Just a blip!

It depends on how far you want to zoom out in space and time: men will look like ants

(Apollo’s first photo of the Earth) and the rise of the Nazis , according to a far-right-party guy – will be viewed as a footnote in German history (his clothes were stolen while he was swimming in the lake yesterday).

WE DON’T WANT TO FORGET!!! Not even amnesia can separate us from our long-term “footnotes”.

Where I live, people double-name their streets: one, the usual, and second name – ethnic hero. In case the grandkids ask.

1968- 2018   Fifty years. A  quick search will tell you that it started with a French student wanting to have a reciprocal right to visit an all-female dorm that triggered unrest in Paris.

Meanwhile, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy; the execution of  a Viet Cong insurgent on the street of Saigon; the high-octane Chicago Democratic Convention together made 68 a hot-boiled year.  “He ain’t heavy He is my brother” was a hit that year. Sitting out in the open, I looked up to my upper classmates band, who performed that song flawlessly. I knew then and I know now that I was witnessing history.

After all, the war (Vietnam) brought out everything: the go-go bars and the body bags. I DON”T EVER WANT TO FORGET in case the grandkids ask.

A lot has happened since: people moving in and out of my life, places I have passed by and moved on from…. everything I read and re-read, faces I failed to recognize.

1968 was the year of growing up fast, faster than the drone noise of Operation Frequent Wind in 1975.

Faster than the advancing “enemy”. Faster than I can say “Thank you President Ford”.

But there were other villains I don’t want to forget either. Save that for another time.

When you zoom out, really zooming out, the bad and the ugly both look like blips. Just blips. And goodness somehow shines on, despite the years and places in between. I remember an innocent line in “Saturday in the park” by Chicago ” a man selling ice-cream”. That’s what it’s all about: have an ice cream just like 50 years ago, last year and yesterday.

Blip!