did we try to fight it?

I had the opportunity to be in the car for a while today, and Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" came on. Great song! And it allowed me some time to think. One of my favorite teachers in high school, Mr. Meyer, had us analyze this song once. It was 'history' class - but really it was more 'life' class, since he really taught us more about where we were going than where we had been. He gave us the lyrics to this song one day and we went through and discussed each event and how it was important in the development of the 20th century. We had to write a paper about it, not cataloging the events, but explaining why they were grouped together the way they were in the song and how things as different as British Beatlemania and the Bay of Pigs Invasion were pivotal in shaping that point in time. It was a cool project. Today, when I heard the song, I wondered what would make it into a current version of the song. At the heart of it, I bet we'd find they are all the same. Are we making the same mistakes over and over? Or are we really trying to fight it?

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye.

Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockerfeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy Chon, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu, and "Rock Around the Clock"

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, "Peter Pan", Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly, "Ben-Hur", space monkey, Mafia
hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no go

U2, Syngman Rhee, payola, and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion

"Lawrence of Arabia", British Bealtemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beat Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcom X, British politician sex
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollolah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

"Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller Cola Wars, I can't take it anymore

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on....


this site has references to all these major events - and even some papers similar to the one I was asked to write once.
http://www.teacheroz.com/fire.htm

If anyone has the desire to try and write a new version of we didn't start the fire I'd love to hear it - hell, I'll even help if you want....