May God richly bless you and yours!

…

WARNING – SPOILERS!

The ship had to find Earth; you really couldn’t have a satisfying ending without that. It could be Earth in the past, the present, or the future. Present is out; that’s [shudder] Galactica 1980. So a future Earth? With people who spoke English? Nah.

Back around 100,000 to 150,000 years ago, modern humans suddenly appeared on the scene, displaying Cro-Magnon man (I think it was Cro-Mag) and quickly taking over the world. We’ve got clues to this “great leap forward,” and we’re certainly related to Cro-Mags, but it was a sudden change.

In fact, James P. Hogan’s book “Inherit the Stars” has the same ending, sort of. A 50,000-year old man is found on the moon, wearing a spacesuit. Turns out — many pages later — that his people came to Earth after their homeworld (between Mars and Jupiter) was destroyed. They didn’t have a lot of supplies, but they were quickly able to spread and take over the planet from the indigenous cavemen, eventually becoming us.

In “Inherit the Stars,” Cro-Mags had been taken from Earth by residents of the 5th planet, where they had evolved into modern humans. Those humans were the ones to return to Earth and eventually take it over. That’s how Hogan solved the issue of parallel evolution; there wasn’t any.

Galactica copped out in that sense, throwing in the idea of God (or whatever — “It doesn’t like being called that”).

I had figured that “The Gods” had taken primitive humans from *our* Earth to Kobol 150,000 years ago, those humans had eventually left Kobol for the Colonies, yada yada yada, and Galactica would return them to Earth to repopulate it 50,000 years in our past. Full circle.

Not quite, but the general idea was there, and I like how it fit in with real history.

(At the end of “Inherit the Stars,” an archaeologist digs up a 50,000-year-old wristwatch, but tosses it away because it’s *obviously* not an artifact. I had thought that Roslin’s glasses were going to serve the same purpose. [shrug])

Bottom line, I don’t think it was rushed. I think that ending — or something similar — was planned all along.

The most immediate image that came to my mind was of sitting with him in his basement office, a much bled upon draft of my thesis on his desk between us arguing about whether “think” or “feel” was a more scholarly word choice. And the second was of Bill playing guitar and singing the Stones’ “Brown Sugar.”

Thanks for your words, too. So many things I had forgotten.

I’d like to be half the teacher he has been — imparting lessons even from a distance.

I can’t believe how my life is different because of Dr. Burling. If I hadn’t had him 1st semester of the 1st year of grad school, I would have probably been a “liberal humanist” close-reader of literature. I probably wouldn’t have any real clue about cultural criticism, maybe none at all considering every other professor and every other class I’ve had. Every other professor I’ve had may have given some mention to critical theory, may have brought up feminist theory, or Marxist theory, as some vague concept. But aside from one other professor, they’ve all been passing mentions while we deconstructed literature or history of English. (The one exception is the professor who is filling in for Dr. Burling in the critical theories/Frankfurt School class I was supposed to have with him. While he’s brilliant at philosophy in general, he’s self-described new at materialist and Marxist theory, and isn’t very familiar with most of the theorists/critics we’re studying–who made up the foundation of the cultural criticism Dr. Burling taught and I feel absolutely enamored of.

When I discovered cultural criticism, Adorno, Gramsci, Jameson, Freedman, through Dr. Burling, it awakened something inside and lit a passion for the subject I had no idea even existed before I had his class. I thought English was all about…English literature when I enrolled for my MA. Cultural criticism became who I am, and I know for an absolute fact I wouldn’t have discovered that these last three years if not for Dr. Burling. It’s just not real for me.

–
Brooks Travis

A Katrina survivor who lost everything was sitting under a tree and felt a breeze, and the breeze was sent by God to reassure her or something. Yeah, that’s the most useful thing he could have done.

It was this bizarre urgency to thank God for every tiny dime found in the street and caught traffic light, but God had no hand in the horrible catastrophes that finally got through to me – there is no basis for this. It is made up from the need of humans to have some false sense of control or something.

My brother, who figured all this out at about age 7, once said, “So there’s this omnipotent being who either allows or causes all these bad things to happen, and that’s supposed to be comforting? I find it more comforting to think that the universe is completely random and nothing has any meaning at all.”

Marilynne, Ohio

But, have to be careful, it all has to be verified. Suspicious circumstances alone….