Dr Doran
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This is extremely interesting. I am getting insights into all of you. I still recommend the book GENERATIONS by Howe and Straus(s). It tries and largely succeeds to explain American history by generations. I am always surprised that it has not been read more, as it is highly readable. Their major premise might not be correct, though: namely, that four-generation cycles recur. A "civic" generation, a "silent conformist" generation, a "spiritual" generation, and a rebellious cynical generation. In the 20th century, this is exemplified in their schema by the WW2 vets, the post WW2 but pre-hippie people, the hippies, and then the post-hippie Gen X. Supposedly when the generation after X "comes of age" they will be the next "civic" generation. I hope so. The idea of historical cycles has its bogus elements (I say this as a professional historian by trade), but very smart people like the Arthur Schlesingers Sr. and Jr. thought that American politics had gone in cycles, so who knows.
I was born in 1970. I am a latter-day punkrocker. I started listening to punkrock in (as you might guess) my early teens, in the early to mid 1980s, so I was too young to be a part of the first wave of that scene but I identified with it heavily when I was in my early teens, all the way until I was in my early 20s when I got sick of it. But one of the things about punkrock that resonates with me now (now as a 'vintage person') is that it utterly rejected the late 1960s and 1970s entirely. I loved that aspect about punkrock. I hated bell bottoms, long hair, peace signs, overrelaxation, and all of the stuff the writer Joan Didion portrayed in the alarming piece "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" that she wrote. However, I love the back-to-the-land element of the 1960s movement, the sense of freedom, the refusal to live by obsolete rules. But those virtues do not need the ugly parts of the hippie movement which I still hate. Such as tie-dyes, a horror beyond all horror.
My father and mother had me late. I was a surprise. My eldest brother had spun my mother's birth control pills around and around in their plastic hexagon, and I was born 9 months later. i am not joking. I believe it was a happy surprise, but then again perhaps I believe this in order to be OK with it.
My father was born in 1921. He was stationed stateside in WW2 but remembers all of it, growing up in the 1930s and 1940s and trying to make his way in L.A. as a classical musician. My mother was born in 1930 in Canada. Her father had emigrated there from France in 1907 at the age of 14. My mother did not know English until she was 20. She moved to California in the 1950s, was a nurse, and bought a convertible. She met my father at a Catholic dance in L.A. in 1955 and they fell in love. So that explains all the vintage interest I have.
I was born in 1970. I am a latter-day punkrocker. I started listening to punkrock in (as you might guess) my early teens, in the early to mid 1980s, so I was too young to be a part of the first wave of that scene but I identified with it heavily when I was in my early teens, all the way until I was in my early 20s when I got sick of it. But one of the things about punkrock that resonates with me now (now as a 'vintage person') is that it utterly rejected the late 1960s and 1970s entirely. I loved that aspect about punkrock. I hated bell bottoms, long hair, peace signs, overrelaxation, and all of the stuff the writer Joan Didion portrayed in the alarming piece "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" that she wrote. However, I love the back-to-the-land element of the 1960s movement, the sense of freedom, the refusal to live by obsolete rules. But those virtues do not need the ugly parts of the hippie movement which I still hate. Such as tie-dyes, a horror beyond all horror.
My father and mother had me late. I was a surprise. My eldest brother had spun my mother's birth control pills around and around in their plastic hexagon, and I was born 9 months later. i am not joking. I believe it was a happy surprise, but then again perhaps I believe this in order to be OK with it.
My father was born in 1921. He was stationed stateside in WW2 but remembers all of it, growing up in the 1930s and 1940s and trying to make his way in L.A. as a classical musician. My mother was born in 1930 in Canada. Her father had emigrated there from France in 1907 at the age of 14. My mother did not know English until she was 20. She moved to California in the 1950s, was a nurse, and bought a convertible. She met my father at a Catholic dance in L.A. in 1955 and they fell in love. So that explains all the vintage interest I have.
