The Gen X Chronicles: Part Ten - Other Chronicles of the Gen X Experience

Below is the very last image I have for The Gen X Chronicles series. Of all the photography I did at the Reagan Museum, this image may be my favorite. One section of the Reagan Museum features gifts that were given to the Reagans out of diplomacy from Heads of State and others during the 80s. I had to snap a picture of this little trio - this piece looks so intrinsically Gen X and reminds of me of many little figurines I saw in my early Gen X years.  

At first glance, these may just look like carolers holding their music...at second glance, you'll see three Gen X girls wearing cute scarves and Doc Martens who are proclaiming their stories to the whole world...that's what we bloggers do. And at the moment, it seems there are only three of us left - only three of us still blogging about the Gen X experience. If you enjoyed these Gen X Chronicles, here is a little bit about two other, even better bloggers who have done some Gen X chronicling of their own....

As I was writing about the Challenger Disaster of the Gen X Chronicles, I was thinking of my friend Heyray at
The Shape of X. While Generation X remembers watching the launch of the Challenger on classroom TVs, there were just a few Xers who got to actually watch it launch with their own eyes. HeyRay is one of these people - she had seen multiple epic shuttle launches and she stood in the parking lot of her junior high school as it ascended and unexpectedly descended: Atlantis Rising

The name Jennifer was one of the most popular names given to Generation X girls including my friend Jennifer James at Are You There God? It's Me Generation X   She is doing a year-long series called "The Jennifer Chronicles" that includes stories and photos of girls named Jennifer. This is my favorite one so far:  Punk Rock Jennifer - this post includes a picture of another trio of Gen X girls.... 

There are millions of stories to be told about Gen X. If you are a Gen Xer, you grew up in an amazing time in history, and you have an amazing story. I am grateful for all the Gen X writers and bloggers out there who have and continue to chronicle the Gen X experience each in their own way. The ten Gen X chronicles I have posted have been a big piece of my story, and this is a big piece of the story of Generation X...

 The Gen X Chronicles. 

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I forgot to take a photo of the sign describing the image above - I think it came from Eastern Europe, but I can't remember - please send me an email or comment if you know who gifted this or if you know the artist who created this adorable piece!

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Nine - The Images that Colored Our Lives

The following pictures are some of the final images I photographed in the Reagan museum - images from an era that deeply affected the collective psyche and lives of Gen Xers. I only had three short hours to spend at this museum, and those three hours turned into ten blog entries. I wish I could've chronicled more. I encourage other Xers to go there - to even spend a whole day there so that you can experience it fully for yourself - to look back on the major events that happened in that tumultuous and fascinating era of history.

Above: a photo I took of Reagan's old notecards. He had a system where he would write down thoughts or quotes that inspired him and then draw from them for speeches. These words, imprinting themselves in pixels in my camera, were the words that have imprinted themselves into the soundbites of our collective memory. 

Above: one area of the museum has mementos of the Reagan Assassination. In high school film criticism, I remember learning about how a hand held camera adds extra tension due to the shaking that becomes apparent on film. You can tell by this photos that my hands were shaking as I stood over the jacket Reagan had been wearing on March 30, 1981. It was intense to be so near all this - especially while a continuous loop of the footage of the assassination attempt was streaming to the side with gun shots that were very audibly ringing over and over again. Sometimes you don't realize how much something has affected you until you revisit it many years later. It was strange to be standing inches away from the dark blue jacket present on a day that altered the course of history.

Above:  The White House presidential oval office as it looked during the Reagan Administration.


The Reagan Library and Museum in California isn't so much about a specific president or political party, but more about an era - the 1980s. It inadvertently became a chronicle of the formative years of Gen X, because it is is a visual story of the major world events that affected us in our youth. 

Above: Air Force One. This plane holds a lot of history from within. Photography is not allowed from the inside, but you are allowed to walk through. It is a mix of fascinating and eerie, because it is such a time capsule. There were seven different American presidents transported on this plane. This plane took Nixon home from his resignation, it took Carter to meet hostages in Iran, and it took Reagan to various countries during the Cold War.

Among other things, this series covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 since many Gen Xers say these were the two most important events that affected our generation during the 80s. There were other geopolitical issues mentioned at the museum from that era that included South America, the Middle East, and other places. Each one of these events affected the collective psyche, but they affected people as individuals in different ways depending on where they were living. Many of us were (and still are) haunted by the Chernobyl Disaster which is mentioned in the museum. This is something that still affects people in the present. Another issue documented at the museum that partly took place in the impressionable years of Gen X was The Troubles in Ireland and the UK and I hope to do some writing about that in the future. There is so much history in those years that it can't really be limited to a series of ten posts, so beyond this series, I will keep telling the story.   


A lot happened in the formative years of Generation X and this is a big piece to understanding who we have become today. 


(c) 2012/2013  - All photos from the Gen X Chronicles taken by Chloe - original images from the Reagan Library and Museum in Simi Valley, CA. All rights reserved. 

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Eight - Tiananmen Square and The Unknown Rebel

Among the exhibits at the Reagan Museum, there is an exhibit on The Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.  It is in the area of the museum that is about heroism. 

Gen Xers and almost anyone around in the 20th century remembers seeing images and footage of  the violence at Tiananmen Square on the news as it was happening. 3,000 students on a hunger strike for reform turned into a million protesters in and around the Square. The footage below of The Unknown Rebel, a nameless man chose to stand his ground after the Chinese government forcibly removed protesters in and around the Square. This brave young man, most likely a Gen Xer, refused to yield to a long line of government army tanks. He eventually came to symbolize all that happened during the Protests. 

The Unknown Rebelis holding two shopping ba gs as he makes his statement. It seems as if he could've been running a mundane errand and then all the sudden he decided to do this - to change history. 

One of the most powerful demonstrations that can take place on this planet is a non-violent protest - there is something so...morally profound about it.

What if every human being is called to be a prophet in some way in their lifetime? There are different ways to define a prophet, but one way is this: someone who stands against injustice, and who brings to light what is morally profound. What if every human is at the very least supposed to have one monumental moment of time in which you are supposed to step forward - either with your words or your actions? Maybe that moment will come in the most unexpected situation. Maybe you'll be going through the motions of life on a regular day -  like coming home from the grocery store -  and an opportunity to do something extraordinary will lay before you. Your profound moral moment may change another person's life, or your life, or the world. 

Part of the issue of living out a prophetic moment is that you must consider the cost. Sometimes it comes freely, but more often it doesn't come cheap. Standing up for your rights or someone else's at work can mean a job loss for one person, standing up to some other power in your community may cause the very loss of your community, or worse. Sometimes, it isn't your moment because you are in a place of  just trying to survive - you are not in a place to rock the boat, but in a place where you are just trying to keep floating. I've been there. However, when your  monumental moment comes, you may find yourself in a situation when you are strong enough and able enough and ready enough to handle the cost of standing up to someone. When you do, I hope that you speak truth with all clarity or that your actions bring those listening to their knees. 

The Unknown Rebel is considered to be one of the most important people of the 20th century according to Time Magazine. Life Magazine put this is on its list of the top 100 images that changed the world and stated that a second hero emerged as the driver of the tank refused to crush the man, and instead chose to drive his killing machine around him. Of the billions of images I have been exposed to through media throughout my Gen X existence, this is one of the most profound.  I am overwhelmed with hope every time I see it. 

There is no clear answer as to who this man is or what became of him.

Gen Xers watched Beijing on the news in horror of what kind of a world we were growing up in. Many suffered from, or lost their lives as a result of the violence of June 1989.  It took many of us on the other side of the world years to really process, as we were going through so many crises of our own. Through all of Gen X's lifespan, the world was (and continues to be) in a Crisis era according to historians and others. I will venture to say that in the moments of this video, the Crisis of our world became temporarily suspended. I would venture to say that grace became suspended in the universe when the driver of the tank chose non-violence as he tried to go around the Unknown Rebel, and as the Unknown Rebel used non-violent action to make his point. This image - this man standing in front of a tank - is one of the most iconic images of the 20th century and one of the most intense images ingraved in the psyche of Gen Xers around the world.  

Like the Tao, the "eternally nameless" concept found in Chinese philosophy and various Eastern religions, this nameless man in his own morally profound moment showed us something extraordinary and shifted our universe. Generation X in China is sometimes referred to as "a nameless generation."

The concept of "effortless action" associated with the Tao can take place when a person easily does what they are called to do in a particular moment of time. You can get to a place where something you believe strongly about becomes so intense within you, that it seems necessary and even effortless to act upon it.  Because of the Unknown Rebel's message, we have never forgotten him.

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(c) 2013 by Chloe - all rights reserved

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Seven - Just Say No.

More from the Reagan Museum...here we have a sampling of the "Just Say No!" campaign of the 80s...

It's "The Just Say No!" board game to enjoy with neighborhood friends. 

"The Just Say No" Basketball

"The Just Say No!" Baseball Bat - fully worthy of an exclamation mark. And not aerodynamic. 

Remember these bulletin board maps that would show you places where stuff happened and colored string to show you the journey someone took to get there? These days with infographics and other digital options, I'm not sure who would have the patience to put something like this together...do all the pins and strings just fall out when you move the map? Also, did Nancy care about the kids in the Midwest as much as the other kids? This map might say otherwise - and I don't see that she stopped off in my southwest state. At least we got DARE T shirts after some local speaker gave a speech about drugs in our gym, and I think maybe we got a bumper sticker or two to take home that none of our parents wanted to put on their cars.

A bejeweled "Just Say No" pin?  I don't know about you, but I would've been beat up in the school parking lot for wearing something like this...maybe it was for old ladies of the 80s to wear to their high teas where they would talk about semi-hopeless social causes...like us ruffian 80s kids....

(c) 2013 Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved

All objects from Reagan Library 

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Six - The Challenger

January 28, 1986: The launch and structural failure of the Challenger Space Shuttle.

As far as events that happened on American soil that affected the American Gen X psyche the most, this would be one of the most important - some would even say the most important.

The Reagan Library and Museum in Simi Valley, CA is what I refer to as "The Gen X Chronicles" because it documents many of the world events that happened during the formative years of Generation X which is a big piece of our collective experience. One section of the museum focuses on the Challenger launch.  Gen Xers on the East Coast remember this event happening around noon of their school day. For Gen Xers like me who lived further out west, we remember this happening in the morning, with most of the school day ahead of us. We remember the strangeness of going through the motions of the rest of the day when an enormous catastrophe had happened. The structural failure of the Challenger and the simultaneous death of seven American heroes that all of us school kids had spent so much time getting to know from our classrooms, left an enormous impression on us. 

Below is the Challenger Space Shuttle in a fleeting moment of exquisite beauty - clear blue sky, and an explosion of heat that was meant to propel those on board to the stars. Did these birds, rising up in their choreographed movement with the lift-off know that disaster was only moments away?

Though parts of that day are now hazy for me, I am able to recall moments of it with intensity - the moments that were the heaviest with the most sorrow and confusion are the moments I remember most clearly. I remember that all of us at my elementary school were very unprepared for what happened. For some reason, I was a visitor that day in a different classroom than my own, the one next door to mine, and I remember being gathered with other kids around a TV full of anticipation. When the unthinkable happened before our eyes, the teacher became clearly upset and very quickly shut off the TV. Through the eyes of a child, I interpreted her response as anger at us as she abruptly told me and others to leave her room immediately and go straight back to our regular class. I couldn't completely process what was happening. I couldn't figure out why we she was so agitated at us, and I couldn't figure out what we had done wrong. Through the eyes of an adult, it is clear that she was holding in a huge amount of emotion and was trying not to cry in front of us. She was in a very difficult and awkward situation. The walk back to my regular classroom was also very awkward. Because I could not process everything and because the shuttle images on the TV had gotten turned off so fast as I watched them, there was a part of me who thought maybe everything was still okay, that the explosion we saw was maybe just coming from some piece of debris that had fallen off the shuttle, and that everything was going as planned. It took the rest of the school day for me to slowly process the tragedy that had happened, and the whole day felt surreal. After a very long time of anticipating this amazing day and moment, it all came to an end in a way we hadn't expected. A certain emptiness hovered above my head, above my school, and above my country. 

A few weeks later I wrote letters of consolation to each of the seven families. So did a lot of people.

This is the footage being played next to this exhibit - the 1/28/86 presidential address that many watched as they were experiencing the shock of the event... 

Just after the two minute point of the clip is his message to us as Gen X kids: "...the future doesn't belong to the fainthearted, it belongs to the brave...." When I look at what my generation had to endure in the following decades all I can say is that those words proved to be true:

I used to walk through museums as a child and wonder why old people would be quietly shedding tears in corners after seeing mementos of some war or time in history that they had personally experienced. Back then, life for me was new and I had almost nothing to look back on. After seeing images of things that have affected me personally at museums or in documentaries, I am now the one trying to hold back the tears. This was just one of many crises that would play out in the lives of Gen Xers. 


To those who saw the launch of the Challenger in pixels, and to those who saw this in person, you did not experience this alone.  We all experienced this together. 

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(c) 2012 Writing and photography by Chloe, original photography from the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum, Simi Valley, CA. 

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Five - The Berlin Wall as the Sun Descends

The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the significant world events of Gen X's formative years. From where it stood in Europe, it saw many days of cold, gray skies. Now a large piece of it looks out over the Simi Valley to the mountains where the sun descends on the desert and ocean breezes travel over open land. With my hand reverently touching the cement, I could feel a certain hope - I could feel it swallowing up hopelessness.

There have been walls in my life that held me in, that seemed insurmountable, that I feared would never let me out. When I have found the grace and the resolve to walk past those walls, it is has been astounding how those barriers began to seem so small compared to the limitless possibilities around them. Caught up in the problems we are facing today, it feels that things will never change. It's the larger picture that shows us that the potential of our lives is enormous. Beyond that, if we look out on the horizon, even while holding the broken pieces in our pockets of this fallen world that has disappointed us, we are reminded that there is something beyond this, something more than just this.

For those who grew up in a time of unraveling and seemingly endless crises in history, may you live to see a time when you can walk around it, and then past all of it, through the shadows of impermanence, and into the light of what does not fail us.  

May the possibilities swallow up the limits, may the hope swallow up the hopelessness.   

When our generation's time on this earth is done, when we are finally done walking the expanse of this day and age, may all of us get to that place on the horizon that we can now only strain to get even a glimpse of a place where there has never been walls, a place where there will be no more sorrow, a place where there will be no more pain....



"For believe me, this world that seems to us so substantial, is no more than shadowlands.  Real life has not yet begun."

                                                                                                                                    -  C.S. Lewis

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(c) 2012 photography and writing by Chloe - all rights reserved

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Four - The West Side of the Berlin Wall

While there are many pieces of the Berlin wall more or less this size in different parts of the world, I think this six ton piece is the most beautiful one. I was hoping to get some photos of this piece in California where it stands in the warm sun each day. I can't think of a more monumental symbol of history from the growing-up years of Generation X than the crumbling of this wall. So it was with enormous anticipation that I walked up to this slab of cement that includes the word "freedom" written on it. It was with humility for what this wall symbolized that I took these photos....

The Berlin Wall: Photography by Chloe

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In the weeks before approaching this wall, I imagined what it would be like to take photos of it. I was hoping that I could catch the sun behind it as it was descending. Beyond that, I was hoping I could capture sunflare coming out from behind the wall, exploding in colorful hues to mirror the artful graffiti on the cement. Everything I hoped for that day came true.

My guess is that these images came from a spray paint can held in the hands of a German Gen Xer. I hope to someday find out who it is. Here, in this beauty, is the artful soul of mankind that finds another way to survive, to begin again, and to create.   

Here's to hope...and to new beginnings.

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(c) 2013 photography and writing by Chloe - all rights reserved

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Three - The East Side of The Berlin Wall

I had thought that the entire Berlin wall was in a million tiny pieces. I'd seen fragments of the wall that could fit in your hand that friends had bought or received as gifts - gray cement with remnants of graffiti on one side - like too many puzzle pieces to ever be put back together. Watching the news as the people broke those pieces away with pick axes, hammers, chisels, and even bare human hands  was one of the most important historical memories in my Generation X youth.  Until recently, I didn't realize there are enormous slabs of the Berlin Wall in different parts of the world as monuments to history. One of these places is in Simi Valley, CA. 

When I look at the east side of this wall in all of its bleakness, I cannot help but think of how this is just one of a billion different walls that humans have created for each other over time. Throughout history, people and institutions have spent a lot of time trying to hold things in, or keep things out. These walls are created when you feel that any move you make will be judged unfairly. They are created when someone does something to make everyone else live in fear. They  are created when someone tells you that you cannot do something or that you are not good enough, or that or that your perceptions are not credible or that you are not allowed to believe what you believe.

Irina Ratushinska, a Russian Orthodox Christian writer, found herself in a Soviet labor camp for her ideas and beliefs. As a prisoner, Irina carved her poetry into bars of soap, and memorized the words until she washed them away. These words became books that were published later when she gained her freedom. 

So, reader, have you truly found your voice?

Does some wall hold you back? If some bar of soap or scrap of paper is near you, you can start writing now, you can start planning now.  If some laptop or stack of books is near you, you can start researching now.  Get ready now to speak the truth - when the walls come crumbling down, your story will be told - nothing, and no one will stop you.


"Gray is the color of hope."  

                                                                                         -Irina Ratushinska

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(c) 2012 photography and writing by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved

The Gen X Chronicles: Part Two - Gen X Christmas Trees

At the Reagan Museum in Simi Valley, CA, I got a chance to photograph a seasonal exhibit of Christmas trees - each one a representation of events and pop culture through each decade over the past century. I took pictures of the trees representing the decades that have had the most relevance to Generation X....

The 1970s tree: includes references to Sesame Street, disco, attempts at peace, Star Wars, Jaws....

The 1980s tree includes: E.T., Pac Man, a new presidential administration, the Cabbage Patch Kid, Nintendo, MTV....  

The 1990s tree includes: AOL, the Simpsons, cordless phones, globalization, Furby, Cheers' 200th episode?

The 2000s tree: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, energy issues/hybrid cars, raising the flag at Ground Zero...

A lot has happened these past few decades....

Merry Christmas, X. 



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(c) 2012 photography and writing by Chloe Koffas (Christmas trees by Reagan Museum volunteers) 

The Gen X Chronicles: Part One - The World We Grew Up In

I recently had a chance to visit the Reagan Museum in Simi Valley, CA. Another name this museum could go by is "The Gen X Chronicles."  There was so much to photograph and write about here, I decided to turn it into a series. For the better part of a decade during the formative years of Gen X, Reagan was the U.S. president, and this museum documents the things that happened during those years. These are the events that had a huge impact on the collective psyche of Gen X.   

There is an area of the museum that has a collage of photos of the era when Reagan came into office as President, along with words that described the issues of the time: shortages, gas lines, job issues, unfair taxes, frustration....

For us, there were little to no golden years.

The Olympics are so important to kids - all our hopes and dreams became manifest in the amazing abilities of athletes we looked up to. Except for when it got cancelled. This might have been when the Cold War became more painfully real to kids who could not yet understand it. 

Stagflation: when the inflation rate is high, economics are slow and jobs are few. An image of an empty factory with the windows busted out. The purpose of the "Morning in America" campaign was to address all these troubling issues, but honestly, I don't really remember it ever feeling like a new day. 

This has been a tough existence.

These are just a few images of what was happening in the news in the formative years of Gen X. As we grew up and became more aware of the world in which we live in, all of this was weighing on our minds along with many other things. 

Unemployment, layoffs, plant closures, double digit inflation. This is all part of what caused Gen X to become a nomadic generation from childhood. I remember one year of elementary school when I watched most of my friends move away one by one because their parents had lost their jobs. Then it was time for me to move away, too, and be the new kid yet again at another school. 

Watching these and other news images as the world distentegrated caused much of the anti-establishment and hypervigilance that became part of us. The hardest thing about looking at these images is that many of these issues are still a reality. The recessions we witnessed in our childhoods is now the Great Recession we must deal with as adults. I saw the Gen X kids on the news picketing and holding up poster board signs demanding their parents' jobs back. Now I watch them on the news standing in unemployment lines, worrying about how to feed their own kids. 

Got a Gen Xer in your life who tries not to be negative, but often assumes the worst will happen?

Cut them some slack. 

People become who they are for a reason.

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(c) 2012 Photos and writing by Chloe/original images from the Reagan Museum.