Where Were You When… The Ball Dropped in 1999?

Join me for the Where Were You When? Series and share your story about how major world events impacted your life.  

Image Credit: Where Were You? Events That Changed The World 26-episode series graphic
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Because I’m a slacker who doesn’t keep up with her own blog series I am always pleased when other people write my posts for me. It also helps when these events coincide with the exact same thing that I was doing at the time.

In 1999 I was 19 years old and in my second year at a small Texas college.  I remember the hoopla surrounding the millennial new year celebration and the fear that it inspired in the armageddonists.  Will the Y2K bug revert the world’s computers to 1900 and effectively stop commerce, business, and life itself?  Some people stockpiled supplies in fear of the end times as the world prepared to usher in the new millennium. I, on the other hand, was ready to party it up just in case there was no tomorrow.

To read more about avoiding death, zombies, and water turning to blood with the new millennium head on over to So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.  If you’d like to be a part of this series please drop me a comment so I can share your blog here as well.

Where Were You When… Osama bin Laden Shuffled Off This Mortal Coil

Join me for the Where Were You When? Series and share your story about how major world events impacted your life.  

Image Credit: Where Were You? Events That Changed The World 26-episode series graphic
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Osama bin Laden; the name has haunted the American public for more than a decade and taken on mythical status.  On May 2nd of this year, President Obama accomplished what two presidents before him could not, the assassination of Al-Quaeda’s founder and international fugitive.  While I don’t believe assassinations should be utilized as a wartime tactic I do believe that the President took the only option that he felt he had available to him at the time.  I was in Nairobi, Kenya when President Obama announced Bin Laden’s death and his announcement sent shockwaves through the country and immediately put ex-pats on high alert for possible retaliation from Al-Shabaab.

I watched the announcement and updates on BBC News  as well as read local Kenyan news sources.  News articles reported mixed feelings about the Al-Quaeda leader’s death; while some welcomed his death as justice for his role in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing others railed against the West for it’s interference in international affairs.

What struck me the most was the juxtaposition of Americans celebrating the death of a “terrorist” while the world watched, when 10 years earlier, Americans watched in anger as people on the other side of the world glorified the events of September 11th.  I realize rejoicing the death of one man, a fugitive and “terrorist”, is not the same as relishing the deaths of hundreds of innocent Americans.  However, it struck me, as I watched the reactions of people half way across the world respond to Bin Laden’s assassination that if we took some time to understand our cultural differences that we could come to coexist peacefully.  Unfortunately, the world does not work this way and wars will continue as long as the West continues in its quest for global “Manifest Destiny” and the rest of the world continues to fight the yolk of democracy.

What are your thoughts on the assassination? Do you agree or disagree with the President’s decision to kill bin Laden? Do you think this is helping to bring the “War on Terror” to an end?  What could we have done differently; now, under the Bush administration, or under Clinton’s administration?

Where Were You When… Muggles And Hogwarts Entered The Lexicon

Join me for the Where Were You When? Series and share your story about how major world events impacted your life.  

Image Credit: Where Were You? Events That Changed The World 26-episode series graphic
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I’m going to start with the world-wide phenomenon, Harry Potter, in honor of the final installment of the Harry Potter film series hitting theatres.  Little did we know that June 30, 1997 would mark the beginning of one of the largest and most widely followed book series of all time.  There are few books that can claim the level of popularity and world-wide acclaim garnered by Harry Potter, first as a book series, and then as a film franchise.  The books have literally inspired new words in the collective lexicon such as muggles, quidditch, patronus among others.

In June 1997 I had just completed my junior year of high school and was spending a month in Paris studying Parisian history and practicing my French.  Honestly, my biggest memory from that summer was the news on the return flight home that a) Michael Jordan was retiring and b) Versace had been shot.

While I read the books, and enjoyed them, I was outside of  the target demographic so I wasn’t fully aware of the media blitz.  I really didn’t comprehend the magnitude of the series until I started working at a bookstore the summer after my freshman year in college.  At that point the third book was being released and we were staying open late to accommodate avid readers who wanted to purchase the book at the stroke of midnight.  I realized then the impact that the printed word could make on a generation. Even now, as the Harry Potter films draw to a close, it’s obvious the impact that they have had on scores of young adults who grew up reading the books and watching the films.  I can’t think of one book or film during my childhood that unified a generation, globally.

If you are thinking, “well this is really just a Western world phenomenon”, I can assure you that Harry Potter books were regularly checked out of the library in the small village where I lived in Africa.  Now, to return to how Harry Potter affected me personally.  While I don’t have one moment where Harry Potter touched my life, I do believe that the series provided inspiration for me as a writer and a reader.  While I may never write a best-selling novel or change the world with my words I was personally inspired by what J.K. Rowlings brought to the page and how she used words to open up a new, unseen world to readers.  There are not many authors who can imbue a book with the level of literary magic and bring an entire wizarding world to life but Rowlings accomplished it here.  These works continue to inspire my own writing, whether a blog, journal entry, or report.  I am constantly striving to bring my stories to life and use my words to make an impact on my readers.  So thank you Harry Potter and thank you J.K. Rowlings for making me a better writer.

Where Were You When

There are moments that define every generation and we reflect on these events as a society, asking one another, “where were you when?” During my own life I can think of a handful of these moments that have galvanized Americans to action or created an extraordinary national or international outcry

- Ethiopian famine/LiveAid
- the Challenger explosion
- the fall of the Berlin Wall
- Tiananmen Square
- Nelson Mandela’s release
- Oklahoma City Bombing
- Columbine School Shooting
- the death of Princess Diana
-the first Harry Potter book
- Nine/Eleven
- Hurricane Katrina
-Indonesia, Haiti, and Japan natural disasters
-Gulf Coast oil spill

As the final shuttle landing closed the door on three decades of space exploration for America, the final installment of the Harry Potter franchise hit theatres, and Norway was rocked by twin attacks last week, I have been considering the impact these events have in our daily lives. How did these events shape you personally?  Is there another event that made a profound impact on your life?  I would like to start a series exploring how these events (and others) impacted individuals and what that means to the greater social collective.

If you’d like to take part then you can either write a post and link back here so I can include your blog in the series or you can leave a comment or email me at rbranaman(at)gmail(dot)com about writing a guest post here.

Include the badge on your blog! Right-click or ctrl-click on the image you want and save it to your desktop, then upload it onto your own blog. Please link back here so I know you are participating in the series!

Image Credit: Where Were You? Events That Changed The World 26-episode series graphic