Monday, May 21, 2018

Incoming!




          I remember sitting in my grandparents’ living room in Oklahoma, probably on a Saturday morning when there was no school or perhaps on a hot summer afternoon, mesmerized by yet another Tarzan movie. 1961 television didn’t have much to choose from in comparison to today’s offerings, but I was perfectly happy. Those old serials were just fine with me – Tarzan, Roy Rogers, the Thin Man movies. It probably had little to do with the family lore of one of my cousins having swum with Johnny Weismuller, but Tarzan was a favorite.

          Maybe because of this, a child, gorillas were often in the back of my mind. It probably didn’t help that my older sister made me sleep closer to the window in our shared room, “if the gorillas come, they’ll get you first.”

          Another dark fascination was lava, even if I was unlikely to encounter much in Arlington, Virginia, where I grew up, or Tulsa, when we moved to my grandparents’. Those natives in Tarzan's world, or alternatively, hapless explorers, were always crashing through the jungle, a searing river of lava right at their heels.

          Here in Massachusetts, I couldn’t be much farther from current events in Hawaii unless I chartered a boat but I’m still captivated. And apparently we have a whole new vocabulary to go with it.

          Laze: “lava” and haze” - a mix of hydrochloric acid fumes, steam and fine volcanic glass specks created when erupting lava reacts with seawater,

          Vog:  a hazy mix of sulfur dioxide, aerosols, moisture and dust, with fine particles.

          Lumb: a lava bomb, a projectile lump of lava

          And lately another concern just occurred to me when I realized that Kilauea kicked into action on May 3rd, the day my sweet little twin granddaughters were born. For their parents’ sake, I hope this isn’t a portent of the level of excitement in the years ahead.

         

11 comments:

  1. Interesting you had a cousin who knew Johnny. I had a good friend who was in the 28 Olympics with him. My friend was a diver but he didn't medal.
    What is going on in Hawaii is mind blowing and that it is going on so long is hard to come to grips with.

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  2. For some reason I find it hard to get my head around still active volcanos. And then I get reminded. Again.

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  3. Isn't it bizarre? I see those photos from Hawaii and it seems so otherworldly.

    I loved those Tarzan movies, too! And Little Rascals, and the Marx Brothers, and all that old black-and-white stuff that used to air on the weekends. In some ways, I miss having only five TV channels!

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    1. Isn't that funny? Maybe it made us appreciate the few shows we could get

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  4. I remember watching Tarzan every week too, along with Dr Who and Superman. I've always loved gorillas.

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  5. Mt. St. Helens didn't seem as awful as Kilauea does. And I was an adult then, too. And Kilauea is further away!

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  6. I remember Tarzan ... and others.

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  7. It amazes me that people who are a mile from this nightmare are being 'forced' to evacuate. And they are being stubborn about it, as if by staying they can hide in the basement or something until it's over.

    I also wonder what happens after this thing settles down: the propery these people owned is now lava encased, there is no going back to rebuild; what do they do?

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    1. Wow. Good point. Its not like a simple flooded basement.

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    2. I see now that they are threatening people with arrest if they don't get out NOW. I have this image of people hosing down the roofs the way you do during a brush fire, so that the house won't burn. Oh please.

      It's a very real fear, and as i said to my husband, I'd have been out of that place with the first bit of lava moving, so fast...I suspect, too, a lot of them are planning to return to their houses (down there somewhere under a few tons of molten lava) as soon as this is over, to rebuild.

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  8. I remember the Tarzan, and especially the Roy Rogers movies, every Saturday at the theater down town. My brother and I were there every Saturday morning. A quarter got us in to see the movie with enough left over for popcorn and a drink. We each got a quarter for our allowance. I grew up with a fear of hot burning lava flowing down the streets. A real fear. Never thought about where that fear came from.

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