The 60's

This post at Rob Shearer's blog got me to thinking about the 60's.

It was a cataclysmic age and just as Rob says in terms of American culture it's like talking about before the Flood and after the Flood.

Although my youngest sometimes thinks I'm as old as dirt, I was born at the beginning of the 60's, but my sisters were teenagers in high school near the end of the decade. Most of what I remember is towards the end of the decade when were living at the Air Force Academy and my two older sisters were in high school.

I remember the mourning that came after the assassination of Robert Kennedy by one of my sisters. She was behaving as if on a funeral dirth. It's really the first death I remember and it was indelibly stamped upon my mind because of her behavior.

My parents always blamed the Beatles for introducing illegal drugs into the culture as being glamorous and trendy. It seems to me the entire decade was one of questioning all the status quo of what was moral and acceptable and drugs were just a part of that.

Certainly it was a volatile time and that was reflected in our household in spades. I remember the angst and stress of differing opinions being argued loudly and passionately especially the Vietnam War. Those impressions, too, are indelibly stamped upon my brain, and it's amazing how people in the same household can hold such differing views of the same subject.

As an adult, I've looked back on the era and it is sometimes hard to seperate the images from the TV, and those that replay in my mind from my family, and what is popularly accepted as truth in our culture as portrayed in books, media and movies about that time.

I've often thought that the fracturing of the family when divorce laws became more lenient led to the fracturing of our society, and that lenience began in the 60's and by the 70's any state in the union would grant you not for cause (legal term meaning for a reason, it used to be you had to sue someone for divorce because they had abandoned you, abused you, committed adultery). That coupled with the many things going on culturally and politically was a recipe for disaster!

Doing this subject justice would take several posts, and I'm not sure I have the time in my schedule to devote to the brain power it would require as well.

So, I'll pull a "Scarlet O'Hara" and say, "I'll think about it tomorrow as tomorrow is another day..." and I'll slip into my vocation as mom and homeschool teacher by way of avoidance and pursuing the "higher calling."

Anyway, I'm off to do phonics and early American History with my youngest... less volatile times, right? ;-)