Masonry

Hey, history buffs: Where were you thirty years ago?
It could be that you were still trying to put your life back together after the Loma Prieta earthquake that rocked the Bay Area even as the local baseball franchises went head to head in a World Series that had to be put on hold while both cities dug out and cleaned up. Batman had just been brought back to the big screen, setting up what would eventually become a burr underneath Martin Scorsese's saddle after a few more decades. George H.W. Bush was President of the United States. I mention most of this because I didn't have a blog yet and many of these events seem important to me.
Like the fact that it was thirty years ago that construction began on the first McDonald's In Russia. This was the kind of thing that led to the Scorpions recording their Glasnost hit, "Wind Of Change." And for those of you who may be too young to remember the Scorpions, they rocked like a hurricane, even though they were saddled with some pretty severe accents. But because they were from a country that chose to build a wall down the middle of what used to be their capital, we give them a pass here. And because it was thirty years ago that the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.
It wasn't an earthquake, or a stampede to be first in line for a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. They use the metric system over there. After years of pressure from within and without, the edifice which had been the most outward symbol of divisions created by the Cold War was toppled.
I wasn't there. I watched it on TV. And it is just now occurring to me what a terrible shame it is that we weren't more equipped to deal with that groundswell of democracy. As those protesters leaped into the vacuum created by all those years of Soviet oppression, we gave them our best: blue jeans, MTV, and a chance to be "free." In 2019, walls are back in fashion, and the freedom that was chased for all those years is being turned back on itself. Those open borders are closing down as the European Union begins to crack under the strain of Nationalism. Boris Johnson has improbably turned Britain on itself to collapse under the weight of its inability to do those things that make a country truly free.
And now, just down the road, a new wall is being built. Because, we are told, "Walls work." If the goal is to build frustration and anti-government hysteria, then I would have to agree. I just don't see it as a step forward.
There's a new Batman movie being made.