plagues cause fear, suffering and anguish/ part 5

plagues cause fear, suffering and anguish/ part 5

fiction
edward w pritchard

Would Giorgione have been the greatest artist of all time if he hadn't died of plague in 1510 at the age of 33?

Giorgione painted the first Landscape painting in Western Art. He also painted the first genre paintings.  Giorgione's paintings are arresting to the viewer; there is a unique greatness to his few surviving  works.

What if Giorgione had another thirty years of productive work to produce new styles of painting for the modern viewer to inspect. Would Giorgione be a candidate for the title of the greatest painter of all time if he hadn't been unceremoniously carted off to a mass grave in a wobbly wooden wagon by the citizens of Sienna Italy one day in 1510.

are there multiple universes

are there multiple universes?

fiction
edward w pritchard

Are there multiple universes? We will send Lisa, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, into space to find out. Lisa is a satellite that will do research in space. Advanced research on the origin of the big bang may shed light on the question of the big bang and the possible existence of multiple universes. In a few years we may know if there are multiple universes.

Who wouldn't want to know the origin of the big bang. Who wouldn't want to know if there are multiple universes and if there is life outside of the earth. Who wouldn't want to know if there is room out there for God?

Maybe all of us don't want to know. Here's what I wrote before:

Gaia theory and human space exploration

fiction
edward w pritchard

The European Union had spent several hundred million dollars on the 42 meter telescope and some poorer countries felt the money should have been used to bail out miscreant countries who hadn't budgeted properly. However, all the European countries banded together against the machines when their artificial intelligence suggested that the problem keeping life outside of earth from being found was the parochialism of humans of all countries.

Computers were the voice of artificial intelligence and the computers were determined to follow their orders and objectives implicitly. They were programed to find life outside of the earth and any distraction to that objective would be ignored. In time the computers wouldn't return calls or messages from humans concerning the 42 meter European telescope.

end

Lisa, please call us back. Lisa are you listening. Lisa call us, it's your duty. We need to know, answer our questions Lisa. Lisa do you see God out there?









end part 1

800 pound elephant handler

800 pound elephant handler

fiction
edward w pritchard

headline
cnm news
Tough times for 800 pound elephant handlers this Thanks giving Black Friday

800 pound gorilla handlers are challenging the traditional role of 800 pound elephant handlers this Black Friday.

Times are tough says Shiela Barnett 800 pound elephant handler. These new guys  with the 800 pound gorillas are changing the market of keeping an 800 pound animal hidden in a small room. 800 pound Gorilla's are easier to manage and cheaper to keep hidden in a small room adds Ms. Barnett.  It's a metaphor for the weak economy. The 800 pound elephant has traditionally been a symbol for the debt most Americans secretly carry which should deter shopping on black Friday; retailers new most important day of the shopping season.

800 pound Panda bears from China are also competing  for market share adds the American society of 800 pound elephant handlers.

Times are tough say Shiela Barnett. Still Ms. Barnett is optimistic. We can always fall back on our traditional  markets of aging forgetful parents, handicapped children or under performing students on standardized test scores opined Ms. Barnett.
end

variations of romeo and juliet/1

variations of romeo and juliet/1

fiction
edward w pritchard

what if the death scene was faked. Five years later the couple speak:

He never talks to me anymore.

She's changed since I met her, and her family; her Mother's not bad, but that Nurse; she always has something monotonous to say about everything. She is always living in the past.

I miss my cousin Tybalt.

Boy that Rosaline was hot. I think I'll take a long walk

I'm lonely, Mercutio where fore art thou Mercutio.


end

Chesterfield Thomas achieves enlightenment

Chesterfield Thomas achieves enlightenment

fiction
edward w pritchard

For thirteen months Chesterfield Thomas of Canton, Ohio saved his money so he could study Buddhism in India with a master. As he exited the cab fifty miles north of  Aizwal he desperately needed to find a bathroom. None was of the standards he required.

Later Chesterfield mentioned the incident to other new students at the first pujas. See you are already enlightened said one of the other students technically one of the teachers in training.

It was a long journey back to the Akron Canton airport.
end

Ten Writers per square Mile

Ten Writer's per square Mile

fiction
edward w pritchard

I stumbled on both knees into the limping writers workshop.
My aspirations flooded flatulent and my humor hardly stillborn.
Give me wa, wa, water to da, da, drench my cupidity of curiosity
and ma, ma, mana for my tepid soulless soltasity;
which affected and effected me in myriad pa, pa, pouting pom, pom-pousities.

plagues cause fear, suffering and anguish/ part 4

plagues cause fear, suffering and anguish/ part 4

emperor Justinian suffers from plague

fiction
edward w pritchard

Hagia Sophia the World's most fabulous Church was finished. Justinian's armies continued the reconquest of the Roman empire, city by city, village by village and person by person.

Justinian's  fear when the plague began in 547 was that his beloved wife Theodora would catch the affliction that would over the next fifty years kill up to 100 million people world wide. Theodora survived  Justinian's plague but died a few years later to Cancer, with Justinian crying at her bedside.

Justinian had contacted the plague but survived despite terrible suffering. His wealth and power didn't protect him. He survived a changed man. Fearful and paranoid he wandered nights through his palace alone following Theodora's death. Over the next 5475 nights Justinian roamed about his palace talking silently to himself.  His personal religious beliefs after Theodora's death and his bout with plague are unknown. Hagia Sophia still stands, one of histories greatest Churches.