It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...and it had nothing to do with Sgt. Pepper!

Well I know that I have been ruminating in a somewhat light-hearted way the past few posts...although I am never certain that readers can discern the nuances of my strange mind...but today I want to remind everyone of the transformational events of 20 years ago...with the falling of the Berlin Wall and the end of the world...or at least the world that all of us born from the 1930s-1960's had known...

...It truly remains hard to believe how rapid the collapse came...and there are many well-written pieces (here is one that brings together the old and new pretty well: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/world/europe/08germany.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 ) ...but it really was a transformational event in our history...


..For those of us who served in the military through the 1950s-1980's the power of the Soviet Union was the reality that we faced every day...it drafted my father into the US Army during Korea and 25 years later I would volunteer for the US Navy...and the efforts and energies of many countries poised against each other...nuclear weapons at the ready...was something we simply could not shake from our minds....even well into the 1980's our young men and women stood at the ready against "the godless red hordes of the east"...(just ask my buddy Mike Gallagher)...if any of you are interested in the USS Bainbridge CGN-25, my steel and nucelar powered home during those years...check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEFT0wPQo0Y for some old film of the "Gray Ghost of the Orient"...almost two football fields long she was something in her day...


...it is somewhat crazy to believe that the ship I served aboard for four years from 1976-1980 possessed more fire power aboard than all of the weapons fired by all sides in WWII...amazing...and sad...and reminds me of the huge debt we owe to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa and many others known and unknown who brought this awful and wasteful stalemate to an end...even Gorbachev deserves some credit...at least he didn't line every one up against the wall like previous Soviet leaders...



...so on the plane home from Europe I watch a movie that gets **** from me...an excellent watch...well acted and in many ways prophetic...of not only the rise of the Wall but also its collapse and a warning for contemporary citizens of this global village...Brendand Gleeson gives a stunning performance of Winston Churchill...oh, WWII is so boring, you say?...well listen carefully kiddies to the dialogue in this film...for it speaks to us well...stirring my heart, my soul and desires for a better tomorrow...rent a copy of Into the Storm http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0992993/ ...and prepare to be impressed with the strength of those who we can hold no candle to.

I for one am quite grateful this date for not only Ronnie and the rest of the leaders of the 1980's but also the one and only Sir Winston Churchill. Hats off to all of them!