A Cultural History of the Last Fifty Years:
An Interpretative Personal Timeline

I can no longer recall when I first saw this movie back in 79 or 80, but I have seen it countless times since then--mostly on my VHS player--and I still marvel at what a great accomplishment it was to convince the Muppets to perform on the big screen (and with all the cameo appearances from Hollywood stars thrown in there too). I was a big Muppet Show fan when it ran on television from 1976 to 1981. Part of this time, I was in college, and I looked forward to the weekly show and the guest stars. It still seems strange to me that Jim Henson (1936-1990) had to have a production company in England to make the show. The show's "pigs in space" segment was always especially funny. For a long time now, I have considered Jim Henson to have been one of the artistic geniuses of the twentieth century for what he was able to do with a sock puppet and a sawn-in-half ping pong ball (and thus creating Kermit the Frog) and then the rest of the Muppets. Henson's Muppets had appeared on Sesame Street since 1969, they had their own television show (and some specials); and they created three very popular Hollywood movies. What unbelievable puppets! Look, there are not a whole lot of successful, full-length Hollywood movies out there that star puppets (think about that). The opening seen of The Muppet Movie with Kermit the Frog playing his banjo and singing "Rainbow Connection" while on a log in the swamp is simply one of the great scenes in film history of the last fifty years. Remember, these were puppets!

The setting: Wembley Stadium London (over seventy thousand people) and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia (over one hundred thousand people)--note that the old Wembley Stadium, built 1923, has since been demolished and replaced; JFK Stadium, built 1926, has also been demolished and replaced. The temperature in Philadelphia had to have been well over 100° on the field amidst that mass of people, no clouds that day.
The concert, organized by Bob Geldorf of the Boomtown Rats, was a charity event intended to benefit victims of the Ethiopian famine. It was broadcast live around the world, and performances went on in both London and Philadelphia. See the Unofficial Live Aid Site.
We got there early because we had general admission tickets. It was already light when we reached the stadium parking lot; that means that we must have left home in the dark by at least 4 a.m. We hauled in our food and drinks and found a place about maybe 50-60 yards from the stage, off to the right a little bit. Did I say already that it was hot! Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, they called in firemen to spray the crowd with water from the fire hoses. Another place that it was watery was the corridors; the bathrooms could not handle the huge crowd that day, and there were plumbing breaks everywhere. Water was flowing out of the women's bathrooms ankle deep. It was really pretty disgusting. It was also hard to find your way back to where you were sitting if you decided to go to the bathroom, because when you are looking out over a sea of people, it is hard to figure out where your spot is.
Since performances started in London first (five hours ahead of us), we watched on the big screen while we waited for our performances. At some point in time, I recognized that someone had been playing in London for a few minutes now, kind of a Bolero tune. I had never heard the song nor the band before. Turned out that it was U2 playing "Bad." It must have been a 10-12 minute version of the song, and it was one of the greatest live concert moments that I ever experienced. That musical set sealed U2's fame, and established the group as one of the rising stars of the rock world. They have certainly lived up to that billing.
Sorry, but I don't have too many personal impressions of many of the other Philadelphia performers, although I have seen most of them on the DVD. Tom Petty did an absolutely rousing version of "Rebels." Led Zeppelin reunited on stage with Phil Collins sitting in on drums, but I have no idea what they played; only the fact that Phil Collins was the drummer. The real emotional moment of the concert occurred when Teddy Pendergrass--look him up if you don't know who he was-- appeared on stage in a wheelchair to sing "Reach out and Touch." The concert (a kind of Woodstock festival of music in miniature) ended in Philadelphia with a whole bunch of glittery Mick Jagger and Tina Turner duet performances that did not interest me in the least. Would have been better if Zeppelin had finished out the concert.

In reality, it was difficult to decide on an exact date for this item. I first encountered this novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) when I was in grad school at the University of Virginia. What an amazingly bizarre, fantastic work. I have also always loved Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog (Собачье сердце, 1925), and I think that was how I "discovered" Bulgakov.
The book is a brilliant satire/critique of Russian society of the 1930s (the height of Stalin's power and terror) and centers on the devil (Woland and his associates) arriving in Moscow and setting up shop. At the same time, the Master has written a novel about Pontius Pilate and Jesus of Nazareth, and the novel circles back and forth between the life of the Master and his lover, Margarita; the dialogue between Pontius Pilate and Jesus of Nazareth; and the exploits of Woland as he hosts a satanic witches' ball. The book contains all sorts of philosophical and historical references, and because of that, it can be challenging for the reader (but challenging in a good way). It was never published in the Soviet Union during Bulgakov's lifetime; indeed, there is no way that it ever could have been published because of its contents (even though there is evidence that Stalin liked Bulgakov ad protected him to an extent). Pieces of the novel were only finally circulated discretely in samizdat (manuscript) form in 1960s, and then it was published abroad in Germany, with the first English translation appearing in 1967.
When I was in Russia in 1990, Bulgakov had achieved cult status. We visited locations associated with the novel such as his old apartment building--it was plastered with drawings and graffiti honoring Bulgakov--which I understand has now been cleaned up and turned into a Bulgakov museum. In Kyiv we went to the street where he grew up and stood by his family home, which also seems to be some kind of museum now. This "Bulgakov becoming part of the literary establishment," I think, really does not suit him very well. I think the graffiti was more appropriate. I consider Master and Margarita to be one of he greatest literary achievements of the twentieth century and try and reread it every one or two years.

Of course, I am just kidding about the debut date. Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)--he died the same day as Stalin; so you know who got all the publicity; they even had a hard time just having his funeral--completed this ballet way back in 1935, and it first premiered in Czechoslovakia in 1938. There are a number of different versions out there now, and it remains one of the most popular ballets performed today. The music is simply fantastic.
This was the very first ballet that I had ever seen. I knew something about classical music and opera, but absolutely nothing about ballet. I saw Romeo and Juliet in a little theater (not the Bolshoi or the other major concert halls) in Moscow in the early summer of 1990. I really had no desire to watch a ballet, but our group insisted that I go. We sat upstairs, first tier, and watched and listened. There were an awful lot of foreigners/tourists in the audience that night. The ballerina in the role of Juliet was amazing, watching her float/drift backward across the stage on her toes. I still vividly remember watching the Dance of the Knights (the Montague and Capulet families dancing; the feigned awkwardness of the men heavily dressed as knights)--it is such a shame that the music has been used for commercials on television. As the ballet ended, with Romeo and Juliet dead upon the stage, inches apart, the director emerged, and put their hands together.
I watch the ballet often now on DVD (I have several productions.) or listen to the many different recordings that I have on CDs. I believe that production that I saw way back in 1990 might have been staged by the Moscow Classical Ballet, but I am not sure.

This (Jim Morrison's grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris) was, and hopefully still is, one of the essential pilgrimage place in the world for all lovers of rock music. When we visited Paris, we did not go to the Louvre, nor to Notre Dame Cathedral, but we did find our way to Morrison's grave site.
Let's go back for a moment to 1967 and check out just some of the breakthrough rock albums that appeared in the year that would later become famous as the "summer of love": The Doors, The Doors (debut album); Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow; The Byrds, Younger than Yesterday; The Grateful Dead, The Grateful Dead (debut album); The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; Pink Floyd, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (debut album); Big Brother and The Holding Company, Big Brother and the Holding Company (debut album); The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced (debut album); Cream, Disraeli Gears; Procol Harum, Procol Harum (debut album); The Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed (debut album). These albums are icons of rock music; some of the greatest ever produced.
The Doors (Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, John Densmore) produced great music with a sound that featured the unique voice of Morrison and music that was often based on his poetry. These are great songs: Light My Fire, Riders on the Storm, L.A. Woman, The End. Morrison was also one of the greatest (and most erratic) stage performers of the rock era--you can easily look up the details.
The careers of Morrison, Hendrix and Joplin are so intertwined with the 60s, the music, the hippie subculture, the drugs, the protests. Their deaths within the span of about a year (Hendrix in September 1970, Joplin in October 1970, Morrison in July 1971) signaled an end to the 1960s and the culture that had flourished then.

Seems light years ago when the DOS--a whole new generation has grown up without ever having to learn DOS commands--version of this PC strategy game first appeared. The computer game revolution was just underway, and that revolution would lead to a whole new form of entertainment based on computer games initially, and then later the PlayStation, X-box, Wii machines and the whole set of handheld game devices. I think that you would be hard-pressed to find a kid today who hasn't played video games.
Civilization was/is a strategy game, designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley for Microprose, that requires you to start with a city and try and build a successful civilization. In the process you have to battle other civilizations as you build cities to increase the size of your empire and as you add more advanced technologies (armor is a key military advance). I think that the game is similar, in a way, to the popular Sim PC games, but I never really played Sim Ant, etc. We played the first version of Civilization for years, and then Civilizaation II came out. That particular version proved to be very addictive and lead to some all-night attempts to beat "the game." Once you got started time seemed to just pass by. The Civilization 2 version is the one that I still play--it runs nicely on Windows XP, and it is really the only computer/video game that I play. I did not play the later Civilization versions, such as Civilization 3, as much simply because I could not make out the graphics very well to be able to differentiate between a settlers unit and a military unit. As computer screen sizes have gotten larger and graphics better, that is less of an issue, but I still stuck with Civilization 2, although I play it far less often then I used to. That's a photo of my copy of Civilization. The box is still complete after all these years with instruction book and 5 1/2" floppy discs inside!

It was a cold, frosty morning for President Clinton's inauguration when Maya Angelou approached the microphone. I had never heard of her and was leery of what she was going to say. She was the second poet to speak at a presidential inauguration (Robert Frost had read his poem "The Gift Outright" at President Kennedy's chilly inauguration on 20 January 1961), and the first black woman to do so. She began her poem, "On the Pulse of Morning" with the words, "A Rock, A River, A Tree, " and I remember the power, focus, dignity, emotion with which she recited her poem. She displayed a magnificent presence while reading the poem to the thousands gathered in front of her on the west lawn of the US capitol building (and the millions watching on TV). Later I wrote to her about her performance--it is rare that a poet gets an opportunity to read a work on that kind of stage--and she was kind enough to sign my copy of the poem--if only I could find it now. It was a great piece of poetry, a little long, but very, very well done.

Somewhere around 2005, I finally got around to watching Laputa: Castle in the Sky (aka Laputa or Castle in the Sky or 天空の城ラピュタ or Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta, 1986), a film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki (1941-). This was the Disney release of 2003 that generated a lot of controversy among critics and "those-in-the-know" over the dubbing and some minor changes in the original film to fit the US market--there was also criticism over the later US versions of Miyazaki's movies Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Whatever the case, the Miyazaki productions are magnificent films and easily as brilliant as some of the productions of Walt Disney. Castle in the Sky also reminded me--although in different ways--of two other more recent path-breaking films such as The Muppet Movie or Who Framed Roger Rabbit–well, not that recent!
Miyazaki is one of the leading practitioners of the Japanese form of animation, called anime (one of my former students in HIS 135 has done a nice website on the History of Anime and Manga). The "Father of Anime" was Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), a Japanese artist who became world famous in the 1960s with his creation of the characters of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, but I must have missed those when I was growing up back then.
Anime spread around the world and even to the US, but it was only twenty some years later I discovered Anime in the form of Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. The film is brilliantly illustrated, and the story has an important message for humanity in the form of the fate of those who let greed and the lust for power run their lives. The movie also brought back to me the famous line in Voltaire's Candide, "il faut cultiver notre jardin!" (Because at the end of the movie, it is the garden that survives.)