Saturday, December 10, 2016

Finding the Last Lost Generation: The Christmas Truce of WWI


To go back in time exactly one century ago, the world found itself at Christmas time, about halfway through WWI.  Because of how the cycles of history go, you can reach back to a similar era to better understand the present one. As the cycles of generations go, once every four generations is a Lost Generation.  This is what Generation X is, this is what the soldiers of WWI were.


In the spirit of seeing history and time as cyclical and not linear, I am beginning a new project as the year comes to an end. It is a journey of reaching back to the last Lost Generation to find synchronicity between their generation and Gen X. Beyond that, I want to see what messages, what signposts, they left for us, to help us and to give us hope, because the journey of Generation X is much like theirs.

The main event that defined the last lost generation was WWI. An extraordinary signpost they gave us very early in that war was the Christmas Truce of 1914. French, German, British, and other soldiers declared impromptu truces along areas between the English Channel and Switzerland. Not everyone in the war stopped fighting that Christmas, but individual units dotting the Western Front put down their weapons as a sort of rebellion against the violence of war.  Stepping out of their trenches to exchange a smile or a handshake, to have a drink or smoke together, to sing Christmas carols, and to bury their dead. Those who chose to participate saw a humanity in each other they could not see before.  Soldiers spoke to each other in broken forms of each other's languages, in every European accent you can think of, to make a genuine connection with the other side. A similar spontaneous situation took place on the Eastern front, the first move coming from Austro-Hungarian commanders, and Russian soldiers reciprocated. At Easter 1915, Orthodox troops created truces with the other side as well.

There are times when we find ourselves so lost, the only place we feel even remotely at home is in No Man's Land. Yet, this can be the place where the best of human moments exist, a place where we are the least alone.  In our current political climate, we see an enormous split, where many have dug into ideological trenches. We can step out of these trenches, these digital veils, and open our hearts to hear the stories and struggles of those on the other side. We can choose to see the faces of those who believe differently than we do as truly human, and know that we all feel anger, fear, heartbreak, and hope in the exact same way.


In just three minutes, this powerful clip gives you a glimpse into that extraordinary day that changed history because of human kindness.  (Or search YouTube for Sainsbury's official 2014 Christmas ad).



When we can climb out of our trenches, and extend a hand, we can see the divine in others, and they can see the divine in us.  May we all have moments this season where we show kindness that we, in some way, change history.



Joyeux Noël
Fröliche Weihnachten
Vrolijk Kerstfeest
Buon Natale
счастливого Рождества
Boldog Karácsonyt

  Merry Christmas.  



_________________________
(c) Chloe Koffas 2016

sources: Wikipedia, History.com



Sunday, November 6, 2016

In Spite of Everything


In Spite of Everything, by Susan Gregory Thomas, is a memoir I read recently that is a reflection on the larger collective experience of Generation X.  While her thoughtful honesty and humor drew me in, there was this painful familiarity I felt as her story echoed the experiences of my own life and many Gen Xers I have known.

She mentions in the book that according to U.S. census and other data, almost half of all Generation X children's families split and 40 percent were latchkey kids. She makes the point that the "benign neglect" concept that was commonly embraced by Boomer parents in how they raised Gen Xers during the '70s and '80s wasn't so benign after all, and in many cases, it was truly just neglect.

There is a lot of insight in the book on how the difficult childhoods of many Gen Xers has made us want to give our kids what we didn't have, and has made us become the kind of parents we wish we could've had, and how in spite of everything, our best intentions don't always lead us to where we thought we were going. She does a beautiful job of telling her story as part of our larger generational story: her parents divorced the same year mine did.





With extensive knowledge of classic literature, she makes references to everything from Greek mythology to Proust to illustrate her struggles, and to a large extent the struggle of the lives of many Xers as we have tried to recover from childhood wounds and to hold our relationships together in the present.  Among the timeless literature she references, she points to the Bible and sees scripture as a way of finding peace among the stress, confusion, and loneliness of our lives.  She mentions the technique of Lectio Divina, which she began to use when going through a dark point in her life.  She points to God as a place of solace, she points to Christ as "the very definition of hard-core punk." No doubt that is the highest compliment a Gen Xer could give -- I have always felt that way, too.

An excerpt from the book that explains what has defined each generation over the last several decades:

"It is a hard truism that each generation is shaped by its war.  The Greatest Generation was forged by WWII; Baby Boomers were defined by Vietnam and the civil rights and antiwar movements. Generation X's war, I would argue, was the ultimate war at home: divorce.  We didn't get Purple Hearts or red badges of courage, nothing that could be culturally shared or healed.  Our injuries were private, secret, solitary..."

The hope that rises from her suffering is that in spite of the fear that we all are randomly in orbit around some larger force out of our control, we may actually be deeply connected because all matter in the universe is made of the same substance.  In spite of our fear that we are ultimately alone, it may be that we are far more connected to one another -- much than we ever would've imagined.  






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(c) 2016 by Chloe Koffas 



Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Ben Cooper and Collegeville: The Retro Halloween Costumes of Gen X

Staring at the illustrations on the costume box and admiring the mask through the clear cellophane just before I pulled out what I would wear for Halloween was a ritual that I remember with so much happiness. These memories come from the late 1970s and very early 1980s, yet I can still feel the fiber of the thin cardboard box against my small hands and I can still smell the vinyl as I would first pull the costume out of the box.  

And the Magic-Glo - there was nothing like the soft green glow coming from kid's costumes as the smell of caramel, chocolate, licorice, Blow Pops, and pop culture would come wafting from the plastic pumpkin shaped buckets or the super hero pillow cases little Gen Xers would use to hold their candy.  





At the time I never noticed the Ben Cooper brand on these costumes, though now that name is the perfect search term for looking up pictures of Gen Xers in Halloween costumes through the years as we grew up.  Considering how easily these types of costumes would fall apart if you tried to wear them more than just on Halloween night, I guess this company saw a market for "sturdy" costumes you could wear over and over, like when you just can't wait for Halloween, and maybe even when it's already Thanksgiving.  I have a vague memory of seeing this cardboard box in a fellow Gen Xer's toy box when I was very small:






Collegeville was the other main competing company to Ben Cooper at the time.  This is another good search term for looking up pictures of Gen Xers dressed as all the cartoon characters we used to watch.




My favorite Ben Cooper costume that I wore was Casper the Friendly Ghost.  Apparently both Ben Cooper and Collegeville had the commercial rights to Casper...here's what was going on behind the scenes for retailers who were thinking of selling the costumes in their stores that we bought and took home as little kids: 





Happy Halloween, Generation X.  



Saturday, September 17, 2016

River Phoenix - I Don't Want to Stand Where He Died

It's hard to choose just one person as a the symbol or voice of a generation.  For Generation X, many say it was Kurt Cobain, many others say it was River Phoenix.  Strangely, Kurt and River died within just five months of each other.  Gen Xers barely had time to grieve River when we heard the news of Kurt.  I distinctly remember walking between classes in high school, the weight of the books in my backpack heavy on my shoulders, staring up at a pale blue sky and thinking how unreal it was that they were both gone.  River was 23 when he took his last breath.

We were in town a week ago for my husband's 20th high school reunion, sitting in the driveway of his parents' house in a suburb of L.A., he was ready to drive our rental car to Sunset Boulevard where we had planned for a long time to go where River Phoenix experienced his last day in 1993.  As we set up the GPS with the address for the Viper Room, I realized I didn't want to make that journey.  I realized that I don't want to be near the place on the sidewalk where River passed away, at least not for now.  So instead, the next day, I decided to scramble for a window seat on the plane going back home and to think of River on the journey.   Instead of Sunset Boulevard, it was the Pacific Ocean, and lapping beaches, and sandy mountains covered in Redwoods.   So much of River's history took place from Southern to Northern California, it made sense to remember him this way.




People say there was something about him, that there was this bright spark in his soul.  He had this extra large portion of kindness and gentleness that radiated from him.  This is how I picture him leaving this earth: ascending quickly from the crowded shores of L.A. and then more slowly over open blue waters looking down at a thousand circling fish, watching the L.A. haze diffuse into the peaceful fog that hangs over the Pacific, and then realizing for the first time, he was utterly free of everything.

River was, by all accounts, Generation X.  He was born in 1970, right in the middle of the first wave and the second wave of X. The first time I ever saw him was on VHS in my 4th grade classroom.  Our teacher had us watch Stand By Me. It seems strange now -- 4th graders watching an R-rated movie in our classroom, a script full of so many heavy subjects, but we were a generation that grew up fast.

I mentioned River at my husband's reunion while catching up with people at Roxanne's - an Old Hollywood style bar in Long Beach. People would have to pause to remember who he was for a moment, or they would mention that no one talks about River Phoenix much anymore.

Whether we are still alive, or whether we have gone to the other side, whether we find ourselves at our high school reunions or are sending a message online to an old best friend that we grew up with, we don't want to be forgotten. 

As our flight came near its end, I looked down on the mountains of Northern California.  I felt a world away from Southern California, and a lifetime away from that day in 1993 when we lost River.

As the decades go by, I hope that he is never forgotten, I hope the bright spark within him is always remembered.  He was an animal rights, political, and environmental activist.  I imagine that his hope was (and is) that the things he was passionate about are never forgotten.

As I was getting ready for the trip, I read Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind by Gavin Edwards. Going through these pages made it clear there was a lot of suffering in River's life.  It sounds like, as he grew older, he took movie roles mainly just to pay the bills to take care of his family, that he wanted out of the business, that he wanted to pursue music instead.  Edwards shows how River left a mark on pop culture and on Hollywood, I'll add that he left an enormous mark on Generation X.  Even if Xers have to pause a moment to remember him, they remember him.

Given that River had quintessentially Boomer parents, this led, as it often does, to a quintessential Gen X experience.  Sadly, the package that came with this Gen X experience for many was growing up far too fast, and sometimes, living far too fast, and dying far too young.

Sometimes, when I'm in LA, I look around at the way the palm trees lean silent in front of the sunsets, as cool evening breezes flow above the heat rising from the concrete, and think about the way Hollywood makes people, and then breaks them.  

As one of the Orthodox priests officiating at the funeral of my husband's family matriarch in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery last year said,

"Nothing is forever, 
especially not Hollywood."  

    
No doubt that's true about this world, that nothing is forever; it's something Gen X knew innately even before we watched R-rated movies as fourth graders, it's something we felt intensely the day we lost River.
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(c) 2016 - all photos and writing by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved. 



Sunday, August 28, 2016

Our Stories

In addition to the writing I do on this blog, I have recently become a regular contributor over at Are You There God? It's me Generation X.  My first piece is about telling our story to overcome lies with truth both in our own lives and together as a generation.

Feeling very excited about what the future holds for all of us Gen Xers as we tell our stories more, and as more of us tell our stories....








Head on over to read the piece: 




Wednesday, July 6, 2016

The AIDS Generation, The Bravest Generation

I go to places that hold the untold stories of Generation X - especially the stories of our suffering.   I used to hesitate to use the word "pilgrimage" because this word implies a journey that is to a holy place.  Now I always use this word to describe all my Gen X journeys, especially memorial places, as I realize God is everywhere, especially in those spaces where we seek solace from the suffering we endure in our time on this earth, and especially when we do the holy work of remembering.   I had the chance to go to the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, and to do some photography here.


An initial walk through the grove with my family had me thinking about those we've lost from multiple generations.

A pause to look at the redwoods and then a walk back through by myself with my camera got me thinking about my own generation, Generation X, and how many we lost....

Down these steps there was a palpable sorrow. lingering especially above the soft green leaves of the plants to the left.


We cannot, and should not, forget those who experienced HIV/AIDS in a time before there was any hope for medication that could help offer a relatively normal lifespan.  While AIDS primarily affected multiple generations (primarily second wave Boomers and first wave Xers) they called us "The AIDS Generation". 

1996 was the turning point year in the history of the AIDS Generation story - those diagnosed before '96 had a very high mortality rate, as research for treatment was only beginning.  During this key year inhibitor medications began to be available, even if only in their most elemental stages.  I remember this pandemic overshadowed my growing up years, and especially my high school years, with fear.  I graduated just before 1996 when hope began to unfold.


A lot of hope resides in the beauty that was created here, in the flowers reaching toward the sky.

Yet, in the open space below, waves of sorrow come drifting through among the soft winds from the Bay. If you walk here, walk with reverence, below your feet the sand holds many tears have that been shed.



Many First Wave Generation Xers lost a friend, or even a whole circle of friends during their coming of age years. 



Many of us Second Wave Xers remember Ryan White as the first person infected who was our own age. He became infected with AIDS from a blood transfusion.  It felt as if these little white flowers were trying to bend and lean toward each other to somehow spell out the letters of Ryan's name.  It is as if he is forever frozen in our minds as a young teenager, it is as if he became forever young.

Ryan and his family went through enormous ostracizing and persecution when he was diagnosed, and then he became a spokesperson for AIDS....

My family and I had no hatred for those people 
because we realized they were 
victims of their own ignorance.  
-Ryan White, Generation X (1971-1990) 




Dr. Perry Halkitis, a Gen Xer, wrote  The Aids Generation: Stories of Survival and Resiliance.
I've skimmed the book and hope to eventually read it in its entirety.  He writes, "In the last year of the plague alone, nearly as many young Americans died of AIDS as perished in the Vietnam War."  He calls us The Bravest Generation. 


It took many years for this memorial grove to come into existence, Isabel Wade and Nancy McNally envisioned it back in 1988, and a dedication took place on World AIDS Day in 2012:



As I left the park that afternoon and headed toward the stone staircase, the sun was hiding partly behind the clouds that and then finding a way to slowly, bravely, make its way from behind the grayness.  




While we have made progress, much progress still remains.  To read about how AIDS affects income development progress in low-income countries, a new, very effective, mother-to-child transmission immunization, and what we can do globally and individually to help, follow the link here: The One Campaign: HIV/AIDS


______________________
(c) 2016 - writing and photography by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved.  
Feel free to comment below or to email me at genxpixels(at)gmail 


Tuesday, May 24, 2016

The 30th Anniversary of Hands Across America

It's the week of the 30th anniversary of Hands Across America  a historical event and a collective experience if there ever was one.

A couple of years ago, a relative from an older generation gave my daughter a small bag full of hand-me-down mementos from her jewelry box -- old buttons, little pieces of ribbon from gifts once given, lapel pins, and other trinkets.  When my daughter came home to show me her new treasures, my heart skipped a beat as a little pin reflected a sparkle of light and instantly conjured up memories from my Gen X childhood.   It was a Hands Across America pin.  Something that didn't mean much more than a spare button to the person who originally had it, and something that looked only like a symbol for a string of paper dolls to my daughter, but something that means a lot to me because of the history it is connected to.

Hands Across America, an event organized by Ken Kragen, raised millions of dollars that were distributed to charities across the country. To be a part of the chain, you were asked to submit $10, and the money was used to help Americans living in poverty.  Other than it just being a one-day event, the idea was to raise awareness of the effects of poverty in America in a broader and more long-term sense -- to help people think about how they could be continually involved by doing volunteer work or contributing  in other ways.  The chain went from New York City to Long Beach.  Of course there were breaks in the chain of people, and apparently in some places where the desert sun was too hot,they used stretches of ribbon to connect people to each other.  




Even though the 1980's were full of materialism and vanity, there were these events, these bright points, that became part of the history of that decade, like Live Aid, where people united themselves to help others on a large scale.   I think those big events that happened in the mid 1980's had a lot to do with who I became as a person.   As Gen Xers who were kids and teenagers at the time, these bright points not only were a part of what formed our collective consciousness, but also our collective conscience.  Celebrities of the time were a part of the Hands Across America promotional video and part of the chain itself.   In the video, we see young faces of people that are now much older and faces that we miss of those who have since passed away.  The event came right through my city at the time, Albuquerque, NM, and the celebrity who made a local appearance for the event was Don Johnson.  I didn't get to be a part of that day, but I do remember watching the Hands Across America promo video in the same classroom where I watched The Challenger Disaster earlier that same year. 1986 fell right in the middle of my formative years and holds a large number of my Gen X memories, including Chernobyl, and the beginning of the Iran-Contra affair.   It was a year that showed me that even though the world is full of much confusion, disappointment, and suffering, we are capable of great things when we come together for a cause larger than ourselves.   When 1986 began, we could not have known how much history was unfolding around us, or what an enormous role it would have in forming who many of us became as Generation X adults.  

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(C) 2016 writing and photo by Chloe Koffas

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

The Psalms - Why What is Beautiful is What is Real

Fuller Seminary, a theological graduate school, recently launched Fuller Studio, a place to embrace a wider circle of voices from around the world.  This includes intercultural conversations on the Christian faith, along with women's issues in the leadership of the church, and interfaith dialogue.   Recently, Fuller Studio released a short film that includes conversation between Bono and Pastor Eugene Peterson about The Psalms from the Bible, and about The Message, a version of the Bible which Peterson translated from the original Hebrew and Greek into English in an idiomatic sense and in contemporary language - an extraordinary scholarly effort both of the mind and of the heart.  

An afternoon spent in a cozy lakeside cabin with a mug of hot coffee, in a discussion about  literature, art, and theology near a crackling fire with kindred souls, I can't imagine a place I'd rather be....




The Psalms are full of the rawness about the agony of life, the questions we have that can go unanswered for so long, and the deep sorrow, despair, and confusion we all experience.   The Psalms are beautiful because they are real.   Praying, in the way that the Psalms are prayed, isn't being nice before God, says Peterson, it's not pretty.  It's honesty, brutal honesty.   Bono said he would like to see more of this type of realism in life and in art and in music - write about a bad marriage you had, he says, write about why you are pissed off at the government....

U2 had an enormous impression on my spiritual life in my formative years growing up Generation X, and they still do.  I spent some Sundays of my childhood in church surrounded by Protestant hymns from the last two centuries; I spent some afternoons of my twenties listening Catholic Gregorian chant CDs, and now my Sunday mornings are likely to include Byzantine chant of the Orthodox liturgy, yet to be honest, nothing reaches my soul or connects me to God like the music of U2.  On that same wavelength, while I appreciate reading or hearing Scripture in any translation of the original text, I truly love experiencing it in my own context - in contemporary language that resonates with the relationship I have with the English language - including the metaphors I already understand.  This is a profound comfort to me, and because of Peterson's research and translation, we have this.  What U2 has done, and what Eugene Peterson has done for contextualizing Scripture into our modern lives, is very similar.  Many thanks to both of them for what they have done for Generation X.   As a quintessential Gen Xer, I can say that both of them have helped make my faith more beautiful, both of them have made my faith more real.

Bono often reads (or sings) from the Psalms during U2's concerts.  If you are interested in reading the Psalms that Bono refers to in the film as they are translated in Eugene Peterson's The Message you can download the first 40 of them for free here.


__________________________

(c) 2016 -  writing by Chloe Koffas -
feel free to leave a comment, or to email me directly here: genxpixels@gmail





Sunday, April 10, 2016

Fighting for X: The Legacy of Fred Rogers


Watching Mr. Rogers put on his cozy, brightly colored sweaters and change into his navy blue sneakers (that now look simultaneously retro and timeless) was a truly comforting ritual for me as a three year old playing with Lincoln Logs in front of the TV.

wqed.org
What I did not know as a Gen X tot of the late 1970's was this man was much more dimensional than the simple lessons he taught me, he was someone who actually fought for my generation.

I remember being a toddler and experiencing this new found fear of going down the bathtub drain - but not for long.  That same week, coincidentally, there was a Mr. Rogers episode where he talked about this very subject, and he reassured me that it was impossible and explained exactly why.  I distinctly remember how he would look at me from the screen with his compassionate eyes, like he was reaching out to me individually, reassuring me that everything would be okay.  And while our fears change as we get older, isn't that what we really want, to know that everything is going to be okay?

As a preschooler, I found the cadence to his voice peaceful and comforting - he spoke slowly enough for me to clearly understand him, unlike Walter Cronkite and news anchors I would see who spoke so fast about a world I couldn't understand, that I couldn't follow along at all.  In the 1970's, many of our living rooms had box shaped TVs that were actually colossal pieces of furniture, and since the screen was near to the floor, he would speak to me, on my level, in every sense.  

As time went on and I got past first grade, when flipping through the channels to find some cartoon, I would come across his show and I would see his preschool vernacular through the eyes of an older child - I wasn't sure why he spoke the way he did - it seemed a little too slow or even off-putting.  As an adult I can see that the way he spoke came from profound wisdom and love.  My first generation American Gen X husband watched Mr. Rogers as he was learning English as a second language and heading toward kindergarten in the early 1980's, and this is one piece of what helped him learn English so quickly.   Many immigrant parents probably found comfort in the slower pace of his voice - in understanding what he was saying as their kids were educated by his show.   Because of his deliberate, slower pace, children with different levels of hearing impairment could also watch his show and follow along much easier than on other shows.   He had a way of reaching out to kids from every socioeconomic background, culture, and situation.


You've probably seen the famous footage online of Fred Rogers addressing the U.S. Congress for much-needed funds for PBS. He gave this speech in 1969, when the first wave of Generation X was very young, and the second wave was about to be born.  While he is fighting for children's educational programming on public television, he was in fact fighting for Generation X.

There is something noble about fighting for people that are your own race or your own generation, and there is something even more noble about fighting for people that are of a different race or a different generation, because you have much less, or probably even nothing, to personally gain as a result.  Gen X grew up in a time when every area of society crumbled around us, where lies and hidden stories that surfaced about prominent leaders in our society caused us to become a cynical generation. Yet Mr. Rogers gave us a reason to have hope that there are truly good, sincere people in the world.

PBS.org
Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister.  In seminary, he narrowed down on his calling, not one of a traditional church pulpit ministry, but one that was profoundly creative - using the medium of TV to help people - specifically children.  When I look at the work of Mr. Rogers through a theological lens, this is how I see the set of his show: he would enter the show on a platform that reminds me of an elevated wooden pulpit, ones like you might see in certain traditional or formal churches, and then he would step down from it, to meet us where we were.  I feel that his brightly colored sweaters were his his simple vestments, and he would change them like a priest changes vestments for the liturgical seasons.  At the beginning of each show,  as he takes off his formal jacket to put on a casual sweater, as if to say that he might have been a man with a pastoral title and a divinity degree, but he was going to keep it simple and light so that we could let down our guard.  He never talked about God on the show because it was unnecessary - it was already clear that God was with him by the light that sparkled from his eyes, and that God was with us, especially when we learned that we were lovable for being our true selves.  Of all the times in life that people told me that they liked me (except they wished I would lose some weight) or that people told me they liked me a lot (but they wished I would wear nicer, designer clothes) or that they loved me (but I needed to change to who I was) it was vital to have a foundation in life that I could be "deep and simple, not shallow and complex".

There are more than enough of us Gen Xers who have been wounded by churches, who have been betrayed by people in church leadership, who have given up on church altogether, or who struggle to get ourselves to church regularly not only because society taught us to mistrust institutions as we grew up, but also because when we did somehow manage to get ourselves to church, people in power were abusive toward us.  And that is why was so important to us for there to be someone, even just one person, for us, who was alive in our lifetime who was a true beacon for God to us, who gave us substance, who had no dark back story or double life, who was genuine and respectable.  The more you read about Mr. Rogers, the more you see what he meant to our generation collectively and individually.


A private disagreement he was having with his wife was accidentally picked up by an audio recorder on the set of his show in 1981.  This was the year when the divorce rate in America was at its peak. This is what he said to his wife: "Sometimes when we disagree, I feel frustrated.  But I never forget how lucky I am to have you in my family.  Always remember how special you are."  He was also a father, and a grandfather.  He was from the Silent Generation, and his second son is Generation X.  Not only was he was a Presbyterian minister, he was many other things simultaneously - including an author, a composer, and an activist: 

"When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you ever see or hear or touch.  That deep part of you that allows you stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive.  Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed."

Here is a link that includes more about his life story:

Weaving a Magnificent Life Tapestry

Photo by Jim Judkis


While I say that he fought for X - he was a fighter in the sense that he disarmed people with his truth and love.  He had a way of connecting with people, maybe because of his profound love for each person he met, maybe for the Imago Dei that he saw in every person.  You could see it on his show, you can see it in photos.   In this photo: a sweet Gen X boy, Tommy, born in 1973 with hydroencephalitis and who was abandoned by his birth mother.   He passed away in 2011.  This photo went viral after the Sandy Hook school shooting with words of wisdom from Mr. Rogers about when tragedy occurs.
There are so many amazing quotes by Fred Rogers, there are some you already know, and there are some that might surprise you - click here to see a list of them:


Gen Xer, Rolling Stone Magazine writer, and MTV news producer Benjamin Wagner was the actual next door neighbor of Mr. Rogers.   He and his brother Christofer recently created a beautiful documentary on life of Fred Rogers that has already won awards at multiple film festivals: 



In case you didn't know it, Gen Xers, Mr. Rogers left a message for you just before he passed away in 2003, this is his goodbye to us....







He wanted you to know that he is so proud of you.  He knows how hard it can be to look toward the future with hope.  He wants you to know that the message he gave you as a child is the same one he gives you now - you are valued, you are valuable, and he wants you to pass this on to the next generation.    

When I look at the whole of Fred Roger's life, I cannot get over the kind of person he was -  he was a fatherly presence to a fatherless generation.  His legacy spans beyond Generation X, it spans out to all children who are and will be affected by what he taught.  He knew what his calling was, and he followed it with grace, creativity, and originality.  So far, in all my years of researching and writing about Generation X, I haven't found anyone outside of our generation who has ever fought for us in the way that he did.  He stood up for us in front of the U.S. Congress, and delivered a speech that got the funding for a show to go on the air that helped us deal with our fears, and manage life, and growing up.  He changed the course of many of our childhoods, he changed the course of mine.   I hope that as I write more about Generation X, and continue to search through the pages of history to understand what made us who we are, that I find more than just this one person who stood up for us.  I'll keep looking.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers, for what you did for my generation.

"One of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation." - Fred Rogers 1928-2003


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(c) 2016 - writing by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved 


A huge thank you to everyone who has, and who does contribute to PBS.  

Thursday, January 28, 2016

The Challenger Disaster and Generation X






As the sun rose on America that January morning, some cities lay quietly under a blanket of snow, and while the Atlantic waters lapped onto the shores of the Southeast, a threatening chill arrived with them.



As the 30th anniversary of the Challenger Disaster is commemorated and the events of that day surface once again in the media, for some of us of a certain age, the tragedy of that day is with us all the time




I was a child of the '80s, and in the months leading up to that day, the Challenger was constantly on my mind - like in the afternoons when I would run in circles and land on my back in soft green patches of clover in the park near my house. Through my nine-year-old eyes, I'd look out to the infinite blue of the universe, to the east where shuttles are launched, to where impossible things seemed possible, even if just for one minute.





In the mid '80s, while the members of Generation X were growing up, modern American public educations standards were at an all-time low. The Reagan Administration saw the upcoming Challenger launch as a way to remind the nation of the important role of teachers and maybe to reboot hope in the American school system. Out of thousands of applicants to the Teacher in Space Project, the charismatic Christa McAuliffe was chosen. Those of us in elementary school closely followed these events from sources like NASA and Weekly Reader, so that these people would continually be on our minds, so that they could, in every sense, become our heroes, so that we could know their stories and their lives, so we would love them.

The pint sized propaganda was delivered to our desks every week, and we drank every drop of it.  By design, the anticipation of the launch hit every major nerve in me - the women among the crew became role models to the Cabbage Patch-carrying girls of the 1980's.


In this Morning in America era, every kid you knew was dreaming of being an astronaut. On the playground, we would tell each other which of the seven was our favorite. In one way or another, every one of the seven carried with them the hopes and aspirations of our generation. Whenever I have asked fellow Gen Xers about their recollection of that day, those in elementary school were often the most impacted. Those about halfway through elementary school, like myself, were old enough to intellectually grasp the significance of this day and yet were still young and tender enough for the event to inflict powerful emotional damage. Because the Challenger launch became synonymous with our education and our hope in our future, the tragedy of that winter day is one of the main reasons my generation instinctively distrusts institutions. While there was a spectrum of responses to the event, ranging from confusion to grief, the school kids affected the most will tell you that day changed their lives. I can tell you that it changed mine. It was a day that left my generation standing alone, in a "sunlit silence".

Custom watercolor by Emblaester, artist on Fiverr.com

If I allow my mind to fully go back into the moments of that day, it is hard to breathe. I can still feel the chill of that morning on my skin from where I was two time zones away from Florida in the high altitude desert of New Mexico. I saw it live on TV from a classroom, along with millions of other kids, and watched quietly as the twisting contrail imprinted itself as an image of horror onto the collective consciousness of my generation, like some coiled up snake that struck without warning. Palpable feelings of excitement degenerated into confusion and then anxiety; and then the teacher abruptly shut off the TV. We were told that it was over and to get back to our desks. In that moment that I was supposed to stoically return to school work, I found myself caught in some delicate place between life and death, somewhere between hope and hopelessness. It took me the whole day to process what had happened, and as I did, an emptiness hovered above my head, above my school, above my country.



So much dialogue was happening in our classrooms in the months leading up to that day about how anything was possible, that we could be astronauts, that we could be anything we wanted when we grew up, and that the shuttle launch was going to be the moment that would demonstratively prove this to us. When the moment defining how anything was possible went entirely wrong, I felt panicked to my core - maybe my future was going to be dark, maybe my dreams would be swallowed whole with no explanation. Not only did our heroes die that day, but a lot of our hope did, and much of this hope was replaced with fear about the future - an anxiousness that has stayed with us our whole lives. Many of the traits that Generation X is known for, from our negativity to our cynicism, can be traced back not only to the state of society in our formative years, but to the exact date of January 28, 1986.

That evening, millions of us gathered around TVs once again, and this time it was to watch Reagan deliver a speech about the catastrophe. His words made the event unbearably real, and while he spoke, my heart was forced to shift from somewhere within the first stage of grief, denial, to somewhere within the dark gravity of the next stage of grief - anger. The only words from the speech that gave me any comfort were that our fallen heroes had "touched the face of God." When he quoted the poetry of aviator John Gillespie Magee Jr. in the speech, I did not know that he, too, had died at a far too young age - during WWII. I could not yet fully know of the service and suffering of the GI Generation before me, of all who had lost their lives in order to pass on freedom before my own generation was ever born.  And what the older generations did not know, was that, as icicles formed around the shuttle that night before, that the world had already had become a much bleaker place than the one they thought they passed on to us, and when morning came, the disaster confirmed it.



In mourning the death of Christa McAuliffe, the Generation X student body of her school came together for a memorial service in the school gym.  "Life in a Northern Town" by Dream Academy was the song that concluded the service. While this song is a quintessential piece of Gen X music, the lyrics actually reference the experiences of Christa's generation - the Boomers. In the song, it mentions that in the aftermath of JFK's assassination, "it felt like the world would freeze."  On January 28, 1986, it did.  Society told Generation X who our heroes should be, and made us love them. And from our schools we watched our heroes perish, so that no place, not even the familiarity of our own classrooms, not even the "high untrespassed sanctity of space" seemed safe after that. All my heroes were taken away from me that day.  In front of my eyes.  All seven of them.

On January 28th, 1986, Gen X witnessed the launch and loss of a shuttle crew, just as we watched our parents' marriages dissolve, just as we watched society dissolve. That decade, educational quality had trended to an all-time low and divorce rates had reached an all-time high - and those statistics weren't just numbers, they were our families. As Generation X was growing up, there was this idea that kids should fend for themselves, solve their own problems, and more or less raise themselves. Society told parents they should be considerably more concerned with self-actualization or self-fulfillment than with parenting. Ten miles above the earth there was a structural failure that took seven lives, and meanwhile, on earth, there was a structural failure in how a generation was being raised. Generation X wasn't just the latchkey children of broken homes, we were the latchkey children of a broken society. Something is truly wrong when children are conditioned over a long time to anticipate an event, and are told that their own futures are tied to this moment, only to watch that event unfold like some kind of nightmare.  "Obviously, a major malfunction" were the words of the NASA launch commentator. Those words haunt us, because, in many ways, it not only articulated a moment that we were unprepared for, but also defined the background of our formative years, and even, in some ways, our entire lives.  Gen X grew up too fast and any lingering naivety dissipated alongside the vapor of the shuttle that day.

We study history to learn from it and to not repeat its mistakes. Let us, as a society, as human beings, never let another January 28, 1986 happen again - not to heroic explorers, not to children whose hope in the future is hinged on a moment that could have been full of possibility, but instead was full of malfunction and fear.  It altered the collective psyche of my generation - how we see the world, our lives, and our futures. We are still mourning. That day for us, for Generation X, was the day that the world froze. It affects who we became and how we see the world, thirty years later.



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A Journey to the Challenger Memorial in Palo Alto, California, January 2016...the seeds from these Redwoods orbited the earth in the Challenger Shuttle one mission before the disaster took place, and here are several photos I took of the park:


My family and I went here to remember the day in 1986 that forever altered history, to remember the seven people we lost that day. This small memorial grove sits in the back of a park.    

As I approached this grove of trees, a train was speeding by just behind here and at the same time, I could feel my life speeding before me, flashing through my mind were the images of my whole life. It was as if my soul was trying to tell my mind how pivotal this experience was to the entirety of my life and my being.


Redwoods stand in a circle - one for each of the astronauts. To stand in the very middle of these trees is powerful.  You get the feeling someone, or several someones, are watching over you. From the large branch that had fallen in the middle, I took some small pieces home with me as a memento. 


Each tree is numbered, coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, 
with the birth years of Gen Xers. 



Such an extraordinary piece of history and of science. Experiments are an important part of shuttle missions and the seeds from these trees were part of an experiment - they were in the aboard the Challenger and orbited the earth over a hundred time as we experienced the summer of 1985. To physically walk up to a space that represents, or even encompasses an event that altered your life is intense.  Many say that the Challenger Disaster is one of the events that most affected Generation X. Many also say that it is the event that most affected us.



To stand above this stone on a California overcast day while reading the words between the cracks brought me several tears.  A weathered piece of metal mounted on a large rock reflects three decades of facing an usually blue sky.  



"These redwoods grew from the sees of El Palo Alto that orbited Earth on board the Space Shuttle Challenger STS-51F July 29th - August 6, 1985. On a later mission, Challenger and the lives of seven astronauts were lost in an explosion on January 28, 1986."



Redwoods can live for a thousand years or more - I wonder if the story of these trees will.  I hope so.


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(c) 2016 by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved.
NASA photos: public domain, writing and other photography by Chloe Koffas, words in quotes from the poem, High Flight by John Gillepie Magee Jr. 

Many thanks to my dear friend, Jennifer McCollum, who hired the artist to do the watercolor classroom picture of January 28, 1986 above. What an extraordinary gift ~

Link to lyrics: Life in a Northern Town
Link to poetry: High Flight