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On this day...
Apr. 28th, 2020 01:40 pm "The greatest scientists in the world have taught here for generations, he thought as he made himself a cup of tea, and still our children ask us: Are there ghosts? What a piece of work is Man...
"He stepped outside, stirring the tea. The shining path glittered across the sky. Out in the lagoon, in the last ray of sunlight, a dolphin leaped into the air for the joy of the moment, the water drops making another shining path.
"The old man smiled, and believed."
– the closing paragraphs of Nation
On this day in 1948, Terence David John Pratchett was born. In the course of a life that ended far too early, he brought joy, wisdom, knowledge, wit and enlightenment to millions of people, and the echoes of his life and work will continue to do so, quite probably for at least as many generations as stretched between the old man in Nation and the days of Mau's unexpected elevation to leadership of his unlikely nation.
So on this day, please celebrate the man and his life and works. Give thanks to your memories of him, those of you who met him and those of you who only 'know' him through his books and advocacies. Keep his name in the Overhead. But please, please think twice about wishing him a happy birthday, because the Terry Pratchett who was born in 1948 no longer exists, so you'd be talking to a ghost. And Sir Terry, humanist to the core to and through the end of his days, did not encourage a belief in ghosts.
GNU Pterry, creator of worlds and improver of this one
Photo credit: Secret World
"He stepped outside, stirring the tea. The shining path glittered across the sky. Out in the lagoon, in the last ray of sunlight, a dolphin leaped into the air for the joy of the moment, the water drops making another shining path.
"The old man smiled, and believed."
– the closing paragraphs of Nation
On this day in 1948, Terence David John Pratchett was born. In the course of a life that ended far too early, he brought joy, wisdom, knowledge, wit and enlightenment to millions of people, and the echoes of his life and work will continue to do so, quite probably for at least as many generations as stretched between the old man in Nation and the days of Mau's unexpected elevation to leadership of his unlikely nation.
So on this day, please celebrate the man and his life and works. Give thanks to your memories of him, those of you who met him and those of you who only 'know' him through his books and advocacies. Keep his name in the Overhead. But please, please think twice about wishing him a happy birthday, because the Terry Pratchett who was born in 1948 no longer exists, so you'd be talking to a ghost. And Sir Terry, humanist to the core to and through the end of his days, did not encourage a belief in ghosts.
GNU Pterry, creator of worlds and improver of this one
Photo credit: Secret World
