Rose-Colored Sunsets, No Flowers For Me

When are the times in your life that you have sat and watched the news, and thought that what you were watching is something really big that it is have long-term effects on the way the world operates? For people of my generation the event that comes very quickly to our minds is September 11, with its unbelievable images of planes crashing into buildings that were images of our national power to a certain extent.

Another event that I have recently been watching is the protests that are currently going on the Ukraine. While I might have been too young, to understand what was going on at Tiannamen Square on June 3, 1989, I know what is happening in Kiev. As the young people of this nation have committed to seeing the democratic process through to its proper end, people in the West are seeing the end of an era.

The Ukraine was once one of the prize republics in the U.S.S.R., and the thought that it would one day have the option of joining NATO and the EU has to seem inconceivable to those who hold power in Moscow, but it is happening. As the young people in the Ukraine were able to see the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 80's, they built a democratic blueprint, and waited for the right time to show the extent of their power.

If you were to tell someone in 1994, that in ten years there would be democratic elections in places like the Ukraine and Afghanistan, they would have offered you ocean front property in Arizona, but those distant dreams are now a reality.

In other news, I have a confession to make. My guilty music pleasure song of the week is "Breakaway" by Kelly Clarkson. Yes, I know, I should be ashamed, but since I heard it for the first time at Freshman Follies, I have always enjoyed it. Go ahead, mock me, but it is catchy.