The Endless Cleverness of the Human Mind

So Spake Mo…

It is so closely our neighbor and the heritage of many a dear friend or co-worker and yet for all the grandeur of its landscape and culture, we fear it. The elegant architecture of old Europe, the ancient temples of early civilization lay shrouded from our view, withheld from inspiring our curious minds by a wall of violence and corruption.

Mexico. So near and yet so far.

A short while ago, my husband was nevertheless charged with traveling to Mexico City. There is always a thread of trepidation when a loved one goes so far away. This time it was no mere thread. Yet, it also proved to be one of the most fascinating and deeply moving explorations his business trips have afforded him so far.

Exploring a locale during a business trip is always a fast and furtive thing, but a connection need only take a moment. A brief stop at a cultural souvenir shop becomes a story, a glimpse into the magic of days gone by when humanity first began weaving a world of culture and technology around itself from…well in this case, an aloe plant more properly known as agave.

Set aside the image you have of the aloe plant that grew on you mother’s window sill with its tidy little pot and meet the version the ancient peoples of Central and South America knew. As tall as the man who is our guide and then again that wide, these plants produce a flower stalk as tall as a telephone pole. They are impressive, rather dangerous looking plants.

The man begins his story.

See here how much this one simple plant gave those ancient peoples, how clever they were to find uses for every part.

He slices off a leaf tip. With two neat snicks of his knife he trims the two corners off the base of the triangle. A couple scrapes of his thumbnail lift the filmy coating off each side of the leaf. He grips the film and strips the film away. It comes off as a sheet. A sheet of writing paper.

See here the paper the native people used for their records. Feel the texture almost like plastic. Here it curls as it dries, but opens once more when moistened.

Our guide pulls his knife carefully around the thick leaf just below its blackened tip. With a twist and a yank he pulls the needle free and with it comes the fibrous threads.

See here how each leaf provides the women with a needle already strung with thread. This black needle hardens as it dries to become a sharp awl. Or if the seamstress wishes to use a different tool, she can trim the fibers and use them as individual threads.

Now he draws us closer to peer into the heart of the plant where the flower stalk has been removed. Again he pulls out his knife and scrapes the sides of the hollow. The plant oozes forth its juices into the cup of its heart.

See here how the plant provides nourishment, this sweet agave nectar. And the nectar, we ferment for this milky-white beverage, pulque, whose sour tang offers sustaining energy.

How clever were the minds of the early peoples to discover these uses and so many more for just one plant. We marvel at the impossibilities of the pyramids and the palaces, the great roads and the aquaducts, but it is innovations of the everyman that make the story intimate, make us wonder, had we encountered this harsh plant in the desert, if we would have been so clever ourselves.

And so my husband walks into the shop to learn yet more stories of gold-flecked obsidian and of looms and of the shaping of silver into works of art, all tales he would never have heard of a creative and hard-working people hidden behind a veil of violence.

So much taken away from the world by a selfish few.

So Spake Me…

My husband met so many kind and generous people during his brief stay in Mexico City. With personal tours on their own time, associates showed him the wonders of their city with understandable pride. The photos he brought back were beautiful.

One associate claimed that Mexico simply had a bad marketing department. The violence occurred primarily to the north. Nothing ever happened in their part of Mexico City. This has a ring of logic to it. There are parts of L.A. I wouldn’t stroll with my children.

But if, within my small circle, I hear of one person’s co-worker being kidnapped at gunpoint and another person’s co-worker being carjacked by policemen, perhaps logic does not offer as much comfort as it should.

My aunt and uncle participated in an RV caravan through Mexico nearly a decade ago. They spoke of the beauty of the landscape dotted with more ancient ruins than one might realize, of startling poverty, of teenagers searching their RV with machine guns at the state borders. They said it was an amazing trip. They also said they wouldn’t do it again these days.

So will I experience that trepidation the next time my husband is sent to visit that client? Probably. But I will also know that the proper precautions can mitigate most of the danger. (After all did not one of my small circle get mugged in downtown Portland for not taking the proper precautions?) And I will wish for him another moving and fascinating whirlwind tour due to the generosity of his new Mexican friends.

And thank you to them for keeping my husband safe.

No Idea

So Spake Mo…

They had no idea what they were getting into.

Would an astronaut’s eyes work up in space or would the lack of gravity cause them to change shape, so that they could not see?

Would gravity affect his ability to breathe, even to swallow the food he needed to survive?

Could they keep a rocket together long enough to find out? They were replacing a warhead with a human payload on a freaking missile!

What would the surface of the moon be like?

One of the places the astronauts trained was the Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. They learned to be the eyes and hands of the geologists back home, identifying volcanic rock and formations. But would the surface they reached be anything like that volcanic landscape?

In vastness and desolation, perhaps.

In volcanic formation, no.

Were the eyes a concern? No.

Breathing, eating? Not really.

Did they figure those human missiles out? Yes.

By the seats of their pants, by adapting the technology they were familiar with, by a vigorous outpouring of ingenuity and the determination not to be outdone.

They had no idea what they were getting into.

And yet they managed what man has dreamed since we first looked to the stars and thought to walk amongst those shining gods.

They had no idea what they were getting into, but they did it.

So Spake Me…

One of the reasons I’ve always found the story of humankind’s ascension into space so inspiring is the sheer impossibility of it. We should never have been able to make it happen. Where were the high speed computers, the advanced aeronautics, the streamlined and elegant technologies we so take for granted today?

But like so many other things in life, it is that overwhelming monument that cannot be conquered which finally inspires people to reach beyond themselves, to push each other past what they’ve always believed to be the limits of their bodies and minds. The highest mountain, the longest marathon, the greatest voyage.

So many of us stop with the I Don’t Knows. We look at that list of questions not as a checklist of activities to be undertaken on the path to Getting There, but as roadblocks, That Which Cannot Be Done. Problems which prevent us from even beginning.

When we begin, we never know what we are really getting into. Never. EVER. The simple trip from the family breakfast table to the front door: missing shoes, missing homework, dawdling kids, an emergency call from work.

Isn’t it a little strange that we expect any other undertaking in life to be any different?

They had no idea what they were getting into.

And neither will we, but it’ll be one hell of a ride.

**Astronaut photos courtesy of National Parks Service.

The Daredevil and the Fisherman

So Spake Mo… Once there was a man who—despite being on record as having broken nearly every bone in his entire body over the course of his illustrious career—managed to secure all the necessary permits from the city of Twin Falls, Idaho to stage a media extravaganza!

Before a crowd of spectators and media, Evel Knievel strapped into his X-1 Skycycle, preparing to make a leap of approximately 1,500 feet…over a 486 foot deep section of the Snake River Canyon.

He made it.

Sort of.

The rocket car’s parachute deployed prematurely, dragging Knievel back over the river, then further still to land on the launch-side riverbank. A few more feet to the north and he wouldn’t have walked away with minor injuries; he would have drowned. His parachute wasn’t the only thing to malfunction. His harness failed to release, trapping him in the Skycycle until help arrived.

Strip away the newsmen and the elaborate machinery.

Bring on the lower-budget daredevils: the fishermen. Approximately a quarter of a mile from the site of Knievel’s jump stands an abandoned platform overlooking those dizzying heights. Feel like dangling a line in the waters of the great Snake River? Grab your gear and your pole and join in your mind’s eye the fishermen of yesteryear as they shimmied down a ladder that hung from this platform in their quest to catch The Big One.

Funny, but the city of Twin Falls, Idaho decided to shut that one down…

So Spake Me…

For those of you unfamiliar with the man, Evel (formerly Evil) Knievel was the stuntman rockstar of his day. His Snake River Canyon jump has been called Woodstock with out the mud and rain.

Yes, hard to picture that in Twin Falls, Idaho.

My folks actually saw the jump. They were stopped on the Perrine Bridge that spans the canyon on their way to pick up some peaches. They watched him nearly land; they watched the wind sweep him back into the canyon.

And then there’s me.

Who snaps a picture of the fisherman’s platform as fast as she can and scurries away from the railing before the vertigo can pitch her head over heels into a picturesque death on the rocks…way…down…there.

PS—Did you know the Shoshone Falls (right next to these two historic sites) is taller than Niagra? Oh yeah, it’s WAY down there.

PPS—I, obviously, didn’t take the Knievel picture, having been less than a year old at the time, but I couldn’t find the name of the photographer who did. So, my apologies. On that note, the photo of the Perrine Bridge, a favorite haunt of base jumpers, was taken by my father.

The Giant Rock Oyster Totem Tells a Tale…or Two

So Spake Mo…

Stories bend over time. They stretch and twist, they slide and expand to fit their new tellers, the new needs they are brought out to serve.

The Tlingit people of Alaska have assembled many of their people’s stories in the Saxman Totem Park outside of Ketchikan. Each totem tells a story. And when each totem falls, the story is written anew by the next generation’s carvers.

The foot of the Giant Rock Oyster Totem depicts the story from which the Giant Rock Oyster House of the Tlingit took its name.

A carver takes up his blade…

In a terrible tragedy, a young man of the house lost his life when his hand became trapped between the shells of a Giant Rock Oyster and he drowned in the incoming tide.

A new carver takes up the blade…

Once long ago, a boy wandered out in low tide and spied a pearl of great beauty in the glistening bowl of a great rock oyster. The exquisite pearl filled his heart with greed. Thinking himself clever, he sought to steal the pearl from the oyster’s maw. Snap! The oyster clamped it shell over the boy’s thieving hand and held him as the waters of the rising tide overtook him.

The carving blade passes to a new hand…

In a time not so different from today there lived a little boy who did not listen to his mother. Time after time she warned him against putting his hands where he could not see. And finally it happened: the boy reached into murky waters and disturbed the rest of a giant rock oyster. The boy shouted when the oyster clamped its powerful shells over his disobedient hand. His mother came and gave him his choices: he could either cut off his hand to free it from the oyster or he could try to hold his breath through the incoming tide. He chose to hold his breath and perished in the waves.

The story transforms with its tellers, its tellers transform with the telling. The story binds the listeners together through the generations, through the moment when they are reminded where they come from, who they are, who they were before.

So Spake Me…

We are losing stories.

We complain about lack of community. And yes, parents work more. Yes, technology creates a greater divide between people. But without a common core, without a common set of stories it is very difficult to create that sense of belonging that binds, that sense of belonging that drives people to set the report aside, to close out of the online games and step outside and join with their neighbors.

Shared experience creates stories that bind people. Just last night I stayed up until the wee hours reminiscing with a childhood friend I hadn’t seen in ten years. We laughed, we rolled our eyes and shook our heads and marveled at how the distance of decades and new experiences had changed the stories we shared. Old stories teaching new lessons over espresso and cheesecake.

We all love those tales of the glory days. We love to know there are people who know where we come from. Then imagine how even more powerful yet are those stories about our roots, weaving together far-flung families, drawing together even large and diverse communities.

So take a moment and learn the story of your family (I’ll bet its fascinating). Learn the story of your community and the brazen impudence that made it possible.

Then share it.

And see what you create.

Light a Rocket

So Spake Mo…

There is a certain fearless foolishness inherent in the act of pioneering, the faith that you are somehow cleverer, luckier, more divinely guided than the ones who came before you.

Before Astronaut Alan Shepard climbed into the claustrophobic cockpit of the Mercury-Redstone 3 vehicle, rocket after rocket had exploded in the delicate embrace of the launch tower. Knowing this, he strapped in anyway.

Before President John F. Kennedy made the decision to televise Shepard’s risky launch, America had suffered the morale-crushing failure at the Cuban Bay of Pigs with all 1300 soldiers either captured or killed. Knowing this, he gave the green light anyway.

And with this green light, Shepard’s rocket lit the sky red and launched America into the black and glittering frontier that has always captured humanity’s imagination. And with this green light, Shepard and Kennedy freed America from weighty confines of Cold War Earth and let the country dream again.

So Spake Me…
Earlier this year, the family made the journey across the country to visit the Kennedy Space Center. It was a bitter sweet experience and not just because we missed the second- to-last space shuttle launch we’d hoped to witness. Truthfully, that was to be expected. If they can’t rearrange it for an ailing Senator, they are certainly not going to accommodate us!

No, it was more complicated than that.

Never in one day, have I gotten more goose bumps, more wondering tears at what amazing things humanity is capable of. And at the same time there was that deep sense of loss—for those who gave their lives, for the end of an era.

But the bitter part of the bitter sweet lay not in the exhibits and the shows, but in the attendance. In a completely subjective survey, it seemed that around a third or more of the people around us were from outside the U.S. Enough so that it was very noticeable.

And it wasn’t a decline in tourism due to the economy. Universal Studios was packed with Americans the next day. So what was it? Have Americans gotten less hungry? Have they lost that pioneering arrogance, that fire that drives them toward something greater despite the risk? I’ve thought about it a lot and I’m just not sure.

But here’s one thought: Maybe Americans are just ready to let go of Daddy’s hand and toddle out there on their own. As NASA shuts down the shuttle program and moves more toward supporting commercial space efforts, we may see the answer to this question.

On this 50^th anniversary of Kennedy’s Moon Speech, let me leave all you pioneers with its most famous quote:
 

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Get out there and light your rocket.

Twin Falls Trolley

So Spake Mo…

Below roared the thunderous waters of the Shoshone Falls like a scale model of the great Niagra filling the space between sheer canyon walls with billows of fine mist.


Such a contrast between the violent beauty of the water, the implied threat of the deeply cut bedrock and that ethereally soft spray… and then came the rainbow that ricocheted from it. A beautiful moment.

As we backed away from the viewing platform, we came to another contrast: the naked heat and drought of the Idaho desert mere feet from so much water. Three generations of us climbed the path up the canyon wall taking refuge from the sun in the occasional shallow cave scraped out by those waters so very long ago.

Absorbed with the vivid colors of the desert, my father and I eventually fell behind the rest of the group near an unnatural arrangement of rocks along the path. That, said my father, was one of two staircases that once led down to a tidy little park with a series of small pools overlooking the falls. He said that in the distant past, the city of Twin Falls had had a trolley running from the county courthouse to this remote spot. Parties with picnic baskets in hand descended these stairs to take their easement while enjoying the natural majesty of the falls.

The park and the stone steps have since returned to nature. But every once in a while as the city of Twin Falls grows and evolves, reminders of the old trolley are found—bits of track unearthed as new roads replace the old, little memories of life as it was.

So Spake Me…

Alright, I know I promised this space would be dedicated to more information regarding the legends from Spectre, but sometimes you just hit tasty gems in places you’ve been a thousand times and you’ve just got to share them.

The Shoshone Falls were on full blast when the family and I journeyed back to Idaho last week and my husband, who had recently been to Niagra, couldn’t believe I’d never taken him to see this before! How do you tell a guy who is looking at this triumph of nature and engineering that the Shoshone Trickle is more what I was accustomed to finding down here.

Of course that is not the only tasty tidbit my parents had to relay, so stay tuned for more…

On the space elevator side, just a quick note: National Geographic recently conned me out $5.71 with promises of an article on space elevators. Nrgh. A picture and puny little paragraph. Repeat after me: Impulse buying is bad. Impulse buying is bad!