Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (via chocolateinthelibrary)
Month: December 2010
KA-CHING!: Why You Got a “C”
Dear Grade-grubber who earned a C:
You have asked me why this happened. I offer the following explanatory theories:
1) You are so dull that you couldn’t find East with the rising sun, a compass, and a praying Arab as visual aids. To call you a lunkhead insults lunks everywhere. If dumb were…
Yoko in Fifth
The fourth race at Laurel Park today, 30 years after John Lennon was shot to death in New York City: Yoko wins the race but is disqualified and placed, where else… fifth.
The notebook dork in me couldn’t resist. One of these is headed my way this week.
I’m thirty. I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
