One December night in 1989...in West Berlin, my travel buddy Justin and I were walking behind Checkpoint Charlie looking for a good place to take a chunk out of the Wall.
It was late, we'd just arrived...we basically figured out where the most famous place was and walked straight there...
It was quiet and cold...the celebrations were long over...and the wall was looking pretty pockmarked and haggard from all the souvenir takers. We had the long alley on the Western Side all to ourselves. So Justin and I got about 200 or so yards from the checkpoint and picked up some pieces of metal and just started wailing on the thing...flailing on it...
big pieces fell off, little pieces fell off...it felt illicit...not really political at all...kind of just this bizarre, slightly after-the-party, history-witnessing/souvenir grab all rolled into one...two guys wailing on a wall one silent December night in West Berlin...
We walked around Berlin that night with these chunks of the "Mauer" in our pockets...past the Reichstag and the Brandenburg gate, past drunken East Berliners partying on their Freedom Marks...basically, we were fucking oblivious Americans...entitled, priveleged, open-eyed...
I only later learned that our chunk of the wall came from a spot almost directly over the site of Hitler's Bunker...buried somewhere under all that weight...rubble, history, war, loss, genocide...
I came back to the United States with some small chunks of the wall and promptly gave them all away. I was pretty much embarrased to have been a looter. I felt sheepish.
I ended up with this one chunk. Which, since I was home in Minnesota, I thought I'd give to my grandfather. My Grandpa loved Ronald Reagan. At pretty much every family dinner for the last decade of his life, he talked about how much he hated the Communists, not that the Russians were bad people...but...they had an Evil Empire.
Well...at dinner (midwest-speak for a meat and potatoes hot lunch)...in this Minnesota farmhouse, smack in the middle of snow-swept prairie, my Grandpa predictably asked me about the Communists and East Berlin...wow, I had actually been over there...upon which I dramatically slammed the chunk of the wall on the table.
"Guess what that is Grandpa?"
"That's the End of Communism, right there!"
So I gave my Grandfather my last chunk of the wall. He put it in this plastic display case and kept it on his desk. I know this because after he died it was still there. Like an artifact from a museum. But a museum for one person.
Except, by that time, the rock had totally changed meaning for me. Sitting there next to the radio that he listened to all his favorite right-wing anti-Communist talk shows. Pristine. Like it was from an alien planet.
This little worshipped rock that I gave to a man I loved but whose politics I loathed.
And...you know, ain't it just like that?
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This year is your story. Is our story. Is many stories.
And in the midst of all the crap and malarky and crisis, remember that everything from the mundane to the profound is a part of your history...our history.
I firmly believe we will make history this November. I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe it was so. And, I guess, this diary is, in a way, a kind of time out from that to reflect on something that I feel the need to remember:
I firmly believe that we share this nation with people who don't agree with us. It's all of ours. Together. Hell, some of us are related. And, right now we are all just trying to figure how better to run our government.
History is weird. We might have one perspective on things now...and see it changed by events outside our control.
The one thing we do control...is our integrity...staying true to ourselves and our values. Standing up for our principles. Paying authentic witness to our times, no matter who we are or where we find ourselves. Our stories, collectively, are what make history. And we must never forget that, because, in a way, that is the basis of our politics.
I want you to know something tonight. Though my grandfather passed away and can no longer cast the ballot for George Bush I'm sure he would have. His wife, my ninety-two year old Grandmother is following this election like a hawk. She's going to vote in Minnesota the way she always has...true blue, Democrat.
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{This post was written on October 14, 2004. Re-posted today in honor of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and my grandparents, Richard and Blanche. Blanche is now 97 years old and, like 69 million of her fellow citizens, voted for Barack Obama in November, 2008.)