Ray is gone.

“I don’t think about what I do. I do it,” he told me.
“That’s Buddhism.
I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down.”

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury was one of my all-time favorite authors.  Along with Issac Asimov, he filled my summer reading list and shaped my hopes for the future.  My mom loved his work and I still have her torn copy of "Golden Apples of the Sun" and when it rains to much I think to the lost astonauts who despair in the storm, and during the eclipse I told my children the story of the girl who was locked in the closet the day the sun came out.

Last year, my brother called me up early one Sunday morning and said, "You know that one story where....." and I did.  I walked to my garage, pulled out the box, lifted out the book, and read him the passage.  It was Ray getting quoted in Sunday School just a few hours later. 

He was a man of vision, and we would have been smart to listen a little more.

Mr. Ray Bradbury passed away today, he will be missed.