anniversary

58 years ago today, my parents were married. August 7, 1948. I'm just surfing around the Internet, trying to get some idea of what the world must have been like on that day. The London Olympics would have been in full swing -- the first Olympic Games since the 1936 games in Berlin. Germany and Japan were not invited to the London Games. One of the big dramas was the finish of the marathon, in which a Belgian runner, Etienne Gailly, entered the stadium first but was so spent that he was not able to do his lap around the track to win the event before he was passed by the two runners behind him.

I've been reading some of William Whyte's early magazine articles for Fortune, forerunners of what would eventually become his book "The Organization Man", documenting the sociological changes taking place in post-war U.S. that eventually brought about a new style of architecture, urban design, lifestyle changes, mobility, suburbanization. Much of this, we're reaping the cost of today in terms of how we live and (yawn) environmental destruction. Much of this sea change seems to have come out of a new set of expectations following the end of World War II. Which is odd, because I've been thinking that the last time we saw the kind of collective response to a global threat that might work with global warming was the response of Britons to the threatened Nazi invasion. What sent my thinking down this road was Al Gore's citation of Winston Churchill's words (not about the war but about another event -- go see the movie). For all of the horrors he participated in, Churchill had a way of getting people moving. I remember how much my father loved him. I remember the day that Churchill died -- a sad day in my house. It was a few days after my 7th birthday and just a few months before we left England for Canada. The television screen went black for a good minute before the sombre voice of the BBC announced his death. Is there any chance today that a charismatic leader could come along and lead the world, or some part of the world, in the direction it needs to go? We seem so much bigger, less ruly, more greedy, scattered, confused. It's hard to believe one person could bring it all together. Maybe the right combination of charismatic leader, a Kennedy type, and an event, bigger even than Katrina, all taking place at around the same time, could push us into massive action. Or maybe we'd just raise our dozing heads from the table for a minute, peer at it all with a single sleepy eye and say "oh, great, just another 9-11 clone. Wonder when the movie will come out..."

But this is supposed to be about my folks. This was their day. Bright eyed, happy, keen as hell to have a big bunch of kids (which they did). The Nazis beaten, what could possibly stand in the way of centuries of happiness, stability, and prosperity? My parents both saw the world out, only a few years ago, believing with all their hearts that this was still so. Their children, all successful, prosperous, and leading their own happy families gave them no reason at all to doubt it. I'm glad they had that. Happy anniversary, mum and dad.