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Rebecca Jansen
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Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
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Posted: 13 January 2024 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I'll admit I thought at one time that "it couldn't happen here". Now I know it can happen anywhere. :^(

Prairie Fires mentions a place my great-grandmothers' family lived; Lake Benton Minnesota. The Ingalls stayed there before heading further west to Dakota Territory and Charles worked there for a railroad. We have one old photo of some of my great-grandmothers' family with Lake Benton written on the back and a date of 1878. Her part of the family would join them from Wisconsin where she was born (just above Chicago IL). She married a man from Manitoba Canada much later and they homesteaded in Saskatchewan where my grandmother and four sisters and two brothers were born. I had the job a few times of minding my great-grandmother (you would never say babysitting). I had known here earlier having her own small house with chickens further up Vancouver Island near one of my great-aunts (her daughter), her neighbours there kept rabbits and I think were Porteguese. She came to live with my grandparents full time when keeping her small house got too much. I heard her stories about a school horse in Minnesota they would ride and the bad winters and hard water. My mother wishes she had listened more or even recorded her stories. Her great motto was "It's a good life if you don't weaken". DeSmet, the Dakota town the Ingalls helped found, was roughly parallel in latitude to Lake Benton. Walnut Grove MN, further east and particularly famous from the tv series, was not much like portrayed there from the sounds of it in this book.

On Youtube there are videos from a couple of guys who dig up deposits of old bottles around these areas, usually where stores and latrines once were. Lots of medicinal and liquor flasks, sometimes bottles from laundry related items for 'bluing'. Any paper labels are mostly long gone. The videos end with photos of the most prized of the bottles shown having been cleaned of all muck.

I'll add The Children's Blizzard to my list to seek out down the road. I have a book on the much later 'Hunger Winter' in the waning days of occupied Holland my father lived through to keep it company.

Watching a PBS show on people escaping North Korea I wondered about all the people who are so occupied with celebrity news magazines and 'reality' tv shows of masked singers and house flipping they can't make time for these too real programs and books. They are part of 'it happening here' whether they ever will realize it or not. They don't want to hear about or discuss anything that might be depressing, and often also won't vote for any of those awful politicians to blame for it all. I think God becomes a last resort when you feel totally powerless and a kind of hopeless apathy has set in. Thus we have Polio and even Leprosy making a comeback and anti-LGBTQ 'opinions' flourishing both because "God never makes mistakes". Freakier weather events probably are interpreted as divine communication reinforcing their situation.

Learn from the past or there might not be a tomorrow. Those things called books (even comic books ala Jack Jackson's stories set in 1800s Texas) are the best way there I find.

Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 13 January 2024 at 5:29pm
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Jonathan Kaye
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Joined: 12 September 2008
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Posted: 30 January 2024 at 3:47am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

RECURSION and DARK MATTER, a couple of very clever sci-fi thriller/suspense novels by Blake Crouch.  Thoroughly enjoyed them!
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William Costello
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Joined: 30 August 2012
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Posted: 31 January 2024 at 12:40am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

NORSE MYTHOLOGY - Neil Gaiman
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Brian Floyd
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Posted: 31 January 2024 at 4:11am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

THE RISE OF THE SHADOW, by Will Murray.
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James Best
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Joined: 02 March 2014
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Posted: 01 February 2024 at 5:35am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

THE LETTER WRITER by Dan Fesperman, a stand alone mystery novel published back in 2018 and set in New York City in early 1942 as the loyalty of the city's huge immigrant population comes under scrutiny as the war in Europe expands. 
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Brian Floyd
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Posted: 06 February 2024 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

The Rise Of The Shadow, by Will Murray. Its about the pulp/radio character, who is one of my favorites.

After that, most likely I Will Find You, by Joe Kenda. We've been marathoning his show Homicide Hunter on ID, via Philo since we don't have cable anymore. 
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Robert Bradley
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Posted: 06 February 2024 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

THE FOOTBALL 100: THE STORY OF THE GREATEST PLAYERS IN NFL HISTORY by Mike Sando, Dan Pompei and The Athletic NFL Staff.

Although not quite as good as THE BASEBALL 100 by Joe Posnanski, it's still an entertaining read.  I have a few minor quibbles with their rankings (Jim Brown is #1 for me, and I think Larry Fitzgerald is a glaring ommission), but generally speaking they do a pretty good job in thee rankings.
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