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| Million Man March 1995 |
Yeah, I know. Can you believe it? It's 2011. A whole decade has followed the triple aught already? I remember Y2K like it was yesterday!Despite the fact that there are now kids who have no idea, or even interest in, what the nineties were really about (i.e., grunge music, Clinton’s unbecoming “stain”, the first Bush, Princess Diana, no wifi, the significance of the phrase “I’m the king of the world!”, riot grrrl, coffee that cost less than $3.50 a cup still to be found, and of course the artist formerly-known-as-Prince-but–now-apparently-know-as-Prince-again’s song “1999” (two-thousand-zero-zero party over, oops, out of time)), the first decade of 2010 seems to have passed with both the agonizing slowness of cutting off your own arm (we can ask Aaron Ralston for confirmation), and all the swiftness of water slipping through your fingers. I mean, if you think about it, none of us will ever see another century mark go by, and most of this decade’s generation will never see one pass at all. It makes me feel a certain affinity with my great-grandparents; they were born in a time of horse-drawn carriages and saw men walk on the moon. What could possibly top that? Even if I can’t imagine the kind of advancements human ingenuity might next display, it’s still a privilege to have a glimpse of the amazement and optimism that they must have felt as they watched one century end and another begin.Despite my inability to listen to the Grateful Dead without needing to hold back my gag reflex, I think they had it right when they played “What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.” The last ten years have seen our country jump from business-as-usual to an all out free-fall of wars, political maneuvering, global catastrophes and unprecedented social shifts in a single, precision-guided shot. 911 and Hurricane Katrina irrevocably changed the way the modern world copes with the fact that we are never going to be able to build walls to keep out our “enemies”, whether human or of that natural variety (well, it’s proven that to most of us, but there are still those who can’t seem to circumvent their pesky lizard brain genetics). While there are many who are still stuck in the rut of relying on the status quo to “fix” things, I truly believe that the next twenty to forty years will see the kind of monumental rift in the social order that has not been experienced since, and will probably exceed by orders of magnitude, the kind of change ushered in by the movements of the ‘60s. It’s those of us who were first growing into our own self- and social- identities in the nineties who will be driving these changes, and it’s up to us to imagine a harmonious and just way of doing it.Wow, OK, sorry about the crazy philosophical/political brain-dump. Apparently a carrot and celery juice cocktail in the morning does something wonky to my synaptic dance. I think I better go put on some Pearl Jam and get out the brain bleach so I can scour away that Prince song keeps looping in my head.A parting gift to you:
I was dreamin’ when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astrayBut when I woke up this morning, could have sworn it was Judgment DayThe sky was all purple, there was people running everywhereTried to run from the destruction, you know I didn’t even care
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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.