A Tribute to Ray Bradbury: Raconteur and Nonpareil of Storytelling

                                                                                                                Krypton Radio Photo 

Despite our many differences, humanity has at least one interest in common: storytelling. We write stories, we watch stories, we live stories, and then we tell them. And the greatest raconteur of all, the chronicler of  the mysterious unknown, is Ray Bradbury. The origin of raconteur is French, literally meaning to tell an account of something, but oh, how Bradbury does go the distance in recounting stories of the unknown in science fiction, fantasy and horror. He is probably not only the greatest story teller of modern times but also one of the greatest teachers of my life.

On June 5, 2012 after a lengthy illness, Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and numerous other stories exploring the uncharted mysteries of life on earth and beyond, met his Maker. He repeatedly credited God with his talent.Wherever Bradbury is now, I have no doubt he is a source of light, illuminating yet another world. I hope, for Bradbury, heaven looks like his beloved Mars.

But let's travel back even further.

On September 28, 1995, my daughter Kate and I squeezed into our second row seats with fervent anticipation at the Unity Church in Houston, Texas to hear Ray Bradbury speak. He was already an icon by then and the auditorium was packed. I took out my pen and note pad, refusing to leave his words to my faithless memory, in order to absorb any new bits of wisdom from the writer whose life had already profoundly influenced mine.

I had been an ardent devotee of English literature and shared my own enthusiasm for that genre, so friends wanted to know how I could possibly love the work of a science fiction-fantasy writer. The answer, of course, was clear. Ray Bradbury was more than a sci-fi writer.

A white-headed sage by 1995, Bradbury commanded the stage and I was mesmerized. I was a teacher with enough experience to know the reasons I had embarked on that career path and the courage it took to try to change people's lives in a truly meaningful way. And the tragedy of not taking the leap to do so.

His stories, like Jane Austen's, explained our own human nature to us--the nature of good and evil, of learning, of relationships with people, and of the choices we make about our lives and the concomitant consequences. But his somewhat scientific settings were part of the message as well, contributing even more to the warnings about the other side of technology.

Bradbury said, "We're trying to build a chrysalis of education around ourselves and hope the wings come out." He had a great sense of intuition about learning--he knew what he wanted or needed for himself and found it at the library, great observer that he was. I appreciated his metaphor, but it wasn't until years later, after planting a butterfly garden, that I saw aghast what he meant. Standing over a chrysalis one day, I watched it begin to wriggle ever so slightly, sensing I was going to witness for the first time an emerging monarch butterfly. I was enthralled, and then something went wrong. It struggled for over an hour and then halfway out it just gave up. My husband Patrick, the realist, chalked it up to the randomness of nature, but I got it. I think Bradbury also knew, despite our hope, that sometimes the wings don't come out. And then what? What did that mean for me as a parent and a teacher?

The heart of Bradbury's speech that day provided a partial answer. I found my old notebook from that September lecture. Here's what he said.

"Some people live off positive or negative energy. They feed off you with their tongues. Evil people are attracted to agonies, negative energy. They warm their hands on your darkness, your unhappiness. They go around collecting your flaws. They're born of darkness, not light, which is why the devil finds us attractive.You don't get blockages if you keep doing things you love. Love is the best thing. Engage in the best things every day. Put the skin of intellect around it. If you have people who don't believe in you, get them out of your life, unless you can infect them with your joy."

Infect them with your joy, he said. For years I had read to my children and to my students Bradbury stories of space men with deep regrets as they faced death, of children who gave in to their own dark thoughts without thinking of consequences, of men and women who made decisions they couldn't live with, or of the technology they didn't know how to live with. I could only hope that the message would surface when it was needed. Left in the hands of people--teachers perhaps, with enough enthusiasm to carry it forward joyfully, it might be possible.

I was given a gift that day, something extraordinary about being in the same room with a living, breathing icon who speaks words of wisdom from his own lips, not just the pages of a book. You have that narcissistic tendency to think he's talking to you alone, that perhaps he's read your heart and uncovered your secrets. How many millions of people he must have mentored in such a way.

Ray Bradbury loved and thus wrote often about space travel. His cautious attitude toward technology made him challenge his characters as they struggled in the midst of futuristic inventions crafted from the finest imagination, but he was also convinced that space travel was a chance for immortality.

He wept the night the astronauts landed on the moon. In subsequent interviews, even at age 89, Bradbury still talked about the night he was scheduled to be on the David Frost show in London. It was for him the greatest day in history, that moon landing, and he was an expert who wanted to talk to the world about it. Frost had scheduled him last, behind a number of popular entertainers, until Bradbury got fed up and walked out, taking a bittersweet six hour walk back to his hotel. A small London tabloid's headlines read, "Astronaut walks at six a.m., Bradbury walks at midnight." He was gleeful as he related his story that evening, and I was close enough to hear him chuckle.

I was standing face to face with him, tongue-tied, as he signed my copy of The Illustrated Man. I met him briefly, and yet I will miss his presence on this planet and somehow feel the loss as if I had known him well.

My grandson Christian, a reader of science fantasy and a devotee of Mindcraft, recently turned eleven, and I gave him that beloved signed copy. It was only right. His mother Kate had been witness that night to the greatest raconteur of our time. 

Saving Our Environment: The Unlikely Polemics of Living Free

 

Few subjects encourage me to publicly engage in controversial debate--what we call polemics, the new Lambent Literacy word, but the environment may be one of them. Because I love this planet--the flora and fauna that soothe my soul, I'm going out on that limb. Here's my story.

I grew up in a city that surrounds a beautiful lake. In those days the oil and chemical industries were located at one end of that lake, and the denizens of the town went about their daily lives fully aware that the water was polluted and therefore dangerous to swim in. My friends and I sunbathed on the beach and stayed out of the water. That didn't stop sports enthusiasts from skiing up and down the river that flowed into that lake, however, but as the years passed, the town began to experience higher than usual numbers of cancer victims. Six acres of wetlands were used as dumping grounds for coal tar, transformer oils and dead electrical equipment for over 50 years, from 1926 to 1980. Soil, sediment, surface water and groundwater were all contaminated with hazardous chemicals. Although today cleanup work is underway, including dredging of the river, it will take many years to purge it of pollutants. As for the air, that's another story. As of February 2020 this city ranks number two of the nation's 100 biggest air toxics polluters. And this state, Louisiana, falls behind #1 ranked Texas, in toxic emissions.

Unless you are an environmentalist or you work in the oil/gas/chemicals industry, you probably don't look at the research on what is happening to our air, water, land, and the wild inhabitants on a regular basis, if at all. Like me, for many years I took it for granted that our government was enacting regulations and policies that would protect me. I was busy getting an education, raising two daughters, and working to help support my family. But, indeed, the government was burning the candle at both ends, protecting industry first and the community second, just enough to avoid serious litigation.

Corny as it may be, I was in my twenties when John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" spoke such a loud and clear message to me that I put my sister and a trunk full of camping supplies in the car the summer she graduated from high school and headed for the Colorado Rockies. I had never seen anything so utterly clean and beautiful, and that summer changed my life forever.

We are living in an age of polemics--controversial disputes, a chaotic four years in the White House, and an unusual election year, one that none of us could have imagined. When President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017, he signaled to the world that the United States wanted less leadership in international climate change agreements. Since that time, 65 per cent of the U.S. population and 68 per cent of economic interests have joined coalitions that support the Paris Agreement. These people, one group calling themselves We Are Still In, have reaffirmed their commitment to helping America reach its Paris climate goals in spite of the decisions made by the White House.  But is it enough?

Environmental safeguards are critical to protecting Americans and ensuring sustainable economic growth. Trump has initiated an unprecedented number of regulatory rollbacks that ignore science and severely impact public health, the economy, and the environment.

The following actions have been taken by Trump's EPA and Department of Transportation since 2017:

1. Clean Power Plan: carbon emissions, a policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants,  rolled back.

2. Regulations on toxic air pollution relaxed

3. Regulations on methane flares, equipment inspections, leaks relaxed in 2018

4. Plan to cap miles per gallon changed from 54 by 2025 to 34 by 2021

5. Executive order requiring federally funded projects to factor rising sea levels into construction revoked in 2017

6. In 2017 Trump proposed a change that narrowed the definition of what is considered a federally protected river or wetland.

7. Seismic air gun blasts to search for underwater oil and gas deposits approved despite concern over disorienting marine mammals

8. Restrictions on protecting the American sage grouse in favor of land developers, mining, and drilling eased

9. Administration of Endangered Species Act changed, putting more weight on economic considerations rather than endangered animals habitat

10. In 2017 companies constructing power lines, leaving oil exposed, or installing large wind turbines are no longer in violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Unfortunately for human health and environmental concerns, Trump has disregarded the importance of scientific data and opened the door for greater influence by business interests.

We simply cannot politicize the environment. 

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how taking care of the planet, the country, my little piece of the world is a Democrat versus Republican issue. Don't we all want to live with clean air, water, and land? Don't we care that we might destroy animal habitats to the point of extinction with our destructive choices? Are we so naive, or perhaps greedy for wealth, that we think our actions don't make a difference?

My story isn't finished. My life has been so very blessed with my beautiful family, my long teaching career, and good health, and yet some of my favorite memories revolve around my relationship with nature, not just the garden that is the salve of my soul, but my sojourns through the wild world. My list is a long, precious collection of memories: camping trips in the mountains of Texas, Colorado, and Arkansas; sharing a mountain slope with a big horn; a whale watch off the Atlantic coast; a hike through the Lake District in England; a hike along the Wild Atlantic Way on the southern coast of Ireland; wild birds and deer in Killarney National Forest in Ireland. 

We know from years of research that, despite the beauty of the environment, the clean green atmosphere adds to our longevity and our peace of mind. 

Knowing the policies and how they have been adversely changed might not convince you, but the potential loss of those feelings of solace and contentment should. So many poets have tried to explain it to us. My favorite is Wendell Berry.

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the

least sound

in fear of what my life and my

children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the

wood drake

rests in his beauty on the

water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild

things

who do not tax their lives with

forethought

of grief. I come into the

presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-

blind stars

waiting with their light. For a 

time

I rest in the grace of the world,

and am free.

 

Surviving the Hero's Journey: An Exoteric Treasure

 While the hero's journey, first elaborated upon by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, may seem esoteric, that is, intended for the select few who have special knowledge in archetypal symbolism, it actually belongs to all of us. That makes it exoteric, intended for the general public. (Greek exoterikos--inclined outward.) Campbell mentored George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, who used Joseph Campbell's writings in his creation of the series, especially his motif of adventure and personal transformation. Is there anyone who doesn't remember Luke Skywalker and his decision to answer the call to his own hero's journey? Ah, yes, the rest is film history.  

In our school years, we learned about Greek and Roman heroes and classic ones like St. George who slew the dragon and saved a village, making its lesser known name, the Monomyth, even more applicable to us--the one great myth that describes the difficult, often life challenging times in all of our lives.

So, what could be more helpful during an unexpected pandemic than a classic but simple explanation of what is happening to us right now and how our story could possibly turn out in the end?

Sometimes understanding the situation can remove enough agonizing uncertainty to enable us to cope more effectively with whatever is thrown at us.

One of my favorite Jungian analysts James Hollis wrote that tolerance for uncertainty is the key to happiness, but that seems to be a tad simplistic these days. So here goes--an attempt to explain the cycle of the hero's journey as it applies to the people of 2020 Covid-19.

The journey begins with the call, and it's a call to leave the normal world and descend to the unknown one. We can accept it or refuse it, but if we do refuse this call, the journey stops right here, end of story. If, however, we decide to take up the gauntlet, we then arm ourselves with the unique courage of advancing toward uncertainty with the facts we have in order to conquer the unknown and face our fears. Pretty daunting, right? Well, off we go.

Making the decision to answer the call simply means following the guidelines--wearing a mask, socially distancing, avoiding crowds, quarantining, and listening to the advice of doctors and scientists before crossing the threshold into the unknown territory of thriving amidst Covid. 

Now that we're squarely into unknown territory, we must remember we are not traveling down this road alone. Helpers appear to join us on the journey. Friends, family, businesses, government, and now schools are taking advantage of technology as never before. ZOOM meetings, videos, Schoology, Face Time, and a myriad other online media have held our communication needs in their safety net. Families and friends who live together have often been a much needed source of not only social interaction but solace as well. In the classic hero journey stories of old, a spiritual helper appears to help the traveler on his or her way. Our houses of worship have made great strides in offering online services and prayer time--some daily, as well as other forms of help needed, and not just the spiritual kind.

Here's where the more difficult leg of the journey begins. Throughout this trek through the unknown, tests and trials are inevitable: job loss, sickness, isolation and altered daily routine, leading to mild or serious depression. Both human and spiritual helpers often show up to pick us up from our misery and help us to move onward.

Every hero's journey of old relates a belly-of-the-whale ordeal, also sometimes referred to as the inmost cave life-and-death episode in the realm of the unknown. This part of the course is most difficult because it is here that we encounter Covid sickness and death, perhaps even our own. We listen to daily reports as the numbers infected and dead keep rising, and we rejoice when the graph levels off and gives us hope for leaving that cave and continuing to the journey's end.

Isolation can make us feel as if we are indeed trapped in a cave, even when we know there are victims of the virus isolated from friends and family in hospitals, sometimes intubated, unable to receive the physical comfort of their friends and family. Yet depression from isolation and altered routine, job and income loss can also throw us into that inmost cave of despair. Reopening of the economy, despite the caution to continue self-protection, has not been successful as cases rise and businesses and schools close again. Teachers and parents are fearful, and with good reason. They're not buying herd immunity or the confidence that all will be well with brick-and-mortar openings, and so we continue to struggle in the realm of the unknown. Add a politically divided nation and brutal racial unrest to the worst economic status since the Great Depression alongside a raging coronavirus pandemic, and, yes, it may seem as if the whale has swallowed us.

One day we will prepare for the return to the upper world of the "normal" when a vaccine is available, the percentage of cases has dropped significantly, and our leaders see that the time is right for opening up the economy and schools again. The hero, that would be all of us who traversed this path, will leave behind the transcendental powers and re-emerge from the kingdom of dread. The boon that we bring with us will restore the world.

Wait. What boon?

The heroes who have been infected with the virus or have been working with or around Covid patients return home with a new perspective about life. Those of us who have not been directly touched by Covid have had the opportunity to learn important truths about ourselves and the people around us. Coping with loss is a tragic way to learn lessons, but many of us have also had the boon of time--more time to pause and think about what matters most to us, more quality time with family even during rough periods. Churches have even announced an increase in attendance because of online services.

When our hero's journey actually comes to an end, we will bring home with us the elixir, the "Golden Fleece" of treasures. What treasure, you ask, could possibly come out of a pandemic? Well, how about a sense of awareness about our own fragility, our vulnerability, but also our strength? And what a boon for us to finally comprehend the destructibility of a life we thought was invincible, and finally the much needed consciousness of the supreme value of human life over quick but illusory fixes.

We will have persevered and stayed the course on our own hero's journey, but remember the real prize is this: Unless you answered the call, crossed the threshold into the unknown world, suffered the tests and trials, you will not return home with the priceless knowledge that you are indeed not the same person who began the journey. The knower and the known have become one, friends, and what greater prize than that.

Iconoclasts: Justice Seekers and Image Breakers

One of my favorite words in the English language, iconoclast, actually derives from Greek: eikon--image + klastes--breaker. In the early days the word referred to someone who destroyed religious sculptures and paintings. An iconoclast today is a bold thinker who attacks settled beliefs or institutions. In short, a rebel who recognizes when change needs to occur for the greater good.

Ah, change. It isn't easy for any of us, especially if we are devoted to the status quo. Even if we believe in change that would grant growth, justice and fairness for the nation as a whole, we still fear the concomitant problems that could arise from it. In particular, we fear our place in society that might change, along with long-held beliefs. Our country is traversing that ground right now as we remove images of the Confederacy.

And we're not alone. This country was founded on altering the status quo of British citizens colonizing America. We will never cease to remember that on November 19, 1863 iconoclast Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address reminded us that change would be the only way to keep the nation together. In the early 1900s iconoclasts like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony paved the way for voting rights for women. In 1869  Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward became the first female physician in New York, a pioneer who helped to found the Equal Suffrage League in Brooklyn. Skip over to 1854 when Elizabeth Jennings predated Rosa Parks (1955) when she refused to dismount a streetcar.

And let's not forget the generation that led the Civil Rights movement, the protests against the Viet Nam War, the ongoing fight for immigrants' rights, the Native American fight for environmental and economic justice--most recently the Dakota Access Pipeline that threatened not only their water supply but also ancient sacred grounds. Stronger than ever now are the Me,Too movement for justice for women sexually abused, the LGBTQ movement for the right to be who you are, to love whomever you choose, and the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice in every arena of our lives.

Iconoclasts of the 60s and 70s rebelled against the establishment. Evidence of it in the Civil Rights and Viet Nam eras could be seen in the music, art, fashion, and in behavior that focused on protests and love fests. I was a teenager then, and I loved this movement, wanted to be part of it.

"I think it's time we stop, children, watch that sound, everybody look what's goin' down....Young people speaking their minds, gettin' so much resistance from behind." Thank you, Buffalo Springfield. Rockers represented the youth at that time through rebel music, and how they did inspire a whole generation!

But, do you think it was easy for these people to risk everything for what they believed was right? Although in times of conflict we may feel uncomfortable or threatened,  years down the road when the dust has settled, we do accept change as it slowly becomes the new status quo. The road to change, however, is always paved with censure, disparaging scorn, and too often sacrifice and loss of life. The question is, who would risk so much to lead us to change, and why in the world would they do that? Iconoclasts would, and here's why.

Gregory Berns, professor of economics and distinguished chair of neuroeconomics at Emory University, has an interesting answer to that question. "Iconoclasts are individuals who do things that others say can't be done." Berns says that iconoclasts see things differently from other people; they're skilled at handling failure, especially fear of the unknown. They don't wait around for someone else to initiate necessary changes. They jump right in.

We all know the majority of us don't jump right in, yet we need iconoclasts to keep us from clinging to destructive images and institutions that aren't working for us or for the nation as a whole. So, if most of us will never be one of those selfless, risk-taking iconoclasts, what part can we play?

Without analyzing the psychology behind our fears, what we actually can do is stay abreast of the news--both sides of it, and remember the US Constitution and Bill of Rights that guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of us. Breaking images--symbols of what we believe represent each of us as individuals, can lead to a positive metamorphosis that brings more freedom and contentment than we've ever known. When we do something good for someone else, our old brains think we're doing it for ourselves. Never forget, We the People.