Right off the get-go here I want to declare I\u2019m a Plague survivor.\u00a0 Two vaccinations, three boosters, fairly careful the past two or three years (who can keep track anymore?).\u00a0 But so far so good.\u00a0 So imagine my dismay when our President comes out and warns us we might be on the verge of nuclear annihilation.\u00a0 And you thought climate change was something to worry about.<\/p>\n
I guess you don\u2019t have to sweat Long Haul Covid, forget about long haul anything when they drop the Big One!\u00a0 I was twelve years old, a snot-nosed kid in Georgia when the Cuban missile crisis was putting us on the brink of \u2026 Atomic War!\u00a0 Neighbors were building fallout shelters, stocking them with food and water, guns and ammo, figuring, I guess, they\u2019d survive the holocaust and kill the mutants who banged on their door.\u00a0 My school was conducting \u2018duck and cover\u2019 drills.\u00a0 You think \u2018Active Shooter\u2019 drills are messing up kids\u2019 heads, try Dr. Strangelove on for size — as the real deal.<\/p>\n
So okay, there\u2019s always some kind of existential threat, some virus or asteroid or robot apocalypse, some unexpected menace, government overthrow, a new war, famine and drought, another ice age.\u00a0 You could maybe get used to one of those \u2026 but all of them coming at you at once?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 Maybe just pull the sheets over your head, call your boss and tell him you\u2019re sick, turn off the TV, cancel the newspapers, avoid social media and imagine a happy place.\u00a0 A place you once lived in but forgot how to find again.\u00a0 A place where the sun shines and children play, a Shangri-la-la far from the maddening crowd.\u00a0 Puppies romp and butterflies fly.\u00a0 Laughter fills the air like puffy clouds and worries drop away and evaporate.\u00a0 Does that place really exist, you ask?<\/p>\n
If it does, you know how to find it. It\u2019s not on your GPS, you won\u2019t find it online, you can\u2019t find it past a secret door the other side of your Closet of Anxieties.\u00a0\u00a0 You want to worry about the future, it isn\u2019t there.\u00a0 The future is the last place you want to look.\u00a0 Try right here\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Right off the get-go here I want to declare I\u2019m a Plague survivor.\u00a0 Two vaccinations, three boosters, fairly careful the past two or three years (who can keep track anymore?).\u00a0 But so far so good.\u00a0 So imagine my dismay when our President comes out and warns us we might be on the verge of nuclear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[5098,5099,4527],"class_list":["post-16011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-cuban-missile-crisis-again","tag-duck-and-cover","tag-nuclear-jitters"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16012,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16011\/revisions\/16012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}