"When dawn spreads its paintbrush on the plain, spilling purple... ," Sons of the Pioneers theme for TV show "Wagon Train." Dawn on the mythic Santa Fe Trail, New Mexico, looking toward Raton from Cimarron. -- Clarkphoto. A curmudgeon artist's musings melding metaphors and journalism, for readers in more than 150 countries.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

The Fall of the Wall

Sections of Berlin Wall, the Churchill Museum, and at far right, Churchill's statue, Fulton, Mo.
Twenty-five years ago, the Berlin Wall fell, the chisels and hammers and noise sending shock waves around the world. I know this was the anniversary because of Google's home page graphic showing video. Sections of the wall are now located all over the world, monuments to the desire for freedom. The video shows many of those. 
But it does not show the ones in Fulton, Missouri, at the Churchill Museum, commemorating his "Iron Curtain" speech. I took this photo when visiting my son and family there a few years ago. 
I'm not only old enough to remember the wall coming down, I remember when the Soviet Union started putting it up in 1961, sending shock waves of a different sort across the free world . We then wondered if WWIII was going to start. The U.S. didn't send in tanks, and we survived that crisis. 
It seems to me the lessons of history are clear--our current crises will also pass, and we have no idea nor guarantee how they'll turn out or if we'll like the results. I do know one thing. Regardless of politicians, political parties and movements, revolutions and dictators and extremists, the fight for freedom, and the existence of tyranny,  will never end until homo sapiens becomes extinct. 
That's what the Berlin Wall symbolizes.

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