The news on quakes of the spring/summer have been quaking lately, even though there was that related time when mom thought it was cool to dance on the tabletop, spilling the water that was eventually melding into wine, since the food was slow in coming …
OK, Lake Michigan was not nearly displaced — that would take my aging uncle diving in even back in just-post-college days — but if you were in touristing over in Bangkok it might have sent waves over the wall railing-edge of a hotel rooftop pool. That’s when mom first started baking a cake for a whole host of spring holidays, before she was feted on Mother’s Day, with quagmires of chocolate all-around. OK, I made the part up about my mom dancing on tablecloths, but not my uncle in the pool, which coulda, shoulda been verified by my old friend, who had lived in Bangkok and said that there are some places you can safely go there, but others such as seedy hotels … And she should know as she could do not only the splits but a move where her one knee was fully bent down and the other stuck out over the floor about six-inches high all-around. Even at 63, I can still — almost — do the splits and used to even dunk a basketball, barely pushing it over the front of the rim. Both a very young server friend and not quite as young nephew took great dispute to that, as I further digress.
Anyway, it was back in late spring when the wake moved the earth throughout the bad parts of town, and shook hotels around the pristine part of the city, and now I will fully call it an earthquake, making pools many floors high tilt and spill their water in small sets of big splatters. No word on flowery drinks or tableside umbrellas; or the slums not far away. Water is hard to come by there. No pools. Barely a dripping faucet. A big building will behave that way too, if it’s tilted partly toward its side. Even when shown a bit later on TV news, crashing down toward the camera-man. Or mom taking a (rare) selfie.
Do they have earthquakes in Greenland? Or Iceland. Or Panama, you know where the big canal is, with China owning the port areas on both sides. We could get involved in even more rainy landslides and floods. Back INTO the sea. More likely icebergs. Like the H2O flows of killer hurricanes, but involving water as well as air. So get back in the studio with an easel, weather artist Karine. There is more signature art work to do, like was brushed in a church basement room and sold to aid the people who had lost roofs and more in and about their former houses. “When the levee breaks,” Led Zep sings, ” I’m gonna die today …” Dragged into the rising waters, like those flowing back into the seas.
Then hours later shown on the TV News. Quakes all the time, and they mostly in my quick take are along the south rim or near it of some continents. That would include Florida and across to Texas, and up the Mississippi and Appalachians, with my niece formerly living near the base of that large water mass in big ol’ Texas. Is now, Madison with its mass (of people this time) any better?
The university there houses, or has housed many members of the family. Snow aplenty but no major storms in their neighborhoods, yet. There was that one deadly shooting not far away.
So try out the School Of Rock. The story (lyrics?) goes something like this: Video showing a bus, on cable TV every two hours in rotation. Drumming with your sticks on the back of the seat. Waiting … Or more telling, singing your heart out of an empty window. Then the band teacher came back on board next to the driver with news; he could have two decades ago been Jack Black, and I explained the trademark AC/DC song to mom. First there was second place. Slight polite applause. Then the biggie announcement. They won with that Voice.
But wait. No record deal. Many universities like others including Harvard are being challenged over what they teach, with a removal of their funding from the feds. So we have more legal challenges, hearings, injunctions, indictments, deportations, extensions, expulsions, suspensions if you are more lucky … The courts are so tied up with so many evildoers they are hiring as many bailiffs as judges. So many more very tall and bald guys are needed. Small guys need not apply. Not so much funky judges who do card tricks. This is not Night Court.
But back to mom and weather, to close. Her bad hip and lower back had been classified as a compression (depression) of her spine, in the areas of L4, L5 and I think L6. Here I’d thought those were hurricane strengths!
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