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Lori Morrison's avatar

My first bonding to another's suffering was when I was very small. I saw a Time magazine with a boy with iron arms or legs in the cover. I just stared. I may have been almost 4 because I remember the house we were in. I just cried and stared and hurt. I even write a small story of it. The second was walking by a black and white TV. My dad was watching Imitation of Life. A white boy was beating a girl in an alley against a dirty wall. Calling her ugly names. I stood, paralyzed with terror. I asked him what he was doing and my dad just said he was mad because he'd found her mom was black. That's it. I probably was about 7. I can't tell you the horror that shrouded me with. I couldn't understand meanness and cruelty. And poverty too. I don't think I ever walked away from this. My heart just broke but I never understood. When Titanic came out I was out of all normal loops raising my kids and it sounded more like a hit romance so I never really got involved. Biafara starvation and migrant oppression and black rights, MLK being killed...all carried in my heart and mind was so much overload to bear. But oh how I've tried to!

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Loren Warnemuende's avatar

I know I was enthralled (and horrified) by stories of volcanic eruptions, but not a specific one. I do remember my fascination with WWII events in the Philippines. We lived there from the time I was five to nine and saw numerous sites like the monument at the end of the Bataan Death March and the island of Corregidor. I remember someone driving us somewhere and pointing to little caves in tucked in the brush and telling us about Japanese soldiers beings found there years after the war who didn’t know it was over. Years later, when I met Kraig’s grandfather we bonded over his memories of being in the Philippines during WWII. I came to find out that he started to tell stories then that he’d never shared.

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