Archive for March, 2008
Final Odyssey
Friday, March 28th, 2008Arthur C. Clarke, world-renowned science fiction writer, died last week in his adopted homeland of Sri Lanka. Clarke, 90, was perhaps most famous for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1968 film on which he collaborated with director Stanley Kubrick and on which he developed the novel of the same name.
I read the novel in high […]
Hands
Friday, March 21st, 2008When I look closely at my hands, details of my life come to mind.
Scars speak of accidents large and small. One of the smallest scars is from one of my worst injuries. I sliced the end of my right ring finger with a razor blade—deeply. But razors make for very thin scars. A more visible […]
Ripples
Friday, March 14th, 2008Four people died in a McComb, Miss., bank shooting on Wednesday. The casualties were two bank employees, a customer and the gunman.
The gunman came into the bank shortly after 11 a.m. and opened fire, killing one employee and one customer. He then took the other employee, his ex-wife, and drove away in a truck. He […]
You Cannibal, You Ogre, Your Majesty
Friday, March 7th, 2008A friend recently gave me a desk calendar of random historical events. The February 26 entry listed a series of newspaper blurbs from France in 1815. Journalists of the day were following Napoleon’s escape from exile on the Island of Elba and his renewed attempts at European conquest.
On March 9: “The Cannibal has escaped from […]