Comments on: November 9, 1989

By: grego

grego — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:50:09 +0000

I found out about it about two years later.

Ok.

I find out about a lot of things years later, and it seems nothing would be different with me, had I known.

Most world events affect us much less than private events do.

(9/11 was a little different.)

What happened? Perhaps one gamebook plan stopped, one came into effect, there was a big relief, and… (Read about the recent psychological research about what’s possible after “the big relief” from moments of threat and fear, which in fact I used to start relationships at Ricks. Scare them, release them, slip under the radar… This post is a little about relationships, right? ;) )

Also, a rising and threatening economy got slammed (once more), and another part of America the Great celebrated for other reasons.

Sure, the gospel could now be taught, families were reunited, etc. Are the people all better off, now that democracy (wait, why is it never “constitutionalism”, or “republicanism”??) is available?

I guess the good thing is, there are often blessings and opportunities that come with other events.

It’s hard, with a limited human view, to really understand the difference between a blessing and a curse…

By: Pam W.

Pam W. — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:37:02 +0000

I was a senior at BYU and editor of the Daily Universe — so my co-workers and I were printing all those stories about the fall of the Wall. I was amazed, having visited Eastern Europe the year before, and yet — I never turned on the TV to see any of that famous footage. I guess I was busy with classes, the breakup of my parents’ marriage, etc.

Generally I consider keeping the TV off to be a virtue, but in this case I wish I’d spent a few hours watching history being made. I can watch some of it on YouTube now, but I wish I’d seen it THEN!

By: FoxyJ

FoxyJ — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:10:02 +0000

I was 11 when it happened and I do remember a fair bit about it, probably because I had a paper route and was a precocious child that read the newspapers every morning as I folded them.

The one I’m embarrassed about is Sept 11 (I probably shouldn’t even confess this to the internet). I was living by myself in an apartment with no television, radio, or internet. I was also working 30 hours a week, taking classes full-time at BYU, and planning my wedding that was going to happen in two months. Yes I heard about it, but didn’t really watch any news coverage of it or anything. I still feel embarrassed that it didn’t have a big impact on me at the time.

I was more shaken by the LA riots, because I lived 40 miles away at the time and several of my classmates came from families that owned businesses in the area that were affected by them. My junior high was also already fairly tense with gang/racial issues so that just made things worse. Anyways, it’s interesting how sometimes some of the more newsworthy things affect us in different ways. Many people I know who are around my age barely remember Desert Storm, but my dad spent six months over there and we spent that entire time watching CNN pretty much non-stop.

By: Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:17:24 +0000

Well, Chanson, if you were in Budge Hall at the time, then you might have seen even more than the Berlin Wall falling, but we are Not. Going. There.

By: chanson

chanson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:44:07 +0000

That is too funny — I was a freshman at BYU, too, and I remember it perfectly! I remember watching news about it on the TV of one of my dorm-mates at Budge Hall.

The event that’s embarrassing for me is the “September 6″ incident. I’d never even heard of this famous group excommunication until about fifteen years after it happened. I was highly motivated to get out of BYU ASAP, so I graduated after only three years, and promptly stopped paying attention to anything Mormon. I’ve gotten interested in Mormonism again within the past few years, and it was just at this past Sunstone Symposium that I realized that my BYU classmates were still there when that happened!

By: Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:13:57 +0000

I was on my mission in South Korea. I saw something about it on a news broadcast, I think, or perhaps a photo in a newspaper. I proceded to buy, borrow, or steal every English-language news source I could find, and followed the events as best I could. The Tianmanmen Square protests and massacre had taken place that April, and everyone in Korea had been talking about it, and I didn’t know what was going on and couldn’t follow the news and felt like a complete idiot. I swore I wouldn’t let that happen to me again.

By: Crick

Crick — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:21:11 +0000

Whether we were aware of the events’ importance at the time or not, we should be aware of it now. Anne Applebaum wrote on this topic in the Washington Post–some people today can only think of what good things have still not happened without realizing how big of a deal it was and still is–that totalatarian governments finally caved to the will of the people and the knowledge that the Soviets would not back them up if they didn’t.

But Jonathan…I think we want a post on what happened to you and why your future wife said she would have nothing to do with you!

By: Ben H

Ben H — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:05:42 +0000

As an Air Force ROTC cadet in the fall of 1989, I had quite personal reasons to notice these developments in the Warsaw Pact and USSR! All my life, that region had lurked like Mordor, mysterious and dangerous. Though I had traveled around the world, I could never imagine being able to go there. I memorized MiGs for war games as a teenager, and then as a cadet. Then the wall came down, and the whole empire seemed to just evaporate. I remember sitting in class one day when an officer came in to tell us that the whole orientation of the military would probably be changing as a result. Like Johnna, I felt a bit like the sun had just risen in the middle of the night. I, too, had enough other things on my plate (heavy course load, reevaluating my major) that I missed a lot of the details, so I appreciate the commemorations, such as this series on the BBC.

By: Phoebe

Phoebe — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:07:57 +0000

We were another family in the Bay Area working on putting our house back together and repairing water leaks that November. I was aware of events in Europe, but more concerned with whether we were going to have heat and hot water for the winter. I wish I could have paid more attention to these stunning events. I had majored in Poly Sci (UCLA 1970) and didn’t think the wall would come down in my lifetime.

By: blueagleranch

blueagleranch — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:21:32 +0000

The night the wall came down stands out starkly in my memory due to a serendipitous bit of irony. My husband and I had spent the evening at the home of some acquaintences of the World War II generation. They had recently returned from a trip to eastern Europe where they had contacts during the Cold War and where the husband had worked as an occasional agent for the US military and the CIA in his specialty of biological warfare. While showing us their slides and relating their adventures, a slide of the Berlin Wall appeared and the husband declared with authority, “That wall will never come down.”

Later that evening after returning home, we flipped on the television to catch the news while we were getting ready for bed. There they were by the hundreds, probably thousands–streaming over the wall! What a stunning sight. We sat mesmerized for quite some time, before turning off the television and going to bed, only to wake up in a whole new world.