My memories of Chris go back a long way, to my earliest boyhood, back to when we still lived around 12th and Prescott. The Martins, Hazel Hemphill, the Jumps, the Pinneys, Iona Tanner... these were some of the early personalities I tuned in, sitting in the back of the car, sent upstairs for First Day School, and so on.
A faction within the USG had successfully lobbied Truman for permission to detonate uber-bombs over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Contrary to Einstein's hopes, the Americans would import German scientists and use the very Nazis he'd hope to circumvent, to make the Atomic Age an horrific experience. Portland works on healing this trauma to this day, with Hanford part of the scar.
Speaking of Hanford, mom is just back from a conference there. These days, the USG is being vocal about having been raped by the Grunch and left in a ditch, defenseless.
You wouldn't think of Uncle Sam as broken and bust, left in a ditch, but then you probably haven't read about the Gross Universal Cash Heist, a continuation of the story in Critical Path, wherein the ever law-abiding, ever rule-changing "zombie devils" ("corporate persons" ala Voodoo Economics) work to subvert and overturn any advances on behalf of humanity made by FDR and his ilk.
The Business Plot people hoping to recruit Smedley "Fighting Quaker" Butler, never gave up on their quest to gut the government and repurpose its treasury to their own ends. We're talking about a billions-of-dollars vitrification plant that has yet to do any useful cleanup work, budgets sucked dry. What's the story on the Savannah Plant?
Anyway, back to Chris. He lives across from the Stark Street Meeting House today, which is where I first met him. However, he's a member of a different church, and actively performs in that church's rituals, which are more elaborate than Friends' (that's not saying much as Friends have it stripped down to a minimum, the name "Stark Street" apropos (as in "stark naked")).
His older brother is Craig and his younger is Doug. Doug does a lot of database work, as I've done, mostly for unions these days. He and Heather talked a lot. Heather is married to a high school chemistry teacher and I couldn't resist telling her Breaking Bad should be in her queue, as worthy adult entertainment. She's one of those brilliant and beautiful Pinney kids after all, an original founding family of our Stark Street (aka Multnomah) Meeting.
