Second Life Friends

These are just a few of the precious friends I have made in Second Life. In a few years I expect you will all have a Second Life of some kind or another. From left to right: "Tita" who knows how to create things out of his brain that are amazing and who has tons of patience; "KFH" aka Kirsty Hawkshaw in Real Life, who is just a wonder on so many levels there is no way to describe her-just let me say again that her presence and spirit gave me grace and a teleport to a new life; "Loverush Pennell," a fine man and close friend who is willing to go shopping on a moment's notice and who is a bright star in his own right as a DJ, producer and generally grand human; then I am on the right, the bumbling, stumbling one who drops in and they all put up with my poor flying, hysterical laughing and whatever is on tap for the times we spend together. Would that you all realize soon that your lives can be ever so much more enhanced by getting your own Second Life!

One more thing-the green picture at the top? A mistake, typical of me at many times, but to go from something like that to being able to take the other pictures? Well, learning occurs throughout our lives, every day, now doesn't it?

Viva la Revolucion!

CUBA...

So I am guessing that the revolution may be about to come to an end. Castro has "retired." What an odd word for a revolutionary to give out to his people and the press. Of course this nearly-lost-in-the-middle-of-the-ceaseless-Obama vs. Clinton-saga piece of news brought up the old, which for a few minutes in the shower this morning made me think of the unyielding past memories of Castro's glory days. The good old post-WW II memories of a child growing up in the 1950's taking everything at face value with no alternate compass for comparison. By 1961, at age 10, the Cold War was raging, but what did it mean for my contemporaries? We were fed fear in huge daily rations left over from 1945. I do not remember my parents ever discussing it around the dinner table where my father held court and we listened to his days' events. To me he was fascinating, so full of life and energy and his daily tales of developing land, building houses and completing a vision his father had begun seemed like the most amazing thing to do. This went on every night.

In contrast, television news, which by that time had become de rigueur for all of us, gave one and all a daily dose of how life as we knew it was on the brink of total destruction. Once in a while I wondered why my father was doing all of this while the world was just about to come to an end. All I wanted to do was eat ice cream as that seemed like the most sensible thing to do under the threat of impending doom.

Pause...this blog has just been interrupted...a friend just asked what I'm doing and then referred me to the following youtube video. You must not, I repeat, must not, continue reading until you have watched it. Perhaps you remember it?



Okay...now that you've seen the video you've got my frame of reference.

Continuing on, this video and many others like it were shown to school children throughout the U. S. in order to prevent widespread panic. What it did, of course, now that you've seen it, was to provoke hysterical yet inner-directed terror which I have always maintained created a collective anxiety disorder that continues to this day. I've had my meds today, have you? I cannot speak for others but I suspect if I took a poll of my peers they would say this malarkey was directly responsible for a basic mistrust of government that simmered and then boiled over during the Vietnam War.

Anyway, back to the world in the eyes of a 10-year old child. So we watched this drivel and did not believe one word of it. There was not a word of discussion as we just didn't do that then but we all knew that we were cooked geese but didn't know what day it would happen. Not if but when and way before the color-coded, post-9/11 rainbow scale of imminent doom. I bet some of ya'll right now are going, oh yeah, hell, I forgot about THAT! What happened to THAT! The memory of it lingers on in the incessant scroll; that's what happened to it.

Back to the fallout shelter. This is what my parents proposed to do to save us all, which included a housekeeper, a cook, my father's driver (yes, we were spoiled), my parents, four sisters, a St. Bernard, three poodles and my turtles:

If we were lucky enough to hear a siren (not available) at school we were to calmly walk home. Okay. No problem. Then we were to go into one room in the basement, all of us mind you, and begin stacking up newspapers and magazines such as Look, Life and National Geographics against the walls as they would prevent fallout from entering this room. Oh everyone knew that. This room was unadorned with anything except a half bath that no one in their right mind would ever use, a safe that hadn't been opened in many years and the dampness and odor much like old potatoes that was noxious enough to gag a maggot. Swell. Eternity for the foreseeable future in that room with people I was quite sure were not really my family as it had all been a horrible mistaken identity thing at the hospital nursery.

Oops, one more thing. Mother had taken the time out from her busy schedule with this woman's club or the other to grab a few cans of vegetables and beef stew, because after all we did have to eat SOMETHING. We did not have Spam on hand, however, as my Father had had enough of that while adrift in the Pacific after his twice-torpedoed light cruiser Admiral Halsey thought cool to use as a decoy before the Battle of Midway. Hell, why not, they're already out there, collateral damage, cool, go for it. Apparently it worked.

So what does all of this have to do with Castro? I thought by now you'd forget but here goes. I know it is a lot to ask of a mere human, but if your whole life is lived as a revolutionary couldn't you have just pretended to live the rest of it out without the word "retired" attached to it? What a waste. One little word has diminished the whole bit. I feel almost dirty. In my secret world, the darkest pit of wishes, I was hoping he would put himself in a missile launcher and direct himself to Miami-now THAT would be totally in keeping with his character, the ultimate parting shot, AND it would make me feel better about all of the time spent under my desk or thinking about a brief time of hell in the basement with all of those people and animals.