I ran across a mention of Judy Blume, and found some strange things through the various Wikipedia pages.
Her maiden name is Sussman; Michael Sussman is probably not closely related, but he has certainly been in the news a lot lately.
There were 118 plane crash deaths in her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, within two months in 1951-1952 (three crashes), and her dentist father helped to identify the remains.
Elizabeth is apparently close enough to New York City that the World Trade Center towers were visible, and is on the flight path to the Newark airport.
The first of these crashes involved smoke coming out of an engine before takeoff, and more white smoke in the air, which became an obvious fire. When Biden's jet was blowing lots of white smoke out of one engine while it was on the ground last year, and then took off right away, people were saying that was totally normal, and nothing to worry about at all.
The 1951 plane narrowly missed a high school, and ended up by the river.
The second of these crashes narrowly missed Blume's high school, less than an hour after school was dismissed for the day, and killed former Secretary of War Robert Patterson. From Blume's graduation date, it appears she was a freshman at the time.
The third crash narrowly missed an orphanage, and did hit an apartment building.
Blume based her 2015 novel "In the Unlikely Event" in that time period and setting.
The Wikipedia page for Elizabeth has what seems like a long list of notable people who are from there for a city of that size, including Mickey Spillane.
Blume's second husband was a physicist.
She wrote books that were controversial at the time, but that paved the way for the school library culture wars of today.
I tried at one point to read her adult novel "Wifey" (a New York Times bestseller), but gave up within twenty pages. I rarely abandon a fiction book mid-story.
A boomer apologizes, albeit without much clarity.
"It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs," Jesus said; Matthew 15:26.
I recently understood that I am spending my life in rebuilding spiritual and practical foundations that had been foolishly undermined by previous generations.
Several months ago I was reading a nonfiction book by Christian author Paul Tournier, and made it about three-quarters of the way through before being drawn away to other things.
When I picked it up this last week and finished reading it, I found references to about a dozen Bible passages that had come up in my daily Bible readings in the interim, mostly obscure Old Testament personages with a variety of afflictions; Tournier was a Swiss doctor famous for connecting his Christianity with his medical practice.
I also read a Christian fiction book this last week: Deadline, by Randy Alcorn. One day, what I read in the book mirrored my morning Bible reading on that same day.
"A work of creation was three-fold, an earthly trinity to match the heavenly; the Creative Idea, timeless and passionate, which is the image of the Father; the Creative Energy, begotten of the idea and working in time, which is the image of the Word; the Creative Power, the meaning of the work and its response in the individual soul, which is the image of the indwelling Spirit."
-- P. D. James, summarizing Dorothy L. Sayers' description
