{"id":124,"date":"2008-04-07T01:44:22","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T01:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amperzen.com\/blog\/?p=124"},"modified":"2008-04-07T01:44:22","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T01:44:22","slug":"charlton-heston-some-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amperzen.com\/blog\/charlton-heston-some-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlton Heston — some thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SoylentCharlton Heston died. I got to thinking about him as the obituaries were rolling out in the news. I think have to thank him for spurring me to read. I remember seeing The Ten Commandments<\/em> at the drive in. My mother and her friend and all us kids would go. We get in our pjs and have brown paper bags full of popcorn and cups for sodas (we had the big bottles not individual cans or bottles so cups were required). I remember not falling asleep. As the oldest child in our family, I lived in fear of those plagues of Eqypt for a long time.<\/p>\n

\"The After The Ten Commandments<\/em>, I went on a reading binge of all the biblical novels I could find. I think I probably read just about anything by Thomas B. Costain that I could find either at home or on the library shelves. There were other authors and other books. When I hit on The Eqyptian<\/em>, I side-tracked into a lot of books on Egypt, the pyramids, the legends and the Pharaohs.<\/p>\n

Later after watching Ben Hur<\/em>, I began reading all I could find about Romans, the Legions, the famous and infamous of the period. My grandfather had a copy of Quo Vadis<\/em>. He always encouraged me to read and when he saw that I actually got through it, he let me borrow other books from his shelves. I remember he had a set of Shakespeare, sort of small with red covers. I read through a lot of those and he talked to me about them and the plays and the history that went into them. (It was through him and his copies of Shakespeare’s works that allowed me to continue to love the work of the Bard after high school and college English classes did their best to kill all interest in the stories.<\/p>\n

So, while Charlton Heston is not directly related to my life long love of reading, the movies he acted in played a big part in getting me to open books. That in turn, opening the covers of other books, led me to find explore new worlds, times, eras, lives, and alternate realities. So, I thank him — for his part in my own life history. While I can not laud him for his later political stances, I can not forget the part he played in opening up my mind with movies and the printed word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlton Heston died. I got to thinking about him as the obituaries were rolling out in the news. I think have to thank him for spurring me to read. I remember seeing The Ten Commandments at the drive in. My mother and her friend and all us kids would go. We get in our pjs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-csa","category-entertainment"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t