Heroes!

Today I had the privilege of assisting my daughter's teacher take the class to a concert by the Boise Philharmonic Orchestra.  As an educational event it only lasted about one hour and was geared toward ages 8 and 9.  Of course I was delighted to attend!  I have no idea how much my enthusiasm transferred...

The Maestro came out, and said that they would be talking about planets, starting with some of Handel's "Water Music," which fit in nicely with the speaker.  Planets? sure, that means they would be playing selections from Holst.  Probably the ones that sound most like Star Wars music (Mercury, Mars, Jupiter - John Williams made the music sound familiar to the audience), since some of the kids would have seen the movie.  Speaker? for an orchestral concert?

Mr. Maestro said he didn't know that much about planets.  I start thinking about Physicists and Astronauts.  Mr. Maestro said perhaps we should ask someone who's actually _been_ in space.  My heart leapt, blood coursing, goo started dripping from my eyes for lack of any better way to express the excitement.

Barbara Morgan (just google) stepped onto stage!  Yahoo!  What a great role model!  A woman, teacher, used to teach on a res, chosen to be an astronaut, an Idahoan, giving instruction, and working with someone entirely outside of her field!  Yahoo!

And, personally... I was agog.  I saw a real, live astronaut walk onto the stage.

It started when I first learned about space.  Leapfrogged when we watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon in the middle of the night.  This is why so many of us became scientists and engineers.  Apollo 13, another reason to be in science.  It was a time when a lot of us grew up believing that we could actually do anything.  And we did -- we went to the moon, we built the space shuttle.

I watched the first space shuttle go up with my brother, and the two of us walked with our heads in the stars for a while after that.  Is there anything cooler? how could anyone not want to be an astronaut? to go into space?

More recently, John Glenn went for another ride... renewing my hopes that somehow I would be able to hitch a ride on something big, no matter how old I became.

I went to the Johnson Space Center some random number of years ago -- the wall was a shrine to me.  The photos and names of every crew that has gone up is there.

Ah.  Well.  That's what heroes do for us.  They are bigger than life, they carry us into the realm of possibility, into the stuff of dreams and make those dreams real.

Yes, back on Earth there was a large team of people making it happen.  Did I mention Apollo 13?  They are all heroes.

Somewhere along the line we realize that heroes are "only" human.  Which, after all, should be the greatest encouragement that we've ever heard:  You and I, you see, are "only" human too!  We can be heroes.  We can bring others into the realm of possibility, into the stuff of dreams, and we can make those dreams real.

Go forth, my dear hero, and make a dream become real.

Thank You

I am thankful for the amazing family that I grew up with.

As siblings, of course, i'm not sure that any of us thought of each other as "amazing."  There are several other words that we probably used, like an average family, to describe each other.  My parents, of course, could not say anything bad about their kids, nor would they say anything discouraging *to* any of their kids.

I don't remember a single one of us ever standing out from the crowd, nor any one of us receiving any "notable" honors.  Honors, yes!  Standing away from the crowd, probably.  There just hasn't been anything that made us appear anything other than average.

I do assume that we are average.  Amazing, fabulous, awesome, and fantastic people are, evidently, average.  (Otherwise other people would find us all more notable.)

Given that we are average then that's a really good thing!  That means that there are a lot of really compassionate, really capable, really productive, quite healthy (admit it!) people on this planet.  People who are committed to doing their best, being their best, giving their best, living their best.  If my family is average then this planet is in a lot better shape than the news would have us believe.

I choose, today, to live my amazingly fabulous awesome fantastic average life in my amazing fabulous awesome fantastically average way.  You too, ok?

Bravery Is as Bravery Does

I am very brave.  Sometimes.

Bravery, unlike beauty, isn't in your eye.  It's in the pit of your gut, and tells your adrenals whether or not it's time to run away, pass out, or barf.  Bravery, though, like beauty, is beheld by the beholder.

Here is an example: Standing in front of a group of not-happy people and saying that their product is still not manufacturable, or that the fix (Stamp On Board) on the 20th revision of the product deserves its acronym, was not such a big deal for me.  For some people, the prospect of standing in front of any group of people, let alone saying something, is enough reason to change one's identity, leave the country, and fill every barf bag on the journey.

I, myself, congratulate me every time I write something down for public view.  And even more so, when I talk about something that is dear to me.  This is not something which I do easily in public, on the internet, or sometimes even in a private-secret-decoder-ring-low-tech-letter.  Sure, it could be easy telling someone else that his/her baby is ugly (i.e., the SOB); telling someone else that I am the one with an ugly baby... that's something entirely different.  Surely it'd be best to hide the baby, protect it, nurture it, and hope it turns into a swan, yes?  Well, no.  All of us have an ugly baby.

With that horridly scatter-brained intro behind me, I present to you an attempt at bravery.  (It is an early draft, and at the same time those with able eyes will notice improvements made since the first draft.  That first draft being sent in virtual secret-decoder-ring not completely low-tech methods.)

Sliding

Behind the creaky doors was one more treasure:

a flurry of memories drifting from the old Flyer sled.

He called it sliding...

First, a powdery footstep to start downhill, then a hiss of the runners as they spit snow behind them, faster and faster.

It's the thrill of not having control, the blur of time going by,

not knowing for sure what he just missed, what landmark he passed along the way.

Frozen spray blurs his vision as he skids across the creek,

and fragments of his childhood splinter from the surface

heaping in random piles as he topples into the snow on the other side.

Or was that the school teacher who fell off his pony into the snow when it was his family's turn to host her for the weekend?

And wasn't that the time that Dad rode the plow horse to get him? Stories drift thick and fast and much bigger than his pony, Rex.

He once tied the sled to old Rex, "and that did not work too well," he says, as he laughs with the thrill of the ride

and a few stray sparkles glance through his eyes, setting over a distant winter.

The weathered slats on rusty hinges hold little that's new;  Mostly a tangle of cobwebs, with dust flaking off in the breeze.

But for now he has his sliding memory.

(August, 2010)

Snark

Dear brother (he lives near water which can be sailed upon, you see, anyone else can read this too),

Remember the boat we called the Sea Snark? They're still around. They are little sailboats that no person who really likes to sail takes seriously. They were made of styrofoam when I was young. It looks like they're made of recycled plastic now.

Encyclopedias were kind of our web when we were kid. All parents who wanted to encourage their kids to study had them. Too many were used for reports in elementary schools. What does this have to do with sailing and Snarks? Read on, dear brother, read on.

Encyclopedias were around in the days before supercomputers, for those younger than I am. We'd pull one of the tomes off of the shelf and look for something interesting. We'd read a bit, and then find something in the entry that we didn't know much about yet. Off we'd go to look up that item, and on and on it went. This is quite like websurfing. For instance...

A friend on Facebook posted that Martin Gardner died yesterday (May 22, 2010). Who, you may ask, is Martin Gardner? The short blurb on my friends Facebook post tells us that he was a mathematics and science writer... with a lot of interesting interests. So, of course, I looked it up myself, and surfed around a bit to find out what I might have read (or might want to read) of his.

Ah. It turns out that I am second-hand acquainted with his works! Why, a large number of my friends and relatives have read and/or quoted and/or otherwise assimilated several of his philosophies. Perhaps I've read some of his articles, but neglected to remember the author. It turns out that he wrote some annotations to Lewis Carroll's works.

Ah. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass -- I read those as soon as I was finished with first grade. That's right, I could read, the books were on the shelf, and I chose to read them. Perhaps that explains a few things... Anyway, in this item about Martin Gardner I found snippets of commentary on something called The Hunting of the Snark, a poem by Carroll. I had not read it before.

Ah. There it was. Sailing to a distant land using a map - a blank piece of paper - in order to hunt for a fictional being.

Ah. There's more! It looks like a lot of people have referenced the The Hunting... . Even Supreme Court Justices made passing references. And, no less, a small recreational sailboat was named the Snark.

Ah. A small, lightweight sailboat, never meant to be taken seriously, but certainly excellent for children's adventures and imagination. After all, the world's best entertainment comes from within one's own imagination.

With love,

your sis.

Getting Energy, by a 7-year-old

The outdoors is an incredible tonic for anyone. Most parents, who can, will send their kids outside when the kids get grumpy or lethargic or bored. Works like a charm.

We have sent our daughter outside to play, looking at each other and saying, "for energy." As in, to burn. As a small child's, though, it sounded different. I finally learned her perspective as the weather turned warmer here this very spring:

She says, "I want to go outside to get some energy." ("Yes, please!" says the harried parent.)

Now, though, I think she's really caught on to something. When you get more exercise, for instance, you have more energy. When you get fresh air (oxygen) you have more energy. When you get the sun's rays to produce Vitamin D that's a good thing, as Vitamin D helps boost the immune system and is seriously implicated as an anti-depressant. (For a lot of "anecdotal" evidence, all you really have to do is look at people's faces on a sunny day after a series of rainy days.)

She's on to even more: Imagine how many television sets would be off if we were outside. And how many computers would be in idle mode. And how much less we would be eating (the high-energy cost foods) out of boredom. And how we could tolerate more temperature extremes if we were out in them more often. We would use less of the planet's energy resources.

Maybe we should all be going outside more to "get some energy."

Consciousness, by a 3-year-old

When my nephew was 3 years old he did not like going to bed. Well, he probably still doesn't. His parents stopped fighting it, and just waited until he fell over and then put him to bed. I know this, because I was with him for about a week when he was 3 years old.

I became his very favorite person for a little while. One night, well after he had taken his bath and put on his pajamas and stayed up well past his bedtime, he tried to get me to move. Mind you, he was so tired that he was doing the drunken-sailor on a ship in a hurricane routine. He kept pulling on me to go play, instead of talking with the boring adults.

Finally, he crawled into my lap to whisper his secret to staying conscious:

"Ya gotta keep MOOOOvin' ! "

Perhaps that's the secret to being aware, to living consciously: Ya gotta keep MOOOvin' !

NaPoWriMo

It is National Poetry Month. It is also National Poetry Writing Month, abbreviated as in the title, and which will eventually be shortened to NPWM.

The goal of NMP is to promote poetry. You have enjoyed poetry, whether or not you realize it. For instance, think of any Dr. Seuss book. Tada! You remember it! Our brains remember rhythms and songs differently than we remember prose and conversation.

I digress here: That we remember rhythm and song differently makes me wonder if Alzheimer's patients could somehow remember what they loved better if we made those people, activities, memories, into song. I choose to give that a shot with a dear gentleman that I know.

The musical "Cats" is being performed here in Boise now. It's inspiration comes from t.s. eliot's "The Naming of Cats." See, sometimes poems are a lot of fun!

Enjoy.