J Starr

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  1. J Starr 4425 Community Answer

    Let's see...  born 1957, so 1952 through 1962, right?

    LOTS going on then. 


    • The Immigration and Naturalization Act was signed in '52-  still a big deal as President Trump continues to squelch what he considers to be immigrants from unacceptable ( "shit-hole" ) countries.  It sets the tone by stating country of origin, religion and race cannot be grounds for refusing immigration- an idea which is anathema to Trmp's feelings about non-rich, Caucasian people's value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1952
    • In '53, the Korean War was declared basically a stalemate  with an Armistice agreement.  A whooole lot of men and women got to come home.  Interesting tidbit: The most famous television show about that time was M*A*S*H which ran for ELEVEN seasons, even though the war, itself, our in-country participation in the declared "police action", only lasted about 3 years. Alan Alda got a lot out of it.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Armistice_Agreement
    • '54 has two strong entries: Firstly, President Eisenhower prroposed what came to be called The Domino Theory.  This was used to start our US involvement in the Vietnamese War.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory  And secondly, Brown versus the Board of Education shredded the Jim Crowe idea of "Separate but Equal"   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education 
    • In '55, Dr, Jonas Salk invented the first polio vaccine. A scourge of mostly childhood deaths and disability was coming to an end from the disease.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine
    • Despite celebrity news such as Elvis appearing on The Tonight Show, and Jackson Pollack dying, '56 should be known for President Eisenhower signing the Interstate Highway Act into law.  By creating the Interstate system, the United States had made it possible to drive pretty much anywhere in the Continental US using the most direct and smoothest route possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956   Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were re-elected, President and VP, too.

      And I haven't even been born yet!
    • '57 is known for two civil rights events: The Civil Rights Act of 1957 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1957  and the desegregation of Arkansas schools by order of President Eisenhower  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine 

      And, of course, I was finally given to the world as a whole.
    • '58 slowed down a bit- I was busy learning how to be a human, soaking it all in- so it's no wonder not much else happened. But, NASA was formed. (We can but hope President Trump's "Space Force" will one day have equal lauding).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA
    • Odd as it seems, I am going to give '59 to the television series, Bonanza. The series has set records such as still being in syndication- SIXTY-ONE YEARS later people still watch it. Not bad for "just another Western". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonanza
    • in '60, we again see a number of important race issues being dealt with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1960    and a classic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee      A few other things happened, of course; JFK won the Presidential election, we-  ooops!- flew one of our spy planes over the Soviet Union and got caught, and the FNL- or Vietcong- became a thing.
    • In '61, MANY important things happened.  Almost so many My Fourth Birthday could be over-shadowed.  If I cannot pick that, then I suppose I have to go with the OFFICIAL start of The Viet Nam War.  This event, this tradgedy, would go on to shape the rest of the 1960s, really.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
    • I have to give '62 to The Cuban Missile Crisis, although, culturally, I think Marilyn Monroe's death from an overdose is a very close second.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe  Decisions, decisions.

     

     

    So now to winnow them down to Only One.  America has voted- or, at least I have- and I must give my vote for most influential societal or cultural change in the decade surrounding my birth to...

    Equality Issues

    They are still on-going.  There are still problems-  STILL!- today,  It isn't just race- although that is the biggest bugaboo- it is sexism and gender issues and ageism and all kinds of problems of measuring people according to some specific and unnecessary yardstick.  It has to STOP!

    “And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.”  ~Sir Terry Pratchett; The Night Watch



    UTC 2020-08-14 07:17 PM 0 Comments
  2. I came into the world eleven years and two months after the end of WW2. My parents, in their mid-twenties when I was born, had experienced the tremors of the war on their parents' farms and in public school in rural Ontario. As children in a pacifist religious community, the Mennonites, they probably had no opportunity to express their fears at home but once grown up and in their own home no one stopped them from talking. And talk they did.  

    Off the top of my head, the fifties were the decade of global recovery from the Second World War. Couples got together and produced offspring like it was humanity's last chance to populate the planet. The label "Baby Boomers" has followed us down the decades. But I'm finding much more in History.com, information that explains so many of the fears and concerns expressed by my parents while I was growing up in the sixties. 

    QUOTE: The 1950s were...the dawn of the Cold War...

    ---------------

    I never realized that the Cold War only started about the time my parents came of age, i.e. in the 1950s, but that explains the day my father shared an article from the newspaper with Mom and she replied that "They can't know in Ottawa when our hay is fit to put up." I hard the fear in her voice. Ottawa was hundreds of miles to the north east and the way the weather worked it was at time impossible for the neighbourhood farmers to know if the other man's hay was ready to put up. Let alone some city-slicker government official in far-off Ottawa. It also explains the day my primary grade public school teacher said the next time the enemy would probably fly in over the North Pole. Adults were scared big time.

    From the above article I find a number of other products of the fifties that became part and parcel of Western culture:


    • television, with its "Twilight Zone" and "Leave It To Beaver," phrases that continue to be used in the common vernacular.
    • Elvis Presley
    • Rock 'n' Roll music


    QUOTE: Music marketing, changed, too: For the first time, music began to target youth.

    UTC 2020-08-23 04:40 AM 0 Comments
  3. I was born the year after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  American triumphalism and imperialism were at their peak, Communism was surging and the Cold War was beginning.  Miraculously, we survived.  Now we're choking ourselves and the Earth with our consumer society successes.  Hard to say which is worse.  

    UTC 2020-08-29 08:07 PM 0 Comments

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