Just a chunk of bad concrete

It used to have pride of place in my study, in a little glass case that showed it off like some expensive crystal figure. I remember thinking often what a lousy job of mixing it represented; it was soft, porous as hell. Rotten as the purpose that had caused it to be poured.

It was a piece of the Berlin Wall, a gift from a friend who had received it, along with several others, from that East German branch of her family that the West German branch hadn't seen in several decades. After the wall came down, twenty years ago today, all the family got together in Berlin and my friend came back with a suitcase full of these broken chunks. I imagine they were a dime a dozen in Berlin for a while: It was a pretty big wall.

Good riddance. Most of the tyrants of the corrupt communist regimes of eastern Europe survived; some even flourished in different guises. Only a few went to a different kind of wall, that that's a damned shame. But whatever our species' failings in the matter of maintaining the freedoms of its individuals, at least we have this to our credit. That damned wall is no more.