Jesus Christ. Okay, I think my site is back to normal now. I had more problems yesterday, but if you can read this, then things are fine.

Well, that was fun!

My apologies to anybody who’s tried to access my site since Friday. My site’s been down for four days and it finally came back up this evening. I ran into a little snafu while trying to renew my domain name. It was frustrating. But things seem back on track now.

If you’ve sent emails to me at tinmanic.com since Friday, I haven’t received them. So you might want to try sending them again.

Again, my apologies, and I’m just glad my site’s back up.

I recently finished reading Sean Wilentz’s new book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. It’s about the rise of the conservative movement from the post-Watergate era to the present, with its culmination in the Reagan presidency.

I didn’t notice this right away, but it eventually struck me that the era covered in The Age of Reagan coincides almost exactly with my lifetime. I was born in December 1973, at the height of Watergate. I was an infant when Nixon resigned. I used to think I was a “Watergate baby,” until I learned that the term “Watergate babies” actually refers to the 75 Democrats elected to Congress in 1974 in the wake of the scandal. But I still like applying the term to those of us born around that time. I feel some solidarity with people who are my age or pretty close to it, who were in the same grade of school at the same time as me, who experienced world events at the same age I did.

It got me wondering about when I first discovered “the news.” What’s the first news story I remember?

I think it was the Iranian hostage crisis. I remember sitting in my parents’ bed one morning in the late ’70s. On TV there were men with white hoods covering their heads. This was a striking image for a little kid to see, and it scared me. Did I see something similar to this?

The next news event I remember is the 1979 gas shortage. My mom packed me into the car with some sandwiches on a spring (summer?) day and we drove to the nearby gas station, where we waited on a long line that stretched around the block, everyone waiting to get gas.

Next: the 1980 election. I remember being in my first grade classroom and looking at the latest edition of the Weekly Reader, the weekly newsmagazine for kids. On the cover were pictures of the three major presidential candidates, each in an oval: President Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John Anderson.

Next I remember the 1984 election. In my fifth grade classroom, we had a mock vote. One student portrayed Reagan and the other portrayed Mondale, and each articulated the candidate’s positions. Then we voted. Out of 20-plus kids in the class, everyone voted for Reagan except me. I voted for Mondale.

From then on, I started to become more aware. Live Aid. The Challenger disaster. Chernobyl. Iran-Contra. The 1988 election, where every candidate seemed to have a one-syllable name. (Bush. Dole. Gore. Hart. Haig. Kemp.)

What are the earliest news events you remember?