Unrelated inspirations
It’s a funny thing, inspiration. Lex’s Long War metaphor? inspired me to comment – not altogether unusual – but it also inspired me to think and write about other things unrelated to the topic at hand. Like books, and the things you remember.
Posted by Theodore
On February 11th, 2008 under Blogging, Books.
Comments: 1
Comments
Comment from Max Damage
Time: February 12, 2008, 12:36 am
One of the great lamentations of my life is that it takes two hands to properly, respectfully, and without risk of damage open a book. Now having an infant who requires frequent holding and cuddling, I suddenly find myself with one less limb than necessary to peruse the library. Sitting in the rocking chair, 40′ x 8′ of bookshelf next to me and not a tome to read. Dreadful, were she not so entertaining to look upon.
Two books from my youth come to mind as worthy of comment.
One was, “Hello God? It’s me, Margaret.” Never read it, but every girl in my sixth-grade class did, so we boys were pretty sure there was some secret, some revelation in that book and if we could only get it checked out of the school library we could probably take over the world. Don’t know what happend that summer, but by 7th grade our eyes were fixated on 9th graders and their tight sweaters in Junior High school. The book could wait.
The second book was Secrets of the Stars, a terrifying tome for a kid. It talked about the movement of stars, how 20 million years from now the Big Dipper would no longer resemble a dipper. Showed how we made rockets that went to the moon and how astronauts couldn’t live without their suits, how the suits were constructed and what dangers awaited them during re-entry. Explained how ol’ Sol isn’t much of a star, that to really be a star try Arcturus or Rigel, and even then don’t bother because Betelguese will still be the biggest boy on the block and even he pales in comparison to the Cephei brothers.
Sort of put me in my place, being all self-absorbed and all.
Little did I know that a mere 750 Million years from now the dwarf galaxy in Sagittarius is going to spiral through our own Milky Way and play sheer hell with any system in its path. No, I was concerned about the long-term effects of the Sun running out of hydroven in 5.4 Billion years and turning into a red giant.
Anything this side of Jupiter is toast. The only thing left that will mark us as mankind and our civilization will be a flag, parts of a lunar lander, and a glorified dune buggy left on the moon.
I should have stuck with Dr. Suess and those books about Clifford the Big Red Dog.
– Max
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