Literature is the unifying element of this week’s three thoughts, which makes them sound high brow and slightly intimidating. Until a little investigation reveals three of the four literary genres are science fiction, comic strips, and fairy tales. More low brow than high brow, which makes me, and hopefully you, feel right at home.
- When we read one of Ray Bradbury’s short stories in eighth grade English class in the late 1960s, I assumed he was an old man. Or maybe already dead. So yesterday’s announcement of Bradbury’s death at age 91 shocked me. If I’ve lived 40 plus years with that misconception, how many others need to be revealed?
- As was mentioned in previous Thursday thoughts, the new biography of Catherine the Great is quite the expose on princesshood. If little girls find out what palace life is really like, sales of tiaras, pink boas, and sparkly shoes will plummet. I wonder if the talking suits in charge of the Disney fairytale princess division are considering damage control?
- The other day, when the back surgeon showed Hiram the MRI of his spine, I felt like Charlie Brown looking at the clouds with Lucy and Linus. (Linus saw a map of the Caribbean, the profile of a famous painter, and a tableau of the stoning of Stephen. Charlie Brown saw a duckie and a horsie.) The surgeon and Hiram saw bulging disks, the spinal cord, and a disk fragment near the sciatic nerve. I saw black stuff and grey stuff and white stuff.
How about you? Have you had any profound, or not so profound, literary thoughts lately? Leave a comment.
