Started with a decade of extremes: Warhol & Woodstock v the assassination of Martin Luther King, The assassination of JFK and the moon landing he initiated. Some Like It Hot and Marilyn's suicide. Israel went from existential peril to the euphoria following the 6-day war.
Then the 70s, and the end of the Vietnam war but also Watergate. Glam rock v Abba. The Godfather and Metzitzim v The Fiddler on the Roof. And Israel, coming from near annihilation in the Yom Kipur war to peace with Egypt and glorious wins in the Eurovision (twice) and the European Basketball Champions Cup (twice). To quote Tal Brody: "we are on the map and we are staying on the map!"
The 80s. Dynasty and big shoulder pads. Perestroika and the fall of the Berlin Wall v Tiananmen Square. Columbia, the first space shuttle took off and the Challenger never came back. Lennon was murdered. Punk. Not related. AIDS. Wall Street with Gordon "greed is good" Gekko. And in Israel, another war. This time a very long one.
Then the 90s. Clinton and Monica. The first Gulf war. Yugoslavia fell apart - war raged in central Europe for the first time in 50 years. The Rwanda massacre. Dolly the sheep and the PC. Seinfeld. Nirvana and the Spice Girls. Forrest Gump beating Pulp Fiction for best picture. The Oslo Accord - Arafat and Rabin shaking hands for peace. Rabin soon paid with his life.
A new millennium. 9/11. The World Trade Center collapsing live on TV. Al Qaeda. Iraq & Afghanistan. The decade of the mobile phone and the Internet. Google. iPhone. The decade in which Global Warming came to the fore. Tsunami, Katrina. The Human Genome and the LHC. The Euro. The great recession. China and the rest of the BRICS. Harry Potter. The Sopranos. The decade when TV made the movies irrelevant. A black man with a Muslim middle name - highly intelligent, uniquely articulate and extremely good looking but still, a black man, was voted American President!
50 years. And I am so happy for him.
And yet, really sad for not being there to celebrate with him. 4,000km is quite a distance. And I feel it even more today. Enjoy your day MBB. Hope to celebrate it with you when we meet next. Many, many happy returns.
PS 900km down. Only 100km to go.
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