“One of my favorite history books is one called Moving Through History—it is a book about dance.”

This is what Dr. Odd Arne Westad , Cold War expert at the London School of Economics, told me today after I introduced myself and explained why I chose to attend the Global Cold War Seminar. (I had mentioned a bit about our new course dealing with Chinese History, Culture & Movement.)

Can you imagine? An LSE history professor, who earlier in the day made an appearance on CNN, and one of his favorite history books is Moving Through History? Does he have a clue that his words will cause me to work extra, extra hard on my project for his class???

I love being a student because it reminds me just how much students may be affected by the things we (teachers) say. That affective connection means so much!

This seminar is going to be even cooler than I had imagined. As I said, my prof asked us to explain, briefly, why we chose the Cold War seminar. Everyone’s answers were so engaging….some of my older classmates spoke of elementary school duck and cover drills, two Russian participants spoke of perspective and how they are very curious to hear what we have to say, many talked about their dads being stationed in Vietnam, others spoke about being stationed at the 38th parallel in 1984 , others talked about how much the mini series The Morning After freaked them out (evidently it freaked Nancy and Ron out, too) or how they loved the movie Rocky Four.

This all made me think of the letter Mrs. Will asked us to write in 1984. I was in 6th grade. I urged President Reagan to reduce the number of nuclear weapons because
“the U.S. and the USSR have enough weapons to blow up the world 20 times over.” I included a huge crayola-colored picture of a bomb enclosed in a red circle with a line through it. (Terribly original, I know.) Now that I think about it—this could’ve been my first task as a political activist. Hmmmm. Thanks Mrs. Will!

Do you have a memory of the Cold War?