Ray Bradbury is 100 today: So what are you going to do about it?
Will you buy a new pair of sneakers and run like lightning through fields of butterflies and dinosaurs? fly to Mars and find Earth waiting for you with patient arms? jump out and say boo to a stranger? read a book and defy the crowd? Ray Bradbury was all of these actions, a child who regretted listening to his friends when they told him, “Put away childish things.”
Bradbury’s books take up two or three feet of shelf space with stories about rocket ships, time machines that live and breathe, and giant monsters and little rascals. He contains multitudes: In this world without paper, his complete works are little more than a tiny dot on the average flash drive — but such a dot as this who walked the universe!
He was a lifetime advocate for libraries, knowing that the words in a library stretch for millions of millions of miles — the images they shoot into your head — unlock the power of words and live forever — unlimited — see all there is to see from an easy chair —
“What? Never venture out into the world?” If you can’t — or won’t — the words will take you there — in books! Glorious books — innumerable glimpses into other minds, so many worlds it’s impossible to visit them all in the longest lifetime — the worlds in the palms of your hands —
Ray Bradbury gave us many of those books, but with that thought — “Books! glorious books” — he escorted us to a place where we can see the infinite possibilities. Oh, Ray, thank you, and I hope your soul is somewhere out there and thinking, “Wow, now this is something, isn’t it?”