19 Comments
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Susan OBrien's avatar

There is a full crew of quiet hands aboard the shaky ship of reason.

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Katharine Hill's avatar

Yes, Susan. I believe sanity will prevail.

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Don A in Pennsultucky's avatar

I was in the 6th grade in Rockland County, NY during the Cuban missile crisis. I remember one fellow saying he wasn't worried because his family had a cabin in the Catskills (Sundown, IIRC) and they could shelter there. We were so naive.

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Richard Sutherland's avatar

I was serving in the U.S. Army during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Army Intelligence. We were on worldwide alert.

We now have an equally serious threat to our democracy, IMO - Donald Trump and the oligarch/MAGA/KKK threat. I fear that Biden, as with Ginsburg and Feinstein, could cause us great harm, almost irreparable, by hanging on too long. We need to be on the offensive, not the defensive. This has the making of a great tragedy.

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Katharine Hill's avatar

I agree with you about the severity of the situation but honestly have faith in a steady course at this point.

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Richard Sutherland's avatar

Fingers crossed. I have begun thinking about Panama if things go wrong.

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Katharine Hill's avatar

I’d have to research that. Looking like France may have stayed on the side of Liberty? Definitely taking it day by day . . .

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Richard Sutherland's avatar

Thought of retiring to Panama about 10-15 years ago, bought property there, opened banking accounts and got a permanent residential card (non-expiring.) So, it is my first option. No longer have property or accounts there but it would be easy to set up again.

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Katharine Hill's avatar

Glad you remembered that, Don. My Mum married a man with a cabin in the Catskills a few years after my Dad buggered off back to England. I can’t immediately recall the year but more likely ‘64?

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Michael G's avatar

Interesting flashback to the “earthquake which occurred in California on February 9, 1972” [sic] (it was 1971). I was teenager at the time and it was the first real earthquake I ever felt and the epicenter was about twelve miles away. I remember my mom kicking the walls of the house telling it to stop. The 1994 one was much stronger and destructive. Neither would have caused the state to split off from North America, but authors need something to base their fictional history novels on. But I digress. Newsom, as some of us California Democrats will tell folks outside of the state is a little over rated and carries his own baggage. Not yet Presidential material, maybe in four years, but at the moment that feels like an eternity away.

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Katharine Hill's avatar

Thanks, Michael, for more details. And you know I had to check my book and I’m glad to report that the typo was not mine—glad you were there to report the truth and that you lived to tell us.

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Michael G's avatar

There were some fatalities in the 1971 earthquake. I remember seeing half collapsed stone and brick churches in our town. Many cracked and uplifted streets and curbs, evidence of surface rupture. A fairly new hospital collapsed, which led to California building codes getting more stringent for hospitals, emergency response operation centers, and schools. Most of the fatalities were from a collapsed freeway interchange. CalTrans rebuilt it and the replacement collapsed again in the 1994 earthquake.

One local tv news station reporting on it, noting the 6:01 am time of the event, mentioned many were in the shower getting ready for work while others that ran outside quickly now have second thoughts about maybe they should wear pajamas to bed.

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Katharine Hill's avatar

Thanks again, Michael. The author got the time right in his foreword to the novel, and he also talked about the damage to the VA hospital. One day at a time . . .

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Don A in Pennsultucky's avatar

I remember it because I lived in Ellenville for 1st and most of 2nd grade and although I wasn't into maps then, I have checked the area out since. What I do remember is the "State Hospital for the Criminally Insane" just up the road in Napanoch and we knew several of the "custodians" there.

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Katharine Hill's avatar

And Jack’s cabin was at Willow, but they moved into Kingston as they aged. I moved there to help with Mum’s Alzheimer’s and spent many years title searching various counties. I remember the drive to Ellenville well. Thanks for adding to the memories today.

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Jim Sanders's avatar

Interesting read leading me through the memories of the Cuba Missile Crisis, remembering the movie “The Guns of Navarrone” with David Niven—loved it watching the movie alone sitting in a dark refrigerated theater while the heat was scorching outside. Then reminded of the scorching heat inside as my young body was being enflamed by adolescence hormones driving my intense curiosity as to what was sex like.

Your post came just as I was finishing reading an article about Dr. Susan Clark of Stanford University studying Hidden magnetism that shapes the gases in the Interstellar Medium (ISM). Don’t stop reading my response as I’ll not dwell on the science. However, there was a quote in the article as a metaphor something like: one can measure a man’s ignorance by the strength of his magnetic field.

Hmmm made me start thinking about Trump. This science is about gases and the complexity that may lead to galaxy formation. The metaphor continues thinking about the gases of the Trumpian gaslighting from this Great Orange Cloaca.

So even if we turn to a young, brilliant scientist like Dr. Clark, we are a long way from knowing what destructive political galaxies are forming because of gases from this toad and all the MAGA toads.

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Katharine Hill's avatar

Thanks, Jim. A whole lot more to think about this afternoon.

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Jim Sanders's avatar

Thank you for the memories.

It is blazing hot outside, both physically and politically. I recognize:

We must all dance together

In this heat of season

To induce the clouds to come

Wanting to be seduced

Into giving up some

Of their nourishing

And healing rains

As I wait the dance beginning

I find some peace

Quietly listening

To binaural beats

Blocking the noise

Of the woe begotten

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Irma Stuart's avatar

Could not have said it better myself!

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