes when my past and present collide, I feel compelled to remind myself that we boomers look at the past nostalgically. We hear the music of Woodstock and forget the mud and garbage; we watch the triumph of Selma and forget the horrible violence of the Civil Rights Movement.

          But every so often a memory surfaces that defies any mud or violence, and, personally, every so often that memory chips away at another piece of my generation's past.

Neil Armstrong

          This week an American hero died, a self-described "nerdy engineer" who never used his celebrity for gain, yet represented the culmination of a dream that can only happen when people work together for a common goal. 

          And it was a monumental task: 154M miles of space traversed over 60 hours in order to walk on the moon. The AP wire was humming as Mission Control in Houston followed the flight. The astronauts landed at 4:18 p.m.(Eastern time) and Neil Armstrong, age 38, stepped on the lunar surface about six hours later. Buzz Aldrin waited in the ship. Walter Cronkite, the anchor we believed, said, "Man on the moon! Whew! Boy." Words seldom escaped Walter so that was quite a quote.

          And that night, in a tiny town in west central Illinois, my husband and I were painting the living room walls in our first apartment. We had no AC and on July 20, 1969, the sweat was dripping off us in the humid Midwest summer. We stopped to watch the grainy black and white pictures, live, and, miraculously, Neil Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface millions of miles away. Some things in life fill you with such a sense of wonder and awe that just remembering them brings tears to your eyes. Such was that night forty-three years ago.

          Rest in Peace, Neil Armstrong, and thank you for bringing us a sense of hope and wonder in such a dark time. You represented the best of courage and heroism.

Shared History: Comfortable, Easy, and Reassuring

In order to make sure my author social platforms are up to date, this week I set up, revised, added to, and changed social media sites--my webpage, blog, Pinterest page, GoodReads page, and Facebook--(whew) and I'm already tired but not done.  While my brain was so occupied, I also meditated in some other side of my brain about shared history.

And, in the thinking, I remembered something my Aunt Ruby once said that now makes sense.

What do I mean by "shared history?"  Shared history is composed of those markers you share with a particular group of people who have known and experienced the same family life or generational life or schooling life as you.  Examples?

Two years ago The Education of a Teacher (Including Dirty Books and Pointed Looks) launched, and I heard from a great many former students and colleagues who had lived through and shared a building known then as Monmouth High School.  Many of their comments touched on their pleasure in reading the book because it brought back so many memories of events they had shared with those who walked beside them down those halls.

This week I had lunch with a group of ladies who graduated with me from high school back in...well, somewhere in the last century.  While most of them either live in Galesburg, Illinois, or were visiting from other places, I drove only about twelve miles to join them.  Evidently these monthly forays to various wine places and restaurants have been going on for some time, but I either missed the fact or was simply ignorant.  We had a great time catching up and finding out about each other's lives and asking about those who were absent.

As I looked around the table it occurred to me that we were all exactly the same age, give or take a few months.  We are in the same place in life--retired or working part time still--and we have experienced marriages, children, grandchildren, divorces, and the deaths of parents or siblings. We lived through the repressive 1950s, experienced the Viet Nam War and the divisive politics of the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement, Watergate, and all of the other events that mark the lives of the oldest baby boomers.  It felt, well, reassuring.  No one had to explain something because, unlike my college students who were born in 1994, all of us had lived through it.  We understood.

I thought of it as an example of those circles in which we live and breathe and have our being.  When my mother died it was one link taken away from the circle of our family rituals, traditions, and history. Other deaths followed so that now my older brother and I are left to share the memories that no one else owns. Only us.  (And I'm sure that--unlike his memory--mine is correct when I say that the argument resulting in the two-story fall of my teddy bear was his fault.)  

It reminds me of my mother's sister, my Aunt Ruby, who passed away well into her nineties, the last person from a family of nine who had experienced the Depression, World War II, and the aftermath leading to the birth of my generation.  When her eighth sibling died a few years earlier, she told me that her true sadness was that she had no one with whom to speak that shared their family history.  Now I understand what she meant.

I believe that teaching college students well into my sixties has kept my brain active and my thoughts young, and I definitely recommend bonding with those generations younger and older than you.  But there is something about being with those people who share your history that is familiar, easy, and reassuring.