Understanding Ghosts

I really appreciate Brian Ladd for his contribution to my education about the wall. That said, I appreciated him much more in the first chapter than I did in the second. Reading The Ghosts of Berlin gave me definitions to words I only half knew regarding the wall and to concepts which were far too blurry to remain so through my trek. I think my favorite part of the whole reading was his descriptions of the graffiti, how they "made the wall visible," how these depictions of people and creatures, words, ways around and through the fence, strategies to end the ridiculous existence of the ugly grey thing were "to call attention to the injustice, anomaly, or artificiality of the barrier." How, yes, law-breaking art has that power. I felt that notion so powerfully, half because my background allows me to understand systems' influence on people of different worlds and half because of my love for art, that the pictures in the book were - quite literally - a thousand words.
Berlin has existed in my head a place a mystery. Through my parents' accounts, perplexing images of David Hasselhoff, and understated paragraphs in my thousand-paged high school history books, the question lay twisted in the knots of my brain. This is one reason I felt this program call to me. I mentioned in my application, honestly, that I knew nothing of Berlin except its popularity and that there once was a wall, and I am excited to have my questions slowly (and thoroughly!) answered. This is fun. Aside from my interest in the art and what it had to say to me (what the people will have to say to me...), I was struck from my ignorance that the wall was erected in the '60s. I'm surprised I didn't underline every part of every page that mentioned this. Ladd discusses an author, Muller-Hegemann, who distinguishes the political connotations the world has with the highlighted decade. That in a time of love, "peace and growing prosperity," unity, justice, the word of the people, a raised fist in the air (the list could continue): something so dividing would occur is astounding to me. This blows me away so greatly in fact that I am considering integrating it into my research project.
I'm loving learning all of this and enjoying being intellectually pushed and challenged (and maybe a little beat-up) with the honors students as well. It's good for me. Dulling that separation of little 'h' and no 'h' at all. Smoothing the ridges, breaking the wall.