Death from Above
This has no doubt long faded from the collective memory, but in the early 1970s, Comet Kahoutek was going to end the world. Among the many theories was one--I really love this one--that the comet would be so bright no one would get any sleep and we'd all die from sleep deprivation.
There was a cult, the Children of God, who were quite sure this was the end. They were a splinter group from the Jesus People, and the founder, David Berg, later changed his name to Moses. California, he said, was going to be destroyed by an earthquake, and in January 1974, the rest of the country was going to get it from the comet. He was also a big proponent of "Hookers for Jesus."
He had a couple thousand followers, apparently. Google "Mo Letters," and you get more than twelve million hits, although most of them seem to be websites of right-wing religous groups railing against this obscure thing most people have never heard of.
Anyway. The point is, the world didn't end. Unless it did, and nobody has bothered to tell us yet. I do think that's possible.
The comet came and went. I remember getting up on the roof of the house to look at it through binoculars. This makes me feel sad and stupid that when Halley's Comet came around, I barely bothered to peek at it.
There are a couple points here, although maybe I'm stretching it with some of them. So let me just give you this:
back when there was such a thing as the music of the spheres, each planet had its own song. Earth was g, a flat, g.
The world didn't end, the comet didn't blind us, and today in Skagway, the finest, most powdery snow I've ever seen fell.
What are we listening to?
There was a cult, the Children of God, who were quite sure this was the end. They were a splinter group from the Jesus People, and the founder, David Berg, later changed his name to Moses. California, he said, was going to be destroyed by an earthquake, and in January 1974, the rest of the country was going to get it from the comet. He was also a big proponent of "Hookers for Jesus."
He had a couple thousand followers, apparently. Google "Mo Letters," and you get more than twelve million hits, although most of them seem to be websites of right-wing religous groups railing against this obscure thing most people have never heard of.
Anyway. The point is, the world didn't end. Unless it did, and nobody has bothered to tell us yet. I do think that's possible.
The comet came and went. I remember getting up on the roof of the house to look at it through binoculars. This makes me feel sad and stupid that when Halley's Comet came around, I barely bothered to peek at it.
There are a couple points here, although maybe I'm stretching it with some of them. So let me just give you this:
back when there was such a thing as the music of the spheres, each planet had its own song. Earth was g, a flat, g.
The world didn't end, the comet didn't blind us, and today in Skagway, the finest, most powdery snow I've ever seen fell.
What are we listening to?
posted by e. Readicker-Henderson at 6:22 PM
1 Comments:
I don't remember anything about a cult and Comet Kahoutek, but I do remember that comet. It was billed as the brightest one of the century - and then it was a dud. Later, Halley's was too. It wasn't until Hale-Bopp in '97 that I saw a decent comet in the sky, bright enough to be seen in the city of Chicago. And you might remember, there was a cult that pined for that comet, too, so much so that they offed themselves to go join it.
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