"CREVASSE RESCUE-MT. SHUKSAN, WASHINGTON"
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We are grinding out missiles like sausages. We will bury you.
Nikita Khrushchev at the U.N. 1960


I am a baby boomer, one of that mass of 75 million people born between 1946 and 1964. Damn proud of it too, as are most boomers. As if that weren't enough, I'm also a tree-hugging, granola-crunching flower child of the sixties, having "come of age" in that lively decade, with all the implications. I was 12 years old in 1960 when JFK became president and 15 when he was killed in Dallas, one of the best and one of the worst days of my life. Like most boomers I remember November 22, 1963 like it was yesterday, even more than cowering under my school desk during the Cuban missile crisis. Like a school desk was going to help!

Baby boomers have been called the generation that changed the world, for better, or worse. We enjoyed (and still do) our day in the sun. And what a lineup, a Who's Who and What's What of people, places, and things, like Elvis, VW Beetles, and Woodstock. Oh, and those other Beatles too.

We boomers have been marked by the murder of our leaders. We lived through the Cold War, Vietnam, the bloody struggle for civil rights, women's rights, and environmental sanity, and even sex, drugs, and rock and roll. No wonder we're in therapy! But as the dust settled in latter years, behold, a better world. Finally we could laugh at Archie Bunker and Fred Sanford, and really "get" them at the same time.

 

Crevasse rescue training prior to the ascent of Mt. Shuksan in Washington state. Two hallmarks of boomer culture are the fitness craze and adventure travel. (next photograph)

 
© Danny Kimberlin 2015