Thank you, Julie. I loved that. Mike Geary Memphis ----- Original Message ----- From: Julie Krueger To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Friday, November 28, 2008 4:24 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] The History of Effects From today's "Writer's Almanac": The History of Effects by William Greenway The Bible was created by Bishop Ussher in 4004 B.C. Then Galileo cooked the universe too long, and the earth, like a yolk, slipped off center and everything began to wobble. Freud needed a reason to talk about sex, and Marx wrote a bestseller so he could retire rich. When the species started to hunt for their origin, they discovered Darwin. So now the ears of corn put down tethers to the earth, trees rake the wind into piles, the sun turns the world like a ballerina, the way a magnet whirls a rotor. Silence squelches the radios, and darkness the bulbs. Automobiles are invented to reach the malls, and choppers to haul body bags, and animals come to live with us to quench our loneliness and nourish our hunger. We've begun to love the people who need us as dandruff rises from sweaters to infect our hair, and parachutes are the white flags of suicides that fail. Julie Krueger