Not Just A Hat Rack

Nuclear Bomb Explodes (It's Only LA!)

            As a mushroom cloud created by a nuclear detonation unfurled on television tonight over Los Angeles, I remembered 1983 – the last time I watched a nuclear bomb going off in America in prime time.  As a 14-year-old, I was profoundly affected by the ABC miniseries “The Day After” when a television show demanded that we consider the most dire implications of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

            How times have changed.  I know many people who are too young to remember the latter stages of the Cold War… moments, people and places I feel like I grew up with: May Day weapons parades in Red Square, Olympic boycotts, Charter 77, Ceaucescu, Gorbachev, Walesa, Havel, Chernobyl, Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars initiative – the “Miracle on Ice”.  Time and history march on.

Six Degrees? Prove It!

Rashida Stewart? Are you out there?

Think you know Rashida? Or, do you know someone who knows someone who frequented The Estate in Chicago, or is an actor in the Windy City?

The premise of Columbia University's Small World Project is to prove that Six Degrees of Separation really do connect the world.  They have taken on what seems to be a massive research project, inviting people like me and you to find entirely random people around the globe - via email.

After seeing the story on ABC's PrimeTime on Weds., December 13th - I'm hooked.  I registered, to seek and be sought... and, ironically, it assigned me to track down a Chicagoan, Ms. Stewart, in six steps or less.