Back to the "Deep South" in Duluth GA

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I get a kick out of hearing the term "Deep South" in 2026. It is a crazy incredibly outdated label. I think maybe I should start saying the "Deep Northeast". I am a Yankee. My family came over on the Mayflower and moved to Upstate NY via Connecticut. Terms used in the revolutionary and Civil war days are generally inappropriate. My family is all but totally out of NY State now. I find the term "deep south" to be of the same thinking that the movie "Heidi" is what contemporary Europe is like. Watching the fireworks in Rochester, NY from the back yard of a house in the city made it look like a real war zone. It is a long drive between Berkshire, NY and Duluth, GA. Most of the 35K miles on the truck were spent in between. I drove the truck about 3k miles in 2-1/2 weeks. It was great to spend time on the farm. It was good to make some progress on needed repairs and improvements. I also felt good about making some new friends up there. I will be...
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The weather this week in SoCal has been pretty much as it has been for months, 75 Degrees F and 50% RH. The rest of the US is having a heat wave.

I remember the first "man-on-the-moon" as we called it. I was 8 years old. Some of the memories I have was that it took soooo long for each phase of the mission. The decompression of the LEM after they landed seemed like eternity. I complained and my OLDER sister said something like "You don't want the astronauts to open the door early and get sucked out of the lunar module"... followed by the typical "DUH." I remember the video simulations (not real video) of the events when there was not video available (lots). I remember the actual video as well with "live from moon" I think it was blinking. It was analog B&W. It absolutely sucked compared to today, but it seemed a lot better than what I am seeing on youtube today. Maybe because my Dad probably put fresh vacuum tubes in the TV just before the event. I also remember going outside and seeing and hearing no one. In those days we spent a lot of time outside, especially kids and especially on a nice Summer day. There was no one playing, no one washing their cars.

The other thing that strikes me is everything else going on in that era, in the span of about 1 year, we had:

  • Woodstock
  • Kent State shooting
  • Vietnam war at its peak-- neighbors not returning home
  • Martin Luther King assassination
  • Another Kennedy assassination
  • The 1968 election-- even for a kid it was big deal

I like this podcast/youtube. We lived the context of what was going on. It was definitely real. It was science. We didn't talk about STEM we lived it.


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