Folded thought of the day:

The responses that I received to the piece I posted yesterday 
regarding Günter Grass' having won the Nobel Prize for 
Literature were great!  Thank you all for sharing your thoughts.  
It feels like we're really building a "Below the Fold" community 
down here and I want to encourage you all to help it continue.  

I'd like to re-post the Günter Grass piece and invite more of 
you to send me your thoughts.  Check back here Monday for a 
collection of reader responses.

---------------

The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded today and Günter Grass, 
considered Germany's greatest living writer, was announced as the 
winner.  In Grass' first novel "The Tin Drum," a young boy named 
Oskar consciously decides to stop growing at the age of three in 
protest against adulthood.  Or, in the words of Mr. Grass...

"It was then that I declared, resolved, and determined that I would 
never under any circumstances be a politician, much less a grocer; 
that I would stop right there, remain as I was--and so I did; for 
many years I not only stayed the same size but clung to the same 
attire." 

According to a statement by the Swedish Academy, Grass' first 
novel "comes to grips with the enormous task of reviewing contemporary 
history by recalling the disavowed and the forgotten: the victims, 
losers and lies that people wanted to forget because they had once 
believed in them."

Armed with his tin drum, Oskar comments on the horrors and injustices 
of the world around him and ends up confined to a mental hospital.  

So, if someone goes insane in a world where insanity has permeated 
almost everything we do, is he/she really insane?  If you saw 
someone reading the newspaper and crying would it seem strange to 
you?  Or is it strange because they don't cry?  As you make your 
way through this world, do you ever feel like you need to bang 
on a tin drum and scream at the top of your lungs?  

Please send your thoughts (or whatever you feel like) to:
Daily_Editor@webstakes.com

--------------------

Overheard bit of conversation this morning:

Guy on his cell phone holding a shoe:
     Do you know that pair of shoes you left in my motorcycle 
     basket?...  (pause) how much did they cost?


Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...