Things Change So Fast

I remember being a kid and seeing Mikhail Gorbachev on TV as the face of the enemy. My family is of recent Russian decent (via the tried and true "marry a G.I and move the whole family" method in the early 1950's), and so a distrust of all things communist runs deep in me.

So what happens last week? My wife goes to see Gorbachev speak here in Kansas and then ended up getting an opportunity to chat with him in Russian for a bit afterwards. It's so strange to try and wrap my head around the fact that the former leader of "The Evil Empire" is out in the middle of the U.S drumming up support for his global environmentalist movement, the Green Cross. I'm pretty sure my grandmother is dancing a jig in heaven somewhere over what has occurred in the past 15 years. Not everything is perfect in Russia, heck some things have gotten worse since the U.S.S.R fell - but we've come a long way in a short period of time.

Funny anecdote to the whole situation: evidently Gorbachev gave his speech in Russian through a translator, and at one point tried to joke about how he always has to have water at the podium and slipped up using vodka for voda (water). Russians and their vodka, can't separate the two. I know it isn't sports related in the least, but it's just a wierd world we are living in now - and this was just pretty close to home for me this week.