.ll 72 .fo off .co on .ce ((Editor's comments in double parenthesis - Homer)) .ce ADR - 419 .ce .ce Copyright (C) Homer Wilson Smith .ce Redistribution rights granted for non commercial purposes ======================================================================== 76 Resent-Date: Wed, 06 Sep 89 22:06:01 EDT Resent-From: homer Resent-To: k6qv@unb.ca, adore-l@ualtavm, isa811sf@prism.gatech.edu Received: from YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu by CORNELLC.BITNET (Mailer R2.02A) with BSMTP id 3983; Thu, 03 Aug 89 17:29:41 EDT Received: by YALEVM (Mailer R2.03B) id 9019; Thu, 03 Aug 89 17:32:46 EDT Date: Thu, 3 Aug 89 18:25:42 ADT Reply-To: Disarmament Discussion List Sender: Disarmament Discussion List Comments: From: K6QV000 To: "Homer W. Smith" , Jane Elizabeth Staller In-Reply-To: In reply to your message of WED 02 AUG 1989 23:34:26 ADT ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- homer, hi. you mentioned that you grew up during the 1950s, with the bomb drills and so forth. i'm doing a little background research on that phenomenon for a play i'm working on. would you mind sharing a few of your impressions of that time with me? thanks, in advance. ever-presumptuous, barry Basically life was terrifying. I was brought up by parents who were very scientific minded, who thought that religion was all a lot of gobbledy gook, that you lived once, died once and that was that. I went to a very Quaker school though from k to 6th grade and there was a lot of bible stuff and devil stuff and christmas stuff etc. I remember most being sure that the world would end in a nuclear war brought on by the Russian agressiveness. Or at the best I would get drafted when I was 18 or 21 and get killed fighting some long battle in another land. I felt that I was in a world not of my own making, I could not believe in a God that had made what I saw around me, and wondered constantly what great idiocy had spawned the mess we called civilization. I saw that adults were very caught up in their own somewhat nonsensical oroblems, problems involving right and wrong independant of desire, and that in their quest to be right they would self destruct rather than do what was desirable. It was a world made of concrete and steel (New York City) interspersed with summers in Maine which always ended right on cue. I looked constantly for some shred of hope of salvation but saw only a world full of people who were bent on the rightness of war and sacrifice, bent on the all consuming importance of the state and government and God to the exclusion of the individual, a world caught up in its drugs and alcohol and cigarettes and sleeping pills and coffee in the morning and brandy at night with not a shred of discussion about why we were here and how much we hated it and could possibly we all be wrong about all our stupid world views including and especially Christianity. I went to a school, many in fact, where no one cared about what happened to you at home, where no one cared to discuss that there were a million other philosophies around the world than the one being dished out here, where all were just living their lives in a black and white nightmare saying it was all just fine and we should do our duty and our parents would love us. Someday I will go back and find just exactly where I entered the Twilight Zone. homer k6qv@unb.ca 9/06/89 No subject