Happy 100th Birthday Ray Bradbury
Happy 100th Birthday to one of our greatest sources of inspiration - Ray Bradbury, who wrote beautiful stories about regular humans in extraordinary circumstances. Kimberly discusses the first Bradbury story she ever read, All Summer In a Day. Purchase the Ray Bradbury story collection A Medicine for Melancholy here: https://amzn.to/3aA3UK4 (https://amzn.to/3aA3UK4) Thanks for listening. 💜🦉 Watch our beautiful educational videos at https://www.socratica.com/ (https://www.socratica.com/) Support our work at https://www.paypal.me/socratica (https://www.paypal.me/socratica) TRANSCRIPT Welcome everybody to the first episode of Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make beautiful educational videos. We specialize in futuristic learning - math, science, and programming like you’ve never seen it before. When I’m not making videos, I spend a lot of my time reading. In this podcast, I’m sharing the books that have inspired us and sparked creative ideas. I’m focusing on Science Fiction - which is like imagination personified. Personified isn’t really the right word. Encapsulated. It is an AUSPICIOUS day to start this venture. August 22nd, 2020. We’re celebrating Ray Bradbury’s 100th Birthday. Ray Bradbury said, (I’m gonna read a quote) “Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about." You tell ‘em, Ray. Ray Bradbury has been an important figure in my life since I was 9 years old. When I was 9, I started the 4th grade, and at my grammar school every year they would hand out a small book called a reader - that was how we studied English. These little readers had a lot of grammar exercises, and about a dozen short stories. I would always take my reader home and read ALL the short stories in a day or two. Yeah, I was that kind of kid. Well, that year, for the first time, I read a story by Ray Bradbury. It was about a little girl, 9 years old, who didn’t fit in with her classmates. They all scorned her because she was different. I couldn’t believe it - someone was writing about ME. He was telling MY STORY! I mean, not LITERALLY, but still. By some miracle, Ray Bradbury understood me. I was a VERY bookish girl who got thick glasses in the beginning of the 4th grade (although I really should have gotten them in the 3rd grade), and I started pulling away from my classmates academically, socially, in all ways, really. I was like a little adult in the 4th grade. And my classmates could sense that I was something different, and they didn’t want to be around me anymore. My best friend unceremoniously dumped me, just stopped talking to me. And so I really related to this girl in the story. It was called “All Summer in a Day.” I remember saying out loud, when I finished it - “This is the saddest story I’ve ever read.” And I still think that. I’m going to read you an excerpt. This story is found in the collection “A Medicine for Melancholy” and I’ll include a link in the show notes. I hope you will go buy this collection of Ray Bradbury stories if you don’t already have it, or many on your shelf, like I do. Now let’s hear Ray Bradbury’s words on this, his one hundredth birthday. Ready? Let’s begin. The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun. It rained. It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were...