Amid it all, the one thing that never changes is that I take our two dogs-a twelve year old labradoodle and a one year old sheepadoodle (apparently the former wasn't degrading enough)-for a five to 9 mile walk every day.ĭespite our regularity, this has gotten odd too. Now the past few days there are governors ordering entire states quarantined and today comes word that Donald is considering a national lockdown and business closure. I got to Logan in an hour and forty five minutes and you could race through Boston, there was so little traffic. When the Daughter flew home from her internship in DC she was going to be the only passenger on her first flight, so they bumped her to one where she was with ten people. The two younger kids did have school canceled, but supposedly the High School will start tele-learning on Monday. The Wife and I are both still working at least, though my staff has been cut in half and our delivery stops drop every day. Up to now, we've not been greatly disrupted personally. I'm writing this in the midst of the Trump-Xi flu pandemic of 2020, just as things have started to get truly weird. Ray Bradbury, the Pedestrian (John Wilson, 7. “Through these experiences,” Eller writes, in his charmingly orotund style, “he had come to see the pedestrian as a threshold or indicator species among urban dwellers-if the rights of the pedestrian were threatened, this would represent an early indicator that basic freedoms would soon be at risk.” Keller, “The Revolt of the Pedestrians,” published in 1928, but was triggered by two incidents over a span of years in which, while walking late at night with a friend in Los Angeles (with one friend in Pershing Square in 1940 with another on Wilshire Boulevard in 1949), Bradbury was hassled by the LAPD. Pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr.Įller says the story was inspired in part by a very odd story by one David H. Step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in To put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to It shows us that we should keep limits on what the government should be able to do find a happy medium between what is guiding people to have moral actions, and what is controlling people, such as a dictatorship.To enter out into that silence that was theĬity at eight o'clock of a misty evening in November,

Crime had been virtually eliminated because of the confines of the law.īoth of these stories describe the way of life the future could be like if the government is granted too much power. Mead is a crazy person and it takes him to a mental institution. The car asks him why he is walking and if he owns a television. By mere chance, the police car passes Mr. The city only has one police car, and no driver. All the people at this time almost never go out anymore. All that can be seen is the light coming from TV’s inside the houses. There is no one on the sidewalk, on the street. Mead is walking on the sidewalk at night and he passes no one. In the story Bradbury uses great imagery to describe the setting Leonard is walking through. In the second story, “The Pedestrian” Ray Bradbury describes a man, Leonard Mead, taking a walk at night in the year 2053. and don’t even realize it is their own son being shot because of their handicaps. The Handicapper General, the one who put all of these laws in place shows up on the stage, and shoots fourteen year old Harrison and the ballerina, with a shotgun. He proceeds to rip off his extremely heavy physical handicaps, and takes the mask off the ballerina. He happens to be their son, Harrison Bergeron, and believes all of the handicapping is wrong and immoral. Later in the show, a boy, seven feet tall I might add, comes on to the stage. It is a group of ballerinas dancing, all with different handicaps, one including a mask to shield beauty. During the story, George and Hazel are watching a program on T.V. He is also physically handicapped with weights. Every time he is thinking about something it will give off a piercing sound in his ear to stop his train of thought. He has a receiver in his ear which receives signals from a government transmitter. George is an above average person and is handicapped for his intelligence, or advantage over everyone else. Two of the main characters, George and Hazel are married in the story. With everyone on a level playing field there is no competition, no point of sports, and really not a fun society at all. This may seem like a good thing at first but when you think about it you will probably change your mind. In “Harrison Bergeron” everyone is equal.

The pedestrian theme