Barbara J. Hamby

Heavy News Week

While I’ve been lounging around in a fog most of this week, I’ve had time to read the daily newspapers for a change. Pretty depressing. National and local news has been focused on the disappearance of a young boy from a local school.

I’m sure much of the world is watching what happens with the oil spill in the Gulf;

I’m also sure I’d be better off without so much news.

This evening I heard from my sister about an earthquake where she lives in Southern California—the second one this week, she says. My other two sisters and I have only been back from visiting her a couple of weeks. I’m happy the earthquakes waited for us to leave.

I haven’t experienced a major earthquake since 1949 in Seattle when some old brick buildings downtown lost some of their structure. I remember newly married friends built a house with some of the used bricks and a group of us helped clean them.

Thanks to Google or some search engine and the internet, I was able to look up the exact year of that earthquake. I knew it was late 40’s or early 50’s before I was married.

Also, thanks to the internet, I’m able to give up a lot of books that I’ve kept for research. They only collect dust these days. I’ve started sorting them and now I have to figure out if anyone wants them.

I seem to be recovering from the virus that’s plagued me for nearly a week.