You took me back with those drills and the descriptions of those shows with the mushroom clouds. I hadn't thought about them for a long time. We know what WE were thinking, but what must the teachers have been thinking? They had to have known the desks wldn't help us.
I guess we were the lucky ones, compared to having to do active shooter drills - when the danger was likely to be perpetrated by someone right here on U.S. soil, and close up and personal.
Some of them believed it I think. This is just another one of the nonsensical things we're bullied to believe to keep us in control. Thanks for your thoughtful comments!
Thanks! It is sad. It scarred many of us who had a clear understanding of fair from unfair. Thankfully, like Viktor Frankyl inducates in "Man's Search for Meaning" they cannot repress or control our minds.
Now that I'm older, I can see how in THEIR minds they were merely trying to keep us from own "sinful" natures. Too bad they forgot to check their own methods against those of Jesus Christ.
This took me back! I lived in Houston during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we were drilled every day at school for about a month at that time. But instead of getting under our desks, we were sent out into the hall where we scrunched down next to the wall and got into something like “child’s pose,” with our hands locked over the back of our heads. I think most of us suspected that if there was really an attack that affected the school, we were not going to walk away. I also remember hearing Nikita Khrushchev on TV, saying that the USSR would destroy us from within. I couldn’t figure out what that meant. Guess we all know now.
As with my Mother's book by Dr Spock on raising children, my circle of friends and I were already a chapter ahead when the Cuban Missile Crisis had us practicing sitting in the hallway with our head between our knees kissing our asses goodbye.
Sen. Ron Wyden announced that he will be hosting an “open-to-all town hall” on Tuesday, instead of attending Trump’s rant in front of a joint session of Congress. Wyden said: “If you’re looking for something to do … besides watching Trump lie for two hours, all are welcome to tune in.”
maybe you went to an enlightened school district? I'm sure there were schools still paddling kids even when I grew up, there are some still doing it today. Thanks for the thoughtful comment, you got me thinking. I'm glad you didn't have to endure this nonsense!
Those air-raid and duck and cover drills were an early sign of the growing division between rural and urban America.
Way back in 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear bomb. By 1950, President Truman’s Civil Defense Administration had started duck and cover drills accompanied by air raid sirens. By the mid-1960s air raids and duck and cover drills had raised awareness of nuclear weaponry so high, anti-war and anti-nuclear weaponry protests broke out in the cities. By the mid-60s, that sentiment found its voice in the anti-Vietnam movement (which was an overwhelmingly urban and college student movement).
It’s no surprise that a higher percentage of poor, rural, and minority kids were drafted while urban and suburban kids, especially white kids, stayed home. Rural families watching city and college kids protesting a war, that their children were dying in, divided rural and urban Americans even further. By the mid-1960s, most urban public schools had ended air raid and duck and cover drills. It’s no surprise that many rural school districts continued those drills well into the 1980s.
During President George W. Bush’s war on terror, military recruitment offices were opened in the inner-cities and all across rural America. Military recruiters went directly into rural classrooms to recruit students while rural principals provided lists of students they felt “well suited” for the military. Recruiters stationed themselves near schools, stores and shops looking for kids to recruit. That kind of recruitment sh-t did not happen in urban or suburban communities, or their children’s classrooms.
Obviously, there is no one event that caused the rural urban divide. It was, instead, an endless stream of small events that seemed inconsequential at the time. Eventually, all the little, inconsequential things added up and elected Donald Trump President of the United States.
Having lived this history and watched its slow progression is why I keep begging urban Americans, and especially college educated Americans, to stop stereotyping rural Americans. If people educate themselves about rural America, they might develop a different perspective on our whole country (including themselves).
PS As a kid, those air raid sirens sent chills down my spine, and I shivered in fear underneath my desk. Recently, I’ve been thinking its time to make sure, our community has air raid sirens, just in case we need them.
Thanks for the insights into your experience. Cross-cultural lines need to be erased and I do believe that's why bussing in the 60s happened, though well- intentioned, was disastrous, and college courses on ethnic SNF women's studies, which exposed students to a version of "others" experiences, authors and heroic deeds, until MLK's dream of white and black children playing together, everywhere, will we actually see there have been and still are differences of how people are treated due to where we were born, what gender we are, where we live and what color are skin is. We would do well to hear more of these specific stories about how some endured particularly harsh, unfair and debilitating treatment.
Christine, your lovely reply was unexpected and appreciated.
The sheer size of our country has made it easy for people to exploit people in one part of the country at the same time they are considered fair, kind and moral at home.
As I often try to explain, rural America is still a colony - an 'internal' colony, but a colony nonetheless. That rural Americans exhibit the symptoms of colonization is no surprise to anyone, except urban and suburban Americans who think everyone enjoys their freedoms, opportunities, and choices.
Over the course of my life, I've stood against our corporate masters countless times. Sometimes we won the battle. Sometimes we managed to mitigate our losses. But most of the time, we lost - and corporations won. To be ridiculed, marginalized, stereotyped, and demeaned by urban Americans who benefit from our losses is infuriating.
If no one has ever said it to you I'm so sorry you were mistreated and made to feel, in any way, that you yourself were the problem and that you didn't belong or that you were not included in the dream that was America, and that you didn't deserve the liberties written about in our Constitution. The shame they tried to put on you belongs to those who did the excluding, the separating, the favoritism and the exceptionalism, amounting to mental and physical brutality. I'm convinced we have a nation of PTSD survivors who have never had their traumas acknowledged or healed.
We still have a long way to go to create a more perfect union.
At this time in history, we are fighting, more than ever, to ensure that every voice be heard and valued for without that there will be no peace or harmony amongst us dwellers of this earth.
I too hid under my desk like I was told until I did my own research . I was that kind of kid that did not believe adults very much. So I found out , if a bomb WAS dropped , the desk would not save me and we would all be dust . What crap to tell kids 🥴🥴🥴.
wow, what a walk down memory lane, Walter! i remember those drills in the 60s also. i wondered, if we lived, if we would get cut by glass when the windows broke. (we had one whole side of the room covered in windows at my school) also, i do remember those movies, Damnation Alley and The Day After Tomorow and actually have them in my YouTube queue to watch later. the giant cockroaches terrified me and now i live in Flori-duh where we have...giant cockroaches. 🤦🏽♀️🪳🪳🪳
You took me back with those drills and the descriptions of those shows with the mushroom clouds. I hadn't thought about them for a long time. We know what WE were thinking, but what must the teachers have been thinking? They had to have known the desks wldn't help us.
I guess we were the lucky ones, compared to having to do active shooter drills - when the danger was likely to be perpetrated by someone right here on U.S. soil, and close up and personal.
The enemy within.
Be well!
Christy 🇺🇲❤️🕊
Some of them believed it I think. This is just another one of the nonsensical things we're bullied to believe to keep us in control. Thanks for your thoughtful comments!
Ha! Complicitly ignorant or mindlessly compliant. Take your pick, I guess.
I had nuns that taught at my school. They were more terrifying than any nuke! And THEY happened every day! 🫣
Everybody I talk to who was taught by nuns says the same thing. It makes me feel sad
Thanks! It is sad. It scarred many of us who had a clear understanding of fair from unfair. Thankfully, like Viktor Frankyl inducates in "Man's Search for Meaning" they cannot repress or control our minds.
Now that I'm older, I can see how in THEIR minds they were merely trying to keep us from own "sinful" natures. Too bad they forgot to check their own methods against those of Jesus Christ.
This took me back! I lived in Houston during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we were drilled every day at school for about a month at that time. But instead of getting under our desks, we were sent out into the hall where we scrunched down next to the wall and got into something like “child’s pose,” with our hands locked over the back of our heads. I think most of us suspected that if there was really an attack that affected the school, we were not going to walk away. I also remember hearing Nikita Khrushchev on TV, saying that the USSR would destroy us from within. I couldn’t figure out what that meant. Guess we all know now.
I clearly remember the view from under my desk in 1961
All the way back to 1961! You must have been among the first and I was among the last! By the time it got to me, it was just a ludicrous pantomime.
As with my Mother's book by Dr Spock on raising children, my circle of friends and I were already a chapter ahead when the Cuban Missile Crisis had us practicing sitting in the hallway with our head between our knees kissing our asses goodbye.
Sen. Ron Wyden announced that he will be hosting an “open-to-all town hall” on Tuesday, instead of attending Trump’s rant in front of a joint session of Congress. Wyden said: “If you’re looking for something to do … besides watching Trump lie for two hours, all are welcome to tune in.”
Thousands of us will be joining!
https://blogspot.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0890ebdb3902bd4cdf592750a&id=e90dce7948&e=9bd07a9a98
I must be in that in-between generation that neither had to hide from nukes, or from school shooters. Both sound hideous.
maybe you went to an enlightened school district? I'm sure there were schools still paddling kids even when I grew up, there are some still doing it today. Thanks for the thoughtful comment, you got me thinking. I'm glad you didn't have to endure this nonsense!
The most frightening movie I watched was “Threads”. The stuff of nightmares.
I don't think I saw that one. I bet it's pretty dated now. The name rings a bell a little bit.
I streamed it a few months ago. It was a BBC movie, set in UK.
Those air-raid and duck and cover drills were an early sign of the growing division between rural and urban America.
Way back in 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear bomb. By 1950, President Truman’s Civil Defense Administration had started duck and cover drills accompanied by air raid sirens. By the mid-1960s air raids and duck and cover drills had raised awareness of nuclear weaponry so high, anti-war and anti-nuclear weaponry protests broke out in the cities. By the mid-60s, that sentiment found its voice in the anti-Vietnam movement (which was an overwhelmingly urban and college student movement).
It’s no surprise that a higher percentage of poor, rural, and minority kids were drafted while urban and suburban kids, especially white kids, stayed home. Rural families watching city and college kids protesting a war, that their children were dying in, divided rural and urban Americans even further. By the mid-1960s, most urban public schools had ended air raid and duck and cover drills. It’s no surprise that many rural school districts continued those drills well into the 1980s.
During President George W. Bush’s war on terror, military recruitment offices were opened in the inner-cities and all across rural America. Military recruiters went directly into rural classrooms to recruit students while rural principals provided lists of students they felt “well suited” for the military. Recruiters stationed themselves near schools, stores and shops looking for kids to recruit. That kind of recruitment sh-t did not happen in urban or suburban communities, or their children’s classrooms.
Obviously, there is no one event that caused the rural urban divide. It was, instead, an endless stream of small events that seemed inconsequential at the time. Eventually, all the little, inconsequential things added up and elected Donald Trump President of the United States.
Having lived this history and watched its slow progression is why I keep begging urban Americans, and especially college educated Americans, to stop stereotyping rural Americans. If people educate themselves about rural America, they might develop a different perspective on our whole country (including themselves).
PS As a kid, those air raid sirens sent chills down my spine, and I shivered in fear underneath my desk. Recently, I’ve been thinking its time to make sure, our community has air raid sirens, just in case we need them.
Thanks for the insights into your experience. Cross-cultural lines need to be erased and I do believe that's why bussing in the 60s happened, though well- intentioned, was disastrous, and college courses on ethnic SNF women's studies, which exposed students to a version of "others" experiences, authors and heroic deeds, until MLK's dream of white and black children playing together, everywhere, will we actually see there have been and still are differences of how people are treated due to where we were born, what gender we are, where we live and what color are skin is. We would do well to hear more of these specific stories about how some endured particularly harsh, unfair and debilitating treatment.
Be well!
Christy 🇺🇲❤️🕊🙏
Christine, your lovely reply was unexpected and appreciated.
The sheer size of our country has made it easy for people to exploit people in one part of the country at the same time they are considered fair, kind and moral at home.
As I often try to explain, rural America is still a colony - an 'internal' colony, but a colony nonetheless. That rural Americans exhibit the symptoms of colonization is no surprise to anyone, except urban and suburban Americans who think everyone enjoys their freedoms, opportunities, and choices.
Over the course of my life, I've stood against our corporate masters countless times. Sometimes we won the battle. Sometimes we managed to mitigate our losses. But most of the time, we lost - and corporations won. To be ridiculed, marginalized, stereotyped, and demeaned by urban Americans who benefit from our losses is infuriating.
Thank you, again, for your thoughtful reply.
If no one has ever said it to you I'm so sorry you were mistreated and made to feel, in any way, that you yourself were the problem and that you didn't belong or that you were not included in the dream that was America, and that you didn't deserve the liberties written about in our Constitution. The shame they tried to put on you belongs to those who did the excluding, the separating, the favoritism and the exceptionalism, amounting to mental and physical brutality. I'm convinced we have a nation of PTSD survivors who have never had their traumas acknowledged or healed.
We still have a long way to go to create a more perfect union.
At this time in history, we are fighting, more than ever, to ensure that every voice be heard and valued for without that there will be no peace or harmony amongst us dwellers of this earth.
Be well!
Christy 🇺🇲❤️🕊
I too hid under my desk like I was told until I did my own research . I was that kind of kid that did not believe adults very much. So I found out , if a bomb WAS dropped , the desk would not save me and we would all be dust . What crap to tell kids 🥴🥴🥴.
I grew up in the 50s, and I well remember "duck and cover" drills. I thought they were stupid, too.
wow, what a walk down memory lane, Walter! i remember those drills in the 60s also. i wondered, if we lived, if we would get cut by glass when the windows broke. (we had one whole side of the room covered in windows at my school) also, i do remember those movies, Damnation Alley and The Day After Tomorow and actually have them in my YouTube queue to watch later. the giant cockroaches terrified me and now i live in Flori-duh where we have...giant cockroaches. 🤦🏽♀️🪳🪳🪳