Thursday, July 24, 2025 at 8:26 PM
If you ask most gen-Zers or most young people today who Homer is, or was, they will think of Homer Simpson from the Simpsons tv show. They would have no idea who the real Homer was. Born in the 8th century BC in ancient Greece, born blind, and was the greatest storyteller of all times. He was Shakespeare before there was a Shakespeare. His stories about the Iliad and the Odyssey are some of the truly great mythological stories of all times. His poems have spawned many iterations of his works, in books and in movies. Ulysses, Helen, Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Paris, Iphigenia, the Trojan Horse, and all the gods and goddesses, all imaginary characters that he conjured up in his brilliant mind, and which are sometimes mistaken for reality today. I mean, that is something else, to be able to recite love stories, mixed with deceit and war and heroism and eventual redemption – in the case of Ulysses, from nowhere, except from his overactive imagination. What a man, and wat a ting!
As a little boy I read all those stories about the cyclops, Polyphemus, and Circe, and the sirens, and all those stories in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and lost myself in them. I read a lot, not only Homer, but all the great writers and poets. I did this as a child, not with parental guidance or encouragement, but because I was curious and hungry for more. I loved reading, and the rewards from that love of books have been priceless. My friends would make fun of me and my books, but I didn’t care; they were my love, until I discovered girls. After that discovery I didn’t read as much, but I have never lost my love for books and reading.
I think of kids today, who have the Library of Congress, and every other library in the world in the palm of their hands. They don’t have to travel or pay or beg to learn about anything they could ever imagine. It’s right there, on their tablets or phones.
I can only imagine how I would have gone crazy with that much power in my hands as a child. Anything you could ever be curious about, any historical or scientific fact you want to know, can be found in seconds! Think about that for a moment. Anything!
And yet we have some of the dumbest, lowest IQ people walking around with the world in their hands, and they use that tool usually for the wrong reasons. That is what progress looks like. The percentage of kids who can’t read or write has grown exponentially since the digital age first made its appearance. It is easy to blame the parents, but what about the educational institutions that don’t encourage that curiosity. I had a teacher that instilled that love of books and reading in me; but it was also inside my being, which was hungry to travel to far-away places in my mind.
I have since traveled the world, but the pictures in the mind formed through the lens of those books are still more powerful to me than the real thing sometimes. Ok, now I see why some young people prefer to date AI rather than the real thing. Never mind, I prefer flesh and blood and pain and suffering and the joys of the living, and books.
  Read a book, dammit!
Glen
