Born in 1971

If you were born in 1971, you grew up hearing "One Shining Moment" of the sixties give way to something more complicated and interior. The Pentagon Papers were published by the New York Times in June, and Nixon's furious response began the chain of events that would unravel his presidency. The voting age was lowered to eighteen—if you were old enough to be drafted, you were old enough to vote—and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment was ratified faster than any before it.

Carole King's *Tapestry* was the album in every apartment, warm and womanly and real. Marvin Gaye's *What's Going On* asked the hard questions. "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night was number one and seemed to sum up a certain determined cheerfulness.

Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida in October and the first day the parking lot was full before nine in the morning. Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle, selling just beans and grounds, nothing fancy. The microprocessor was invented by Intel engineers in Santa Clara, California, though nobody outside the valley quite knew what to make of it yet.

AM radio was beginning to cede ground to the FM dial. The CB radio craze was still a few years away, but truckers were already talking to each other on the highways. Jeans had become acceptable everywhere, which seemed small but wasn't.

The country was finding a new register—less strident, more personal.