For a Captive Audience: The Books of Winter’s Long Night
What do Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Danielle Steel, Tom Clancy, and Robert Frost have in common? They all appear in a TSW post about surviving prison with books.If you’re having a strange sense of déjà vu right about now, it’s because you may have read this post before. We needed to post a re-run this week because Charlene, who scans my posts and forwards them to TSW’s publisher, is moving after 20 years in the same place. It is no small undertaking. So even though she insisted she could still help me get a post out this week, I thought better of it.“More on Pro-Catholic Star Trek, and the Books of Winter’s Long Night” was posted on TSW two years ago this week. I chose it for this re-run post because it has some interesting links, but mostly for its classic exchange about books between Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk (who had been promoted to Admiral) and Mr. Spock aboard a San Francisco bus after time traveling to 1986 Earth. Their dialogue about books that stand the test of time is a must-read for fans of Star Trek and fans of reading.This re-run post also has a few paragraphs about one of my own favorite authors, Tom Clancy. His untimely death last October resulted in another post in tribute to him, and the thirty years I spent in his company in “Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan, and The Hunt for Red October.”Finally, my re-run post concludes with my favorite poem by Robert Frost entitled, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I waded only ankle deep into it, but in “Mothers’ Day Promises to Keep” last May, I dove head first into the poem’s symbolic depths. An old friend of mine – a retired professor of literature at one of America’s most prestigious prep schools – wrote of that post, “I knew Robert Frost and he would have smiled with delight at your interpretations of ‘Stopping by Woods.’”So if you love books – and even if you don’t love Star Trek – this is a re-run worth visiting anew. During TSW’s week of down time, pay a new visit, and perhaps even share a link, to “More on Pro-Catholic Star Trek, and the Books of Winter’s Long Night.”And watch those “colorful metaphors.” Mister Spock has sensitive ears!