TITLE: Our Gods Die Hard
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 26, 2009  7:52 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Many of us know this feeling:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
When gods die, they die hard.  It's not like they
fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep.  They die
in fire and pain, and when they come out of you,
they leave your guts burned.  It hurts more than
anything you can talk about.  And maybe worst of
all is, you're not sure if there will ever be
another god to fill their place.  You don't want
the fire to go out inside you twice.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm tempted to say that the urge to share this
came from a couple of experiences I had at the
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2009-01.html#e2009-01-20T16_27_09.htm">
   Rebooting Computing summit</A>,
but this passage goes beyond the emotions I
felt there.

(This paragraph comes from a "young adult" novel
called the <STRONG>The Wednesday Wars</STRONG>, by
<A HREF="http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engl/faculty/schmidt/">
   Gary D. Schmidt</A>.
I did not realize how many good books there are out
there for young readers until my daughters started
reading them and recommending them to me.  If there
is a book that can make Shakespeare more relevant
to the life of a seventh-grader or more attractive
for a teen to read than this one -- all the while
being funny and on the mark for its audience --
I'd love to read it.)
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