Author Archives: wendywelch

The Monday Book: THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES by Ray Bradbury

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The-Martian-Chronicles(picture courtesy of By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31139878)

Sometimes you pull out an old favorite – or to be specific, you’re shelving in the bookstore and it falls off as you’re putting something on the shelf, and you pick it up and that’s you lost the rest of the evening.

But gained so much more. I love Bradbury’s writing, and I’d forgotten how he saw the slow progression of Earth people onto Mars, the many ways he’d envisioned people’s hearts moving through Space and not changing much once they landed in a new destination.

Chronicles is a mishmash of short stories, all centered around the theme of Earth colonizing Mars over time, but each a freestanding piece with few overlapping characters. I LOVE the ones where he explores social justice, as in Black People go live on Mars and when the White People blow up Earth, they have to ask permission to come ashore. I love the one where forgotten scary characters from Folklore take up residence because Earth minds don’t have room for them any more. I love the one, early in the book, where an unhappily married Martian couple wind up being the demise of the first explorers. Think of it: the colonization of another planet, ended by a jealous husband?

Bradbury thought of this and so much more in his Chronicles. They don’t feel dated. Even though he invented things willynilly and didn’t see half of what technology actually delivered coming, Bradbury’s writing feels timeless because it focuses on people: what we want, what we fear, what we crave (which is a little different than wanting) and what we pretend we don’t fear. So very interesting to read in the lyrical prose he pulls together. He’s so quick, like a comic caught in print.

This judge gives Martian Chronicles all the stars.

The Dogs of Peace

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Bert fosteringPresident Trump called a woman a dog on Twitter. He did this because she said a lot of nasty things about him. It is not okay for the President of the United States or any other man to call a woman a dog.

This is not Christian, servant leadership, an example from a man of faith and action. This is a nasty, foul thing for a man to do.

Many of my friends believe it is more important that Trump win the “war on Christianity” than any individual thing he does. My friend Mark (whom I love like a brother) says Trump didn’t mock that disabled reporter, it was a movement he made added to a clip from something else. My friend Katherine, the sweetest woman on Earth, who would spend her last dime rescuing a dog and kill herself on the highway to pick one up, says it’s okay that The President of the United States did that because women call men dogs all the time.

No, sweet, lovely, dear friends, it isn’t.

My friend Friedgaard had a little dog that attended Quaker Meetings with us in Scotland. She slept in Friedgaard’s arms until meeting was over, then jumped down and ate the crumbs from the teacakes off our plates. It was a ritual among this peace-loving group.

One day during the after-meeting tea, Friedgaard (who rarely talked about herself) said something about being a Hitler Youth. We all sat there, staring, as this kind, social-justice-dedicated woman said, “People say you had to know better. We didn’t. We were taught in school, we grew up believing that when we emptied a hospital, when we moved people, it was for the good of the community. God was telling our leaders what to do, and we were doing what God wanted, obeying our leaders. I cannot make people understand. They say ‘How could your own heart not tell you it was wrong? Didn’t you have a Bible?’ And I say yes, and the Bible was how we believed what we were doing was right, because we believed the pastors and the politicians who told us how to interpret it.”

“And I swore, when the war was over and we discovered that we were the most evil people on Earth, not the good ones, the bad ones, everyone hated us, then I swore, I would never again believe what the preacher, what the politician, told me God wanted. I would never pick and choose what to read in the Bible, I would never live without asking questions. And I never have. This makes me prickly. It makes me honest. I will never live before God as a lie again, with God’s help.”

There is no excuse for the President of the United States to call a woman a dog. He is not God’s man to win the culture war. He is the war.