A Serendipitous Moment

Serendipity - 'The faculty of making fortunate and unexpected discoveries by accident.' According to The American Heritage Dictionary.

As an educator I often describe the concept of a 'serendipitous moment' as walking through a field and suddenly tripping face first into a pile of fresh horse manure. At first, the manure covered faced individual may be upset about this but as that person scrapes away the sticky remains a great big diamond is discovered stuck to the face of the chagrined person. An unexpected discovery turns a moment of embarrassment into one of great joy.

A diamond hiding - really?

June 5th was one such experience J and L experienced while going through some boxes which had been hiding in the rear of John's study closet for years.

While wondering what was lurking in the boxes Laureen asked if I knew that my first interview with Ray Bradbury was in a file within that elusive cardboard box. No knowledge of that long ago transcription had even entered my cranium and then it dawned on me - June 5th of 2015 was the 3rd anniversary of my friend's passing.

Now, I take a great leap of faith declaring the Ray Bradbury as my personal friend but as I posted back in 2012 when he passed from this life and entered the realm of eternity I did believe he was my friend. We wrote correspondence to one another for years after my first interview with him when he had been the guest speaker at the Friends of the Lucerne Valley Library when I shyly went up to him and asked if I could snap some photos and perhaps line up an interview.

Ray Bradbury detailing the joys of writing.

Though I had been published in magazines and newspapers, the concept of actually interviewing a celebrity had not been thought about in my world. I wrote pieces of places I visited or things which should be considered as life altering - like which RV was just perfect for a family of four - but an actual interview? I hadn't done it.

So, as Mr. Bradbury smiled at me in the reception line and answered in the affirmative that he'd love to chit-chat with me. My first interview and it would be one of the most brilliant writers of our time? I tried to be cool and collected but could barely utter the words: "I'll call and make an appointment."

Driving home that evening so many years ago (1990) I wondered what I had to ask the man who had written: The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, The Drummer Boy, episodes of the Twilight Zone, and was good friends with Gene Roddenberry, the brains behind Star Trek. I was a teacher and free-lance writer who sold articles here and there but my name was barely known beyond my dinner table.

Ray Bradbury passionate about libraries

I was to interview Ray Bradbury. Buck up Johnny Boy - no issue there!

A month later I could only arrange a phone interview due to conflicts in schedules - his not mine - but that was enough.

Memory lane for a few lines here if the reader will allow me but the point is to see what a visionary Ray truly was.

J - I want to let you know I'm not a real experienced interviewer but I appreciate the opportunity you have given me to let me have this interview.

R - Surely.

J - I'm taping this if that's okay with you?

R - It's the best way.

J - Ok, what I would like to focus on is your opinion of education in America?

R - Ha! That's the end of that subject. God almighty! Well, I talked to a whole bunch of educators and administrators in Santa Clara about a month ago - 2,000 of them and I ripped their skins off. I said, you know, you're getting a billion dollars a day; that's more than enough to pay for everyone's education but you're not spending it right. It's got to be spent on kindergarten, first grade and second grade.

J - So, you believe the focus is the lower grade levels then.

R - If you don't learn to read what good is a science course in the seventh grade?

A few more questions later -

J - How do you think school districts can become more effective?

R - By teaching reading.

I will not go through the whole interview since it is currently being worked up as a different media concpet which will be produced at a later time but the words spoken by one of the greats twenty-five years ago still rings as solid now as it did then.

Being an educator I know that reading is the most important tool in anyone's life and it is saddening and sometimes maddening when I hear students, as well as adults, tell me that reading is boring while all the time they are Facebooking or texting about things which matter nothing but for the moment. Where reading can take a person to any time period in any world and literally taste things they may never truly experience in their lifetimes.

Pretty Smart guy - this Albert Einstein!

 'A well read and educated public is truly the only thing a tyrant fears,' J. Beyer 2015.

As the interview continued Ray said something that sticks to me to this day - "There's only one crisis - reading. And unless you solve that, our whole civilization goes down the drain. How can you think politically later in life if you can't read?"

Well said - Maestro.

Summer is upon us so let's all get to the store or online and order some books. Read for enjoyment or for education but as Ray would say - 'For God's sake - just read!"

A serendipitous moment for sure this day on the 3rd anniversary of my friend's passing.

Gone, but not Forgotten

Over a year has passed since Ray Douglas Bradbury passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 91 years after fighting a longtime illness. J of J and L has had a lot of time to reflect the loss of one of America's, if not the world's, greatest science fiction.

J is a novelist with a new novel coming out entitled, Soft Target, later (hopefully) in 2013 but he is not a science fiction writer. Ray was and created such masterpieces as Fahrenheit 451, The Sound of Thunder, The Illustrated Man, and of course The Martian Chronicles. Upon learning of his death, another famous author by the name of Stephen King (thought you might know him) wrote this: "Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels and three hundred great stories. One of the latter was called 'A Sound of Thunder.' The sound I hear today is the thunder of giant's footsteps fading away. But the novels and stories remain, in all their resonance and strange beauty."

What a wonderful epitaph for a fellow writer.

Perhaps it's summer or just thinking back through the decades when J knew Ray Bradbury as an acquaintance, or dare I say, friend. Looking upon a few letters, framed now, from Ray hanging in my study, it suddenly brought back those moments when J and Ray sat and talked in the nineties as one writer to another. Granted, at the time J was a struggling free-lancer talking to one of the greatest writers in America, but the man instantly put me at ease.

It was like talking to an old friend.

The typical interviewer questions were asked and answered but when the pieces were written and submitted to the various magazines for whom J worked part-time, the conversations continued for many years.

One unforgettable moment was when my mother, Anne, was visiting and the house phone rang. She being the closest naturally picked it up and immediately her face went blank as her hand clamped over the mouthpiece.

"Joh - -John ---Johnny," she stuttered, "It's Ray Bradbury!"

I took the phone and talked a few minutes with a man I admired so well.

It went on like that for a few years and then the talking stopped. It was not due to not sharing the same love of writing but years don't stretch out but simply shrink and soon Ray was dead.

Our daughter, Jessica, texted: "I'm sorry, Daddy, I just heard Ray Bradbury has passed away."

It was true on June 6th of 2012 that one of America's greatest Sci Fi writers had left this planet and ventured far away into the cosmos.

And isn't that the way it should be?

Perhaps it was just a summer day or recollections of a time gone by that made me think of my old friend, but whatever the case may be those memories are always cherished.