Hailstorms and Hiroshima

Today a customer came into the store with a gift for us: a copy of a catalog of drawings and paintings made by survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima, Zuroku Genbaku No E: Hiroshima O Tsutaeru = A-Bomb Drawings by Survivors. We were certainly grateful for the book as a welcome addition to our atomic history section; it's beautifully done, with text in Japanese and English, and the images are sobering.

The woman, who said she had never been in the store or the Bradbury Science Museum, said that we need at least one book to present the other side of the story in the war with Japan. (If she had browsed only briefly, she would have learned that we do present "the other side," in addition to nonproliferation and peace studies. You can't have a bookstore owned by two left-leaning lesbians and not have representation from "the other side.")

As our conversation continued, it was obvious from the reek of cigarettes on the woman's breath and on her clothes from her raspy voice that she was a heavy smoker. She also had a dandy cough: "I'll tell you why ack-ack-awwrrrgggh! you had that ack-ack hailstorm! It's because of chemtrails. Ack-ack-ack-awwwwrrrggggg! Ack! They're poisoning our lungs with ack-ack-acka-acka-acka chemicals and messing with the environment. If you have chemtrails acka-acka-awwrrrrrgggg! you're going to have violent ack-ack-ack-ack hailstorms. Ack-ack-ack-awwrrrrrrrggggggh!"

My own chemtrails, however, are perfectly ack-ack-awwwrrrrrgggh! harmless.