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Jan. 12th, 2003 01:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wrogI just noticed how the Where Were You When... quiz is a whole bunch of late-80s and 90s events plus the JFK assassination. That's a rather dead giveaway that it was written by some Gen-Y kid who just threw in the JFK thing to catch the Old People. (I'll also guess it was a PNW person, since the Nisqually quake wasn't really national news).
I mean, c'mon. What about
13. The Apollo 11 moon landing (7/20/1969)
We were vacationing at my great aunt's cottage on Lake Michigan near Ludington. Her TV barely worked; the sound was sortof ok, but the picture kept going out. Very, very, very annoying.
14. Phase One (8/15/1971)
A Republican president announces wage and price controls to tame a "runaway" inflation rate of 4.5%. If you thought the stink over GHWBSr violating his silly "read my lips no new taxes" pledge was bad, that was nothing compared to this. And of course, little did they know what was coming (inflation got to 13% in 1980). My dad was incredibly pissed; he'd been overdue for a raise for quite some time.
15. The fall of Allende (9/11/1973)
Well all right, this was a big deal for us because my dad grew up in Chile, my grandparents had just "escaped" a few months earlier, and my uncle was a senior executive at a copper mining company whose assets there has just been nationalized. Lots of phone calls. We all breathed a sigh of relief that Chile wasn't going to be lost to the Communists like Cuba.
My uncle later had this 'funny' story about having to fly down to Miami in the middle of the night to deliver a special suitcase to some random people; naturally, he didn't dare look inside it.
16. The Yom Kippur attack (10/6/1973)
My 7th grade social studies teacher (yes, she was Jewish) was completely devastated. We all sat around in class in stunned silence that morning, figuring Israel was toast. I didn't find out about Nixon pulling the covers off the silos (when the Soviets threatened to intervene to save the Egyptian army) until years later.
17. Nixon announcing his resignation (8/8/1974)
It was horrifying; there was such foul language on those tapes. Politicians weren't supposed to talk like that. No, really.
18. The fall of Saigon (4/29/1975)
Glued to the TV, you better believe it.
19. The takeover of the US embassy in Iran (11/4/1979)
This was a big deal, too, but I don't remember where I was for it (aside from being a college freshman). Though once Cronkite hit on the idea of ending every broadcast with "and so ends the <n>-th day of the captivity of the American hostages in Iran", I knew then that Carter was finished.
20. Outbreak of the First Gulf War (9/22/1980)
I happened to be taking a politics course that semester (silly distributive requirements): International Relations. The instructor was something of a specialist on the Middle East. He was sure it would all be over in a few weeks.
I mean, c'mon. What about
13. The Apollo 11 moon landing (7/20/1969)
We were vacationing at my great aunt's cottage on Lake Michigan near Ludington. Her TV barely worked; the sound was sortof ok, but the picture kept going out. Very, very, very annoying.
14. Phase One (8/15/1971)
A Republican president announces wage and price controls to tame a "runaway" inflation rate of 4.5%. If you thought the stink over GHWBSr violating his silly "read my lips no new taxes" pledge was bad, that was nothing compared to this. And of course, little did they know what was coming (inflation got to 13% in 1980). My dad was incredibly pissed; he'd been overdue for a raise for quite some time.
15. The fall of Allende (9/11/1973)
Well all right, this was a big deal for us because my dad grew up in Chile, my grandparents had just "escaped" a few months earlier, and my uncle was a senior executive at a copper mining company whose assets there has just been nationalized. Lots of phone calls. We all breathed a sigh of relief that Chile wasn't going to be lost to the Communists like Cuba.
My uncle later had this 'funny' story about having to fly down to Miami in the middle of the night to deliver a special suitcase to some random people; naturally, he didn't dare look inside it.
16. The Yom Kippur attack (10/6/1973)
My 7th grade social studies teacher (yes, she was Jewish) was completely devastated. We all sat around in class in stunned silence that morning, figuring Israel was toast. I didn't find out about Nixon pulling the covers off the silos (when the Soviets threatened to intervene to save the Egyptian army) until years later.
17. Nixon announcing his resignation (8/8/1974)
It was horrifying; there was such foul language on those tapes. Politicians weren't supposed to talk like that. No, really.
18. The fall of Saigon (4/29/1975)
Glued to the TV, you better believe it.
19. The takeover of the US embassy in Iran (11/4/1979)
This was a big deal, too, but I don't remember where I was for it (aside from being a college freshman). Though once Cronkite hit on the idea of ending every broadcast with "and so ends the <n>-th day of the captivity of the American hostages in Iran", I knew then that Carter was finished.
20. Outbreak of the First Gulf War (9/22/1980)
I happened to be taking a politics course that semester (silly distributive requirements): International Relations. The instructor was something of a specialist on the Middle East. He was sure it would all be over in a few weeks.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-12 07:23 pm (UTC)It still annoys me that, as a result, there's no easy terminology for People Who Grew Up in the 70s.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-12 10:49 pm (UTC)Since generational shifts don't tend to map nicely to decades, the other way of looking at Generation X is anyone born after the assassination of Kennedy but before the end of the Vietnam War. Basically, people born in the cultural 60s as opposed to the chronological 60s. That puts me, born in 1969, smack in the middle of the group.
To define your generation similarly, you'd have to come up with an appropriate beginning date. Maybe the release of the first Elvis record? And you came of age in the punk, disco, and new wave era. The Blank Generation.
The next group (Gen Y) would be those born after Vietnam but before the end of the Cold War (though that's a bit longer than some of the other generations--vaguely, the Reagan-era kids.) Which means at this point we really should be talking about Generation Z--those born between the end of the Cold War but before September 11.
Of course, these generations are shorter than actual generations in the familial sense, but I think that gives a better picture. New generations tend to gain their popular cultural and historical references from two sources--their parents (two cultural generations before them) and from the people who grew up just before them (one cultural generation). So for me, both the 60s generation and the punk generation were influential to me as I grew up.
It's all pretty silly, since it's just a way to label diverse groups of people who really don't have much in common. But that's how I think of it, anyway.