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Posts Tagged ‘Earthquake’

Have you heard of the band Weezer? Not a particularly great band name, makes me think of somebody struggling to breathe. They were big in the 90s and early 2000s. I was wondering because the bass player, Scott Shriner’s wife Jillian Lauren was involved in a police shooting last week here in LA.

Then Shriner performed at Coachella over the weekend.

It’s been a busy weekend. For one thing, Bernie and AOC held a rally on Erev Passover to fight the oligarchy. It was one of their largest turnouts yet, over 35,000 people attended! The Rocker thought we would go, but I had better things to do – like make chicken soup with matzoh balls and finagle a brisket into a slow cooker. Our small Seder was simple but lovely, the twins’ first holiday.

Bob told the girls about the Exodus and Moses. We didn’t get into all the plagues, or make them answer any questions, like “Why is this night different from all other nights?” I mean, they were already reclining in their twinsie pillow. Leo the Protector dog watched over them on the deck as the sun set over the canyon.

This morning I made matzoh brie (scrambled eggs with milk-soaked broken matzoh) with maple syrup.

And then I saw that the NYTimes had picked up our local Weezer story. It happened like this in the neighborhood of Eagle Rock: Jillian Lauren heard something suspicious in the middle of the night and so she picked up her legal gun and went outside to investigate. I’m assuming she was alone in the house with her four dogs since Shriner was out in the desert with the band.

Whereupon she was shot by the LAPD and then arrested.

Just a few weeks ago I’d met my sister-in-law Jorja and two of my LA nieces with children in Eagle Rock for dinner. Granted you hear lots of sirens and helicopters in the City of Angels, but this shooting just seemed so bizarre and close to home. My initial thought was the city will see quite a law suit in the future; Lauren survived her injuries and posted bond for 1 Million.

This has all the makings of an LA Law and Order style episode. Did she point her gun at the police? Did she fire? Did they identify themselves? And just to make it all more interesting, Lauren is an author! She wrote a book about her time spent in a harem – “Some Girls; My Life in a Harem.”

I didn’t feel the magnitude 5.2 earthquake this morning, which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There were several aftershocks but the only thing that happened was Bob’s phone alert started shrieking, my phone was on silent. “Drop, cover and protect yourself.” Similar to finding your safe place during a tornado watch?

But is any place really safe anymore when you can get shot by the police in your own backyard?

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The same night as the earthquake, the August 23rd Virginia once in a hundred year’s event, I heard the first aftershock. I didn’t feel anything, but around 8 pm I heard what sounded like our emergency-back-up generator coming on. That very well used machine sitting next to the heat pump on the north side of the house, always tests itself on Thursday afternoon. It wasn’t Thursday. This had been my first thought when the big one hit earlier in the day, before thinking the house was about to explode from a gas leak. Talking with my MIL, Ada, on the phone, I paused and considered running out of the house…again.

Since then we’ve had more than a dozen. What is the purpose of an aftershock? Is it just a “gotcha” moment, some earthly comedic effect, warning us not to get too comfy with the idea that all is well? Maybe it’s simply a ripple in the fault line. Ada called me on the morning of September 11th to tell me to put the news on; the local channel was gone by that time, so I put on CNN. I called my daughter, who was working in DC for the FTC. A newly hatched graduate of Duke’s Sanford Public Policy program, she walked back to her apartment in Adams Morgan. My son left high school, to sit on the beach with friends and watch the billowing smoke run down the shipping lanes. Bob gathered EMS crews at the marina to wait for patients who never came.

The Bride’s September birthday became the National Day of Mourning.

Our Jersey Shore community lost so many people on that day, a decade ago. We attended our neighbor, Michael Tucker’s funeral; one of many empty caskets. The investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald was set to open a satellite office in the next town; Rumson lost thirteen people, and Middletown over thirty. I was turned away at the blood bank (it was full), so I delivered food, helped to organize a fundraiser. I remember thinking I was glad to have stopped writing a weekly column for the paper, because there were no words. The aftershocks, the effects of that day are felt now whenever I fly, or look up at a plane, when I see flags on bridges or read about first responders who worked on the Pile developing cancer. They are felt in the two wars we have begun, and the many wounded warriors and brave lives lost. And I pray for peace.

“I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.” – John Adams

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Don’t know if the earth moved for you, but I just downloaded Into the Sun from iTunes. Come out of the darkness and listen to the rumble.

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