Let Down Your Hair
May 1, 2008
Everyone loves a good fairy tale…especially when it concerns a gorgeous blond, who defeats the witch to gain the heart of her stalwart hero, who also happens to be a totally rad free climber.
However, there is a lot more to the story of Rapunzel then being the poor relation of such better known fairy tale babes as Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. In fact, it may be that the primal lessons to be found in the story of the girl with the really long hair are even more relevant to us today then they were when the story was first crafted. After all, don’t we all just long to let our hair down sometimes?
Warlord of Mars
May 1, 2008
MARS! Just the word is filled with amazing possibilities, and perhaps more then any other heavenly body it is dear to the hearts of Steampunks everywhere. So near, and yet so far. Our closest planetary neighbor, as unlike the rest of the solar system as our own Earth is. Our desert sister.
Yet how did we first become fascinated with the wonders and horrors of the Red Planet. Long before Mr Welles ignited the modern age of infotainment with his famous radio invasion, Mars was being popularized by a scientist who has been largely forgotten by we non-academics…Percival Lowell.
A Man in Hell
May 1, 2008
By way of commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day today, I would like to ask you all to consider for a moment another of my heroes and one of my favorite authors, the Italian chemist and writer and survivor, Primo Levi.
I have never encountered a writer who so simply and powerfully helps us comprehend the incomprehensible. With the calm, measured words of the scientist, he walks the reader into the heart of hell, and shows him the sad human truths that await there. By not focusing on the lives and motives of the Nazi’s, but on those of their victims, he illuminates and brings dignity to a dark corner of our shared history.
Sophie - A Follow-up
May 1, 2008
Long time readers may remember some time ago, I posted the tragic story of Sophie Lancaster, brutally murdered for being Goth while defending her boyfriend, who had been beaten near to death by the same thugs.
The story has progressed and the teenage culprits have been tried, convicted and sentenced. Cold comfort, this is true…but sometimes Cold Comfort is all we get. Again, my prayers go out to Sophie’s family and to Robert Maltby.
