I Married an Artist

Don't know where I found this gem.

Ancient History

I was listening to some podcast the other day and they were talking about Germany in the 70s and how it was still living then in the shadow of WW2 and how that reactively shaped policy... and I was very struck by this because I was born in 1971 and WW2 always seemed like ancient history, not close at all to the 70s...

But in reality there was only 26 years between the end of WW2 and my birth. Not a long time, really. Not at all.

For kids born in 2011, tracking back 26 years gets you to 1985, the summer of Back to the Future, Rambo, and Cocoon. Astonishing. 1971 is to Nazi Germany as 2011 is to Back to the Future.

And tracking back 26 years beyond that gets you to 1959, or pre-production on Psycho!!! I remember watching Psycho in 1985 at a friend's house... It seemed ancient... black and white, with strange wardrobes, and odd filmmaking technique and pacing. A curiosity. A relic from another time. The limitless sprawl of ancient history that unspooled before my birth.

Is this how my nephew will view Top Gun?

And then there's the two lifetimes between today and the Civil War. It's nothing, really. My grandfather's grandfather was probably in his 20s during this war...

We are such a young country.