6 Comments

there should be a song "gazoontite in Kaskaskia"

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Ha ha! I might have to write that one!

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I’ve never been to Kaskaskia, but crossing the Kaskaskia River on the way to Chicago is always a high point because I really like saying Kaskaskia.

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I've always loved saying it, too! I knew the Kaskaskia River before I knew of the village (I lived in Okawville, IL for a short blip, and the river runs through town). It's well worth a visit. It really feels like a place out of time, because you have to take a pretty meandering path to get there. We have some friends who took a little camper trailer there a few weeks ago and made a weekend of it. The first time I visited, it was during the 2017 eclipse, so I suppose Kaskaskia is always going to feel a little uncanny/magical to me.

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It was a beautifully haunting retelling. We often don't handle truths well, my friend. We bury many of these in platitudes and nicknames because it's too painful to reckon with otherwise.

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Thanks, Brian! And yes, you are right. Platitudes, euphemisms, nicknames — it reminds me of those pinhole cameras you use in elementary school to look at an eclipse, but never directly.

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