Barrett Dorko
15-04-2007, 05:19 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
Every passing hour brings the Solar system forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules – and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.
These words precede the body of The Sirens of Titan (http://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Titan-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385333498/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176639301&sr=1-1)
I still have the copy of this book I remember reading in some bus station in Pennsylvania. My eldest brother, Drew, recommend the author and that was enough for me. I devoured five of his novels immediately. I was still in college.
While seated behind my computer at lunch in Manchester New Hampshire on Thursday I saw the news of Vonnegut’s passing and mentioned this to a therapist seated nearby. She said, “Who?”
To be a baby boomer (and this woman was) and not to know of Kurt Vonnegut’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut) work is a little unusual, and, to me, it’s sad. The impact of his writing in the 70s upon my generation wasn’t just huge at the time, it endures to this day. And this from a man born the generation before mine.
Perhaps it was it just that; Vonnegut had already seen a war up close and could sense what those of us in yet another were seeing and thinking. Of course, this drew us to him. Today it’s happening again. Who in our generation will write for the next?
Sometimes I blithely refer to “the manual therapy wars” that I’ve witnessed and participated in over the years. Theories, methods and personalities have all competed across the battlefields inside the hospitals, small clinics and huge corporations that control therapy. The carcasses are strewn everywhere though they might not be obvious to most therapists. In fact, in many places there seems to be a sort of calm. Many therapy practices have no sense of the conflicts regarding theory and methodology because their billing will only fit a manner of practice established years ago, and changing that is unthinkable. They’re blind, and often willfully so.
But in other places the conflict rages, and a few in my generation are still fighting. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to influence the next generation who will continue to fight after we’re silent.
In Boston this week I met again with one of those who’ve read my words much in the same way I once read Vonnegut’s. Nick Matheson drove with his friend Mike Sangster 12 hours through the snow from Halifax to be there, and for a man like me who commonly practices in obscurity this is quite a tonic.
I can’t help but think that one day Nick might read of my sudden silence and mention this to a colleague.
They might easily say, “Who?”
Every passing hour brings the Solar system forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules – and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.
These words precede the body of The Sirens of Titan (http://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Titan-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385333498/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176639301&sr=1-1)
I still have the copy of this book I remember reading in some bus station in Pennsylvania. My eldest brother, Drew, recommend the author and that was enough for me. I devoured five of his novels immediately. I was still in college.
While seated behind my computer at lunch in Manchester New Hampshire on Thursday I saw the news of Vonnegut’s passing and mentioned this to a therapist seated nearby. She said, “Who?”
To be a baby boomer (and this woman was) and not to know of Kurt Vonnegut’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut) work is a little unusual, and, to me, it’s sad. The impact of his writing in the 70s upon my generation wasn’t just huge at the time, it endures to this day. And this from a man born the generation before mine.
Perhaps it was it just that; Vonnegut had already seen a war up close and could sense what those of us in yet another were seeing and thinking. Of course, this drew us to him. Today it’s happening again. Who in our generation will write for the next?
Sometimes I blithely refer to “the manual therapy wars” that I’ve witnessed and participated in over the years. Theories, methods and personalities have all competed across the battlefields inside the hospitals, small clinics and huge corporations that control therapy. The carcasses are strewn everywhere though they might not be obvious to most therapists. In fact, in many places there seems to be a sort of calm. Many therapy practices have no sense of the conflicts regarding theory and methodology because their billing will only fit a manner of practice established years ago, and changing that is unthinkable. They’re blind, and often willfully so.
But in other places the conflict rages, and a few in my generation are still fighting. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to influence the next generation who will continue to fight after we’re silent.
In Boston this week I met again with one of those who’ve read my words much in the same way I once read Vonnegut’s. Nick Matheson drove with his friend Mike Sangster 12 hours through the snow from Halifax to be there, and for a man like me who commonly practices in obscurity this is quite a tonic.
I can’t help but think that one day Nick might read of my sudden silence and mention this to a colleague.
They might easily say, “Who?”