I meant a "thing or two".(!)
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius"
<anartaxius@...> wrote:
>
> The writer Gore Vidal died yesterday. I only read one work of his but it had
> a wide influence on my life. I was all of 14 or 15 when it crossed my path.
> The book was 'Messiah', a novel about the rise of a fictional death cult
> religion that eventually mostly takes over humanity. I think this book was
> always in the back of my mind when I eventually got involved in spiritual
> movements myself. Like the small mammals in the time of the dinosaurs,
> staying more in the shadows of the lumbering giants keeps one from getting
> sucked up in the tornado at the pinnacle of spiritual groups where basically
> one is not likely to have much of a normal life. The book is an illustration
> of how a spiritual movement wanders into the land of strangeness and
> theocratic tyranny as it evolves.
>
> Other than watching him debate William F. Buckley during the presidential
> conventions during the 1960 U.S. presidential election campaign (Kennedy &
> Nixon), and possibly hearing some dialogue he wrote to trim up the screenplay
> for the motion picture Ben Hur (1959), my knowledge of this man is slight,
> but he left an indelible mark.
>
