It's almost already Monday in Germany (depending on when you read this) and that means the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall is just getting airborne. As one of about twenty-five percent of all Americans who ever served in the US Armed Forces, I had the opportunity to be stationed, and live, in (at the time) what was called West Germany. I was there as the Evil Empire, Warsaw Pact, call it what you will, imploded and went out of business, starting at Bornholmer Strasse (I have a piece of The Wall in my basement. I've never known what to do with it, but I'll never get rid of it.). I remember it as a rare moment when I truly thought we could do anything we set our minds to.
I've saved this note for quite some time, as my secret treasure and pleasure, because I now live many thousands of miles away from Berlin and Germany, just Germany (no East or West) in an area where many of my neighbors consider a trip to a foreign land as akin to a journey to Disneyland. We're such a large country, sprawling in all directions, with so many different kinds of people, we see the rest of the world more often than we should as a sideshow. I once read where in New York City, alone, there are more people of Irish descent than live in Dublin, the capital of Eire and more people who claim Jewish ancestry than in Tel Aviv. I wouldn't be surprised to learn in the Bronx there are more Who's than in all of Whoville.
It stands to reason, and mathematics, we have more people with German bloodlines than live in Der Vaterland (though they love their muttis, make no mistake-Germany is a Fatherland) and so perhaps across this country today and tomorrow there will be some notice of events from damals and their impact on heute. Unless, of course, one of the Kardashian children does something (anything), or Lindsay L or one of the other media prima ballerinas attracts a camera (they're like pandas in the zoo. You've seen 'em, I've seen 'em. They don't actually do anything but we stand and stare at them for hours. What's the matter with us?). Yeah, I'm not sanguine that we'll look up and see the sky.
My two children, one in his late twenties, the other in her early twenties were much younger when the country of their birth took its first, halting steps towards reunification. I don't know how much of it they remember as I've never asked but they exist because their father found himself a guest in their mother's country and then he found their mother and together they found a family. I've read where we each are the sum of everyone we've ever met and if only because the fall of The Wall expanded the pool, it would be memorable and historical. I'll always have the movie in my head of the Trabants rolling down to A3, south of Frankurt towards Heidelberg.
That the end of a divided Germany put an exclamation mark at the stunning acceleration of events that resulted in The Death of Communism , I leave to the brilliant P. J. O'Rourke to write about and hope you enjoy. Today, spare a moment for a moment twenty years ago when the world grew larger, and smaller, simultaneously--when the Good Guys won and a lot of people who had never had anything to smile about learned to laugh. We could do it again, and do it today (and everyday) and, believe me it would never get old because for someone, somewhere, the next time will always be the first time.
-bill kenny
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