Does Online Communication Allow us to be Cruel with Good Conscience?

The end of this school year is drawing near.  The one thing on my mind is how stressful I am not.  I know what I want to do in life, I know that I am doing it.  I love the people I have always loved profoundly and there is no change to the light of truth, as always.  Life is good.  No matter where I look, there is no drama to indulge in.  I sincerely hope it is this way for all of us.

As a matter of fact, the only place I see drama is online.

When we go day to day in “real life”, we might meet someone we know in a restaurant or on the street.  It’s a ritual to introduce our loved ones we’re with to our colleagues or relatives we haven’t seen in twenty years, or old neighbors or even passersby we’re in the process of meeting.

The old question comes up time and again.  ”So how are you doing?”  It’s like clockwork.  The answer is always,  ”Just fine”.  Then we proceed to tell our happen chance visitor where our job or career has taken us, where we still live or where we moved to, that our children are doing fine, and so forth.  We keep it light weight, drama free and pleasant.  Then we reintroduce the question to them.  They are always fine too.  Their children are in college, they moved up in their company, they just got back from Tahiti.  It’s always the good things and we are interested in each other’s wonderful, laid back stories of life at its finest.  Then we part, feeling good, revitalized in our social experience and embracing genuine happiness for that person and all of the good that life has brought to them.

But online, everything has to be dramatic.  Friends post squabbles with friends, family.  I saw another one just recently on a vanity site.  Everyone makes themselves a victim, fingers point, feelings are hurt, if not numbed after too much of it in the first place. With the press of a button, privacy is forever slaughtered.

“Block”, “Ignore”, “Hide”…it’s all enabling a lack of  common courtesy.  Ethics are different in there.

How does online communication enable this?  Being a social science major, it is a curiosity of mine.

What is it about writing relationships that are so powerful and distinct? Why does bumping into someone on the internet bring out  exaggerated efforts to blow things out of proportion into random disrespect? While we walk the streets of our city and find that everyone is doing fine, online we are not?  But our lives are our lives, aren’t they?  Why is our portrait online so different than our real lives we live?

I have found that the internet is its own drama media, feeding off of people we can’t see.  Because we can’t see them, we are enabled to hurt, or single out without answering to our conscience.

In a conversation with one of my children, we found ourselves laughing at vanity sites like facebook or myspace. We contemplated what is really real and decided that internet communication is nothing more than dramatic entertainment, as exaggerated and as impersonal as Hollywood.

Our conclusion is that we choose to let reality in through real life, not the drama of internet junk.  I am thankful my friends and family rarely go there.  Those who do, don’t go for social reasons.  Real life is far more fulfilling.

People are genuinely people when you are looking them in the eye.

Online, we can’t do this.

I love a good get together, when we can all meet at a restaurant or shopping, or the movies,  the stables, for an occasional camping trip, hike in the desert or forest, or whatnot. That priceless vision of someone else’s feelings comes through in the eyes, the facial expression, the body language and intonations of real life gifts.  When we are in front of the entire reality of the person we are much less likely to hurt them.

My husband once experienced an interesting accusation.  Of course, this was online.  I also knew the entire story and immediately recognized the falsification of the truth.  The circumstance was analyzed, talked about between us, and it changed our attitude toward the internet socializing  completely.  Meanwhile, other accusations were going on around us. We realized that conversations ensue between a few people who were not standing face to face,  but rather printing words where they could not look any of us in the eye.  We knew what we had to do.

It should be noted that during this time, my husband was in the hospital watching his son fight for his life.  The timing and how it coincided with the online “conversations” helped us to gather our perspective and embrace our commitment to each other and our family. As he sat watching his son sleep,  hooked up to the tubes and chemistry that put him through chemo, my husband decided that the new wave of socialization, i.e., vanity sites and online blindness to real human feelings,  was not something he ever wanted to be a part of.  He let go of the accusations against us, that very day, stood up like a man and walked away from it all. No drama, no revenge, no obsession. As far as he was concerned, in our lives, it was all just “gone”.

I am so proud of him, for handling it the way that he did with such profound integrity.

It was only a matter of time.  He has since left all vanity sites.  He just couldn’t see the point.  He has a blog he writes in so infrequently, it flatlines.  His internet life is virtually dead.  When his children want to get a hold of him, they have to pick up the phone or come to our home.  Now, to me, that is living a good life.

“I’d rather be helping around the house than waste my time on internet junk,” he said.  When I woke up this morning at 10:00 a.m., my husband’s computer was still asleep but both of our bathrooms were cleaned.

I wonder about posts all of the time when I read facebook, words spoken that gawk to the family and friends about someone who is singled out.  I’ve seen it ever since vanity sites became popular a dozen years ago.  Gossip.  It hasn’t let up at all.  When one drama is over and a few friends are blocked, another one begins.  It’s just plain sad and it’s hard seeing my friends go through this.  Can we feel for the person who is on display?  Not so much.  More often than not, it is a cue to “get in on it” because we don’t have to look them in the eye.

In real life there is compassion and connection and real communication, the three “c’s” we can blind ourselves to online.

Witnessing my friends just recently and remembering our own experience with online gossip,  I question and analyze and came to a certain peace that would have otherwise been unsought. Though I have lost a lot of faith in the concept of  ”integrity”, I realized that we are creatures who naturally fall into enabling. The internet “enables” us to be naughty. It enables us to be naughty to our fellow man because we can pretend it has  anonymity.  But myspace and facebook and google+ is not a place to be anonymous.  People know people there. We have friends friended, family friended, and colleagues friended who are reading everything others post about anyone or anything.  You can say anything and not have to look them in the eye.  People who know people who know people are reading it too.  We can pretend anonymity to our hearts content but the reality is, there are feelings behind those monitors that read our disrespect.  No matter how hard we pretend, using vanity sites where our friends and family and our friends of friends and friends of family dock is not a place to pretend anonymity and bring up our accusations and personal issues.  In disagreements, particularly…we need the eyes.

Anonymity allows human nature to satisfy a gouge or two toward others without feeling the hurt behind the eyes of their target.

If we must slaughter, can’t we slaughter in some obscure place of barrenness that is buried deep inside of nowhere with a new username no one can identify?  Where our friends and family and colleagues aren’t docked?  Shouldn’t this be a “given”?

What is our true nature?  Are we the people who graciously employ our respect for others we meet walking down the street or shopping at the mall, or are we the culprit behind the keyboard; a keyboard that enables us to pretend to be anonymous and start rumors, or just find a way to hurt someone else?  Is an otherwise good person bad for falling prey to a loss of integrity when anonymity – NOT! comes into the picture?

I haven’t quite figured that out yet.  Sometimes I am tempted to measure integrity by how anonymous people really are and if they try to hold true to it.  Sometimes, I wonder if true integrity is measured by how little we go on to vanity sites at all. Perhaps it is like all things.  The integrity is measured by how you use it.  It can be a weapon or a gift to someone else.

The rest is up to us.

I do know one thing.  Real Life is good.  It is real.  It is true.

Ten Constructive Things We Can Do Online that are Productive and Don’t Hurt People:

1- Make a Gratitude Journal then share the link with the people in your life. They’re sure to read about themselves on there.

2- Make a bucket list and journal about your experience. Inspire someone.

3- Write an appreciation journal for your spouse, your friend, someone you love.  Then share the link with them on a special occasion.

4- Keep track of the places you visit with someone and post  photos and and thoughts on Googlemaps with the location. Then give the link to that person.  I did this for my husband on our first anniversary.

5- Join a club with like interests such as gardening, home improvement, or animals. Join a reading club like goodreads. Be kind, it is not a place to attack people.  Inspire them instead.

6- Post recipes and join an online recipe site so you can share a few of life’s pleasures with someone else.

7- Join a fitness site and meet some friends while giving encouragement to take another step toward health.

8- Write your story.  Publish it on one of the many presses on line then give a copy to your children and grand children, your friends, etc. Create a legacy.

9- Go on youtube and make a folder for your spouse or your friend with songs that remind you of them then share the link with them  on your anniversary or a birthday or Mother’s Day, etc.  Make them feel special.

10- Do research and learn something then post it.  Be an inspiration for knowledge and give the passion to learn something to someone.

Make a difference for someone; a positive difference, and if you must visit Town Square, leave the judgement and the stoning behind.  Be cordial and be a friend.

May the reader find peace in real life and bring that same path to his or her interactions online.  

A12 Oxcart Down – The Truth Always Comes Out in the End

I am not an aviation expert.  Like everyone, I have flown in planes.  Like most people, I have never flown one. Except for this particular aircraft, I am not really mesmerized by the subject.  Yet, this craft has given me passion and respect for what we have achieved as a human race. On this 49th anniversary of Oxcart’s crash in a local desert, I wanted to post this in honor of the human ability to defy physics and command the stage.

The A-12

This aircraft was over 100 feet long and it weighed over 62 tons.  Its speed matched the speed of a rifle bullet, and it could go as high as 91,000 feet.  It could go across the entire United States in just over an hour. Top secret and hand made, this craft was spawned in the 1960s, about fifty years ago.  In layman’s terms,  it is an antique, though it is still decades above our time.  The projects that led to the A12 cost over $160,000,000, overseen by top-level CIA aeronautical engineers.

No American citizen knew of it. No one knew of it.

The heat produced by such phenomenal speeds that this aircraft could master would be more than significant so the material to construct it must be high quality titanium alloy; something that could withstand 1,000 degrees, particularly near the engines.  (That’s hotter than the planet Venus which is the hottest body in our solar system minus the  sun). The irony of this is that the titanium alloy was  purchased from the Soviet Union, the very country we were on guard against during this entire era of the Cold War; the very country we feared and the very country we built this plane to infiltrate.

The fuel tanks of this master product could hold 11,000 gallons of fuel, much needed because of the speed and altitude of its flight.  The fuel tanks made up the largest proportions of the air craft.  At the temperature this aircraft’s fuel would heat up to, any fuel we knew of could blow up. Therefore, even a special fuel had to be transformed in order to fly this craft.

The A-12 was a science fiction reality.

Isn’t she beautiful?

The idea behind the craft was the intention of having it fly too high and too fast to be detected or shot down by the Soviets.    It was trucked in pieces under heavy disguise so as not to be revealed, then assembled on site of its home in Area 51.

There were ten in the fleet.  The  secrecy of the crafts was given a cover story.  The illusion was that the craft was a multipurpose satellite system.  NOT.

A newer rendition by just a few months was the Oxcart series.   The reason for secrecy of Oxcart was they did not want the Soviets to respond with counter measures, making the craft null and void.  In spite of the effort and energy that went into its making, these extraordinary aircrafts were not as well received as they were expected.  The technology of satellite was clearly more efficient to see the goings on “over there” in the Soviet Union.

I am reminded of The Pony Express.  It was a brilliant idea, efficient and workable for its time.  However, undermining its success was the upcoming technology of the telegraph system.  Once the telegraph was introduced, The Pony Express was ousted by a higher technology.  Within 18 months of its birth, the Pony Express was replaced and demised.  So too, the A12 technology was shown up by satellite systems; a more efficient and workable technology to accomplish “spying”.  Therefore, many of these aircraft were put into storage but resurfaced during the conflict with Vietnam.

Looking back, the aircraft made its contribution.

“The photography collected by the A-12 and interpreted by analysts provided valuable intelligence on enemy missile defenses, troop movements, and military facilities; assessed bomb damage and aided in targeting activities; and dispelled concern that North Vietnam was planning to use surface-to-surface missiles against the South,” …CIA chief historian David Robarge

Working out of Area 51, this location adds to the suspense and wonder of the aircrafts.  Besides the fact that it was a hundred years before its time, this aircraft reflects the capability of the human intelligence.  Its secrecy was kept successful for years.  Most of us are astounded by the wonder of its capability.

Then too, it’s just really awesome to look at.  

Capability of being human.

Whenever my eyes behold this “plane”,  I am always reminded of some alien civilization that lives, thinks, and invents way beyond what we are capable of.  It doesn’t matter how many magazines I read that capture its photo, how many models I touch, how many times I google this extraordinary machine, every time I see it, I gasp at its wonder and I stand completely taken by the physics of it all.

The Crash

On May 24, 1963, exactly 49 years ago CIA pilot Ken Collins took the A12 up for another flight.  It was this particular plane’s 79th flight.  Collin was simply testing the subsonic engine. He was also “practicing” to gain skills with the navigational system.  He took off from Area 51 where the craft was kept secret.  Collin headed north and came to the airspace above the desert.  During a climb when his throttle was steady, Collin noticed that his airspeed began to increase.  This was the first sign that something was amiss. He leveled off above the cirrus clouds and intentionally went into automatic pilot.  The airspeed began to decrease.  When the airspeed decreased below the cruise speed, he knew he was not completely in control.

Soon the craft began to stall at 30,000 feet.  The plane was now out of his control in more than airspeed.  At around 25000 feet, the pilot ejected himself from his plane and landed safely after his parachute opened.

Imagine how tantalizing it would be to learn the coordinance of  the Oxcart crash that happened in a desert within hours of my home town. When I got the phone call from a family member saying he knew the co ordinance, within two days, we were there at the crash site with family, and a brand new metal detector in hand.  We spent hours scouring the area.  When we embarked on this mission, we didn’t know if there would be anything to find.  Still, we invested in pretty decent equipment and time.  We also packed up our camping provisions, our shovels and other rock hounding tools, filled up the vehicle with gas, and set out for an extensive drive on the off chance that when they say the area was “sterilized” back in the sixties, and in spite of another 49 years of exposure to the elements and the curiosities of a population; perhaps there was still something there to find.

The actual crash site years earlier. This photo, kept by the CIA, was finally unveiled after the A12 went into retirement.

Thrilled that we went, we found titanium  scattered everywhere.  We found computer boards, pieces of windshield, fuses, and more “nuts and bolts” than you can imagine.   We didn’t need our metal detectors or our tools.  All we needed were our eyes and our hands to pick up the shrapnel. It was everywhere.

Sorting it all out that afternoon was a glorious feat.

When the plane was downed in the 60s, the emergency pick up was fast and furious.  Even the American citizens didn’t know about its existence.  Tarps fell on top of the debris to hide it immediately, the wings were cut apart and stacked away, everything boxed up within hours.  Not wanting to risk ground travel or that the destination of the spy plane might be discovered, the plane was shipped out by flight.  Cranes fell to work all around the area.  Teams of  men worked from dusk till dawn.  At one point they discussed whether or not to dynamite the area, making the identification of the plane impossible.  Because the aircraft has sufficiently broken up when it was downed, they opted against explosives.  And so we were successful.

Erosion.  Erosion on a hillside is particularly efficient in unearthing many things.  It was all we could figure.  Erosion exposed the shrapnel in hoards; objects overlooked because in its time, it became imbedded under the surface. Time exposed the hidden pieces and there it lay; a sight for sore eyes.   All of what we found escaped being boxed up in its time.

According to the story, the pilot’s emergency kit contained official letters that the CIA was desperate to locate.  A team searched for two days; nine men frantic and alert.  In a four by two mile area covered, leaving no stone unturned, they came up with nothing.  A second attempt was made.  Nothing. Finally, on horseback, they were able to recover the letters and a thousand dollars that accompanied them.

The cover story worked for the incident because the pilot, Collin,  was flying at a low altitude and he did not have his air pressure space suit on.  Had he been seen in the “astronaut” look, there would have been questions about the plane’s capability.

However, the CIA got wind that a Salt Lake City reporter, Art Kent,  possessed pictures which would debunk their cover story.  After a conference with said reporter, the pictures were surrendered and word was not exposed as to the truth of Oxcart.

Sodium amyta to find the truth of the crash in the head of the pilot, cranes, flatbed trucks, blow torches, cargo planes, tarps, tools, and horeback, all smothered the evidence in order to keep the secret of Oxcart protected from the world.

Somehow, being in the aftermath nearly 50 years later, was an honor and a privilege.  The aura of the spy plane, the intelligence of our civilization was still in the essence of the debris.  I felt it when I touched every artifiact, when I saw the pieces glistening in the sun, when I held the potential of harnessing the tools of defying our customary known physics in my bare hands.

I am still enchanted by it all.  By 1964 more and more A-12s were arriving at test sights.   The  world record for aircraft speed was held by the Soviets at 1,665 mph, however it has been repeatedly broken in secret by the United States, which could reach speeds over 2,000 mph. Well over 40 years after it first flew, the A-12’s  speed and altitude have yet to be equaled by any other piloted craft and it is now 50 years later.  As I said, science fiction…even still.

The Air and Space Museum – A Smithsonian Venture (part 5)

The Air and Space Museum…

…a sign that we are greater inventors than we are emotionally mature.

First Impression:

Why did we stop space exploration to feed the war machine?

The Air and Space Museum really is a history museum.  This is such a tragedy.  Everywhere we went, we were looking back in time more than thirty years.  Side by side lay man at his worst and man at his finest.  Missiles hang from the ceiling; bombs next to spacecrafts. It is a testimonial to our split nature; our ability to embrace the frontier of space like we can just reach into a dream of the impossible and pull out an entire miracle of our own making while literally setting our ambition on fire; that’s on one hand.  On the other hand we have an obsession to destroy our planet with violence.  Walking through this museum led me to think and feel about how two faced we are.

Our tour through the space station was daunting, yet foreboding.  The loss of lives in the space program, including the animals we sacrificed left me heavy.  Were we up there too soon, before we were ready, or did we just do everything cheap to feed the wars?  Could more of those lives be spared if we did not have OCD about The Cold War, or put so much of our funding into weapons that can destroy, not just one city but entire countries?  Probably.  But the choices we make are who we are.  We are a warring nation and we just can’t stop, not even for exploration of the most intriguing discoveries we will ever know; outer space.   When you stand at the vertex of this museum and realize that our entire potential is in a circumference around you and you see the fighters, the bombs, the missiles, as big and bold as our shuttles and modules, it is something to contemplate.

This American Treasure; the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian had “the big stuff”.  The plane that the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk took up a huge room.  The lobby of this museum was larger than any state capitol’s and then some.  It held treasures such as the lunar modules, replicas of the Mars Rover, the back up Skylab and missiles intended for destruction.  Everywhere you look, at any degree in the area of what circles you, is a story to tell; a long story with adventure as its middle name.   This is not science fiction, fantasy, or myth.  It is all nonfiction where fact takes over opinion, where “what is” leaves “I wish” behind.  It is all sensational, mesmerizing, and awe inspiring.  And it is all very, very real. That is the enchantment of the Air and Space Museum.

The tour of  Skylab, A Nazi air craft,  the first cruise missiles from Germany,  and the tour of the jet aircraft, all signal our genius.

There were certain things  in this museum that stood out as the most fascinating to me.  The first,  I have already blogged about.  That is the Wright Brother’s exhibit.  Being passionate about space exploration, it surprised me that a tour through the history of space penetration was magnificent but the Kitty Hawkexhibit left me far more dumbfounded and passionate than even the lunar capsules that returned our astronauts to Earth.  Perhaps it was the way it was presented.  Perhaps it was just the art of flying in general.  For whatever it was, The Wright Bros  stood above the next five on my list of  exhibits with impact and it did so without contest.

The five remaining exhibits that made marks on my memory follow:

1- The Enterprise from the Original Star Trek Series…

It should be noted that this relic is actually on display in the gift shop: a gift shop like I have never seen before.  There were so many items I wanted in there, especially books by my favorite authors, that I finally  threw my hands up in the air and just left with only two small items.  I did come home with my Einstein bobble head and an incredible gift for my son-in-law.  We found a model of the air craft YF 12 that I purchased for him.  We once excavated a crash site from Ox Cart which was one of these planes.  The craft was on route from Area 51  when it was downed.  During the cold war, it was a huge deal to keep it top secret.  So, its model was a lovely find for us at The Smithsonian.

All that aside….

There are such greats as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Edison, the astronauts, The Wright Brothers,  and of course, Tesla (who could have been a touch more celebrated), and so many more people who have impacted us all.  There were so many other visionaries honored at The Smithsonian.

Now, to me, Gene Roddenberry stands out among them all.  He sees harmony in a world divided.  He sees peace in a world always at war.  He sees space as a frontier to be conquered.  He embellishes the best of mankind and decorates us with morality, sainthood, intelligence, and soul.  Gene Roddenberry is a believer in mankind.  He depicted it in his stories where  man’s best underlies it all.  I say, “more power to him”.  And I  reiterate this with the utterance…”If we are so bold as to believe in the potential of man in spirit and discovery, then this prophesy will follow.”

Hat’s off to you, Gene.  You gave us a pretty thrilling ride.

The  Star Trek Enterprise from the original series on display at the Smithsonian Institute. This model was three times the size I thought it was. Impressive.

2- The LCD screen that showed us the many flights (in the moment) of all air traffic as it was happening. It really was quite shocking.

I’ll never view air traffic the same again.

OMG.  I never dreamed that there was so much traffic in our atmosphere.  Not unlike the seemingly scurrying frenzy of a mass of ants on an ant hill, the numbers of aircraft that are crossing over each other, clumped into thick bunches of solidarity and moving with vicious intent was simply astounding. My husband and I, my son and his wife stood in front of the screen for a good long time, feeling a sort of reverence for the ability of mankind and his grace of transportation.  It was life changing and I came away with far more respect than I walked in with for our intellect and our ambition.  I also developed, instantly, an new found respect for air traffic controllers.  It was incredible.

There is a new found respect for air traffic controllers in this vision of traffic in our atmosphere.

3- Nineteen Sixties Decontamination Suit…

It seems like simple knowledge now, like “There are no penguins in the desert.”  In the early years of space travel, the astronauts would go into decontamination upon their return from outer space.

                                                                                          Decontamination from what?  

Today we know that the moon is sterile, microscopic organisms can not thrive in outer space,  and the life on Earth as extraterrestrial hitch hikers have already visited billions of years ago, giving rise to what we already are.

Still, beholding the quarantine suit from the 60′s and considering the days spent in confinement in case there is risk “out there” seems so superficially dramatic.  I loved looking back and remembering the decontamination space travelers would adhere to.  How could we have possibly not known that alien microbes would not find humans as hosts?

Man’s imagination is vivid.  Life in a vacuum?  Microscopic extraterrestrials on a sphere with no water, air or food?  What were we thinking?  Nothing to fear but fear itself.

This quarantine suit took me back to a concern I had long since forgotten since we stepped on the moon and brought back relics of sterility.  I began to contemplate what we are afraid of in this generation; that we need not be afraid of at all?

4- Space Capsules – The Real McCoy

There are some out there who believe we never really went to the moon; like in the old science fiction film, Capricorn One with James Brolin.  In this film, Hollywood took us into a conspiracy where we faked a trip to Mars.  There are those who never believed we accomplished lunar landings and lunar walk-abouts.  In this way, we would have done a quite extravagant Hollywood facade and after we presented that, someone would have to take the fake landers and scorch them as if they wisped through our atmosphere.

Standing in front of the space modules, I was left with two profound and unforgettable thoughts.   The first thought was, how charred the outside of the vessel was.  I knew it was a signature to its authenticity.  It was the hand print of our atmosphere burning the metal to black.  It made the lunar landings and our Earth orbits so much more real.  The second thought was how small of a man it must be to fit inside of some of those capsules. Those things are tiny.  Not much bigger than a vanity, every inch of space is utilized.  Only a folded human being or so could stuff themselves in those pods.  One day, I am quite certain, we will look back on the scrunched quarters and wonder how we could have been so barbaric to our own kind.

This thing was tiny.

5- Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

In July 1975 two manned spacecraft were launched into Earth orbit.  One from the Soviets and one from Americans.  Their rendezvous in orbit fulfilled a 1972 agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States to participate in a joint venture in space.  It was the end of a cold war; the end of distrust and fear.  It was the signature of two nations coming together in unity.

The joining of two nations. My first thought; trustworthy.

Is it any wonder why this display was so heartfelt?  It isn’t often that America is associate with peace between other nations. It isn’t often that we trust or give the benefit of the doubt to other countries.  This was a beautiful anomaly.  It was a handshake above the planet in a promise to join together as a human race; to trust and respect and throw away suspicions.

This is a moving exhibit that deserves a historical recognition beyond the relics of world wars, cold wars, and politicians who dirty their hands in a quest for power.

The Apollo/Soyuz vision is one of triumph, maturity and faith in human kind, often left on the sidelines of fear and discontent.  Out of all exhibits that were laid in front of us in all of the halls we frequented at The Smithsonian, this one held the most promise and the most optimism for man kind.  It had one advantage over the fictional Enterprise that proclaimed the same joining of minds.  It was real.

The American History Museum – A Smithsonian Venture (part 4)

The American History Museum; an archive of a revolutionary empire.

Hidden beneath the Hollywood anomalies like the scarecrow’s shoes, Dorothy’s ruby slippers, and the original Kermit the Frog, is a legacy of America growing up.  Fashions, fancies, inventions, and legacies begin in 1776.  George Washington’s revolutionary clothing, Benjamin Franklin’s attire, and Abraham Lincoln’s tall stove pipe hat, last placed on his head at Ford’s Theater, bring American History alive to the Smithsonian visitor.

I found the First Ladies’ inaugural dresses to be a visit into the old adage, “The Throw Away Society”.  There was simply too much bling and flaunting for my informal taste.  When I added up the worth of the attire that Michelle Obama wore, as the most recent woman to bear the title of “The First Lady”, I cringed.  Most of the worth was in her diamond ear rings and necklace.  I was reminded of the class system and how unequal our “equality” nation really is.  I wondered on the purpose of status, the importance of impression, and why one mortal is more valued than another.  Status.  It escapes me, even in the Smithsonian.  How many meals could those ear rings buy a child in a hungry nation.  That’s the reality of bling.

I was interested in the fashion from the early 20th century more than the silver threads and jewels embedded.  I loved watching the evolution of the style.  Helen Taft’s gown depicted the old fashioned female attributes of thick hips with a corset lassoed waist.  This was back in the day when women were given far less freedom than men, when attraction was bosom and buttock and the more the better.

Grace Coolidge, in the 1920s depicted the paralleled image of straight waist and no hips. At the time, this fashion statement declared women’s equality by undermining the female figure.

A walk  among these fashions was a statement of the sign of the times, and where women stood in the microscope of social mores.  Fascinating.

From Fashion to Science

All fashion aside,  I was also very impressed with was the invention of the light bulb.  Seeing the first Edison masterpiece was not as I expected.  It was very large, about the size of a cantaloupe.

On display in a room dedicated to circuits and machines, this is the original light bulb.

From tin foil phonographs to a vast array of toasters, it was easy to see that an invention was only the first step.  Everywhere we went there were inventions then evolution of those inventions.   Needless to say, our inventions continue through innovations and evolutionary marks of more and more improvements.  From steam engines to coal driven, to electrical trains, the improvements never cease.  Edison’s tin foil phonographs led to vinyl 78 records to Sony Walkman, then to ipods, the message is clear.  One thing leads to its change into something much more sophisticated and practical.  As the process continues, what ends up evolving is something of a very different nature, though it serves the very same function.  For example, vinyl albums and MP3 players.

The ongoing story of an empire in the mainstream of mechanical and technical revolutions is a powerful one of human ability to take a tool and always find a better way. The American history Museum at the Smithsonian is really, a story of mankind’s ability, imagination, and genius at manipulating the environment.

There is much to honor in the American History Museum.  It was one of the three I was anxious to see for the past three decades.  It didn’t disappoint, save for one oversight.

Nikola Tesla was underscored.  He received a plaque on the wall, a picture of his accomplishments for harnessing Niagra Falls, and an induction motor .  If there was anything else, it escaped us.

My husband and I were completely disappointed.  Esteemed as the “Forgotten American Scientist”, we felt like Nikola Tesla was vastly under-mentioned.  He was recognized for only a few, less than a handful of inventions, yet he is responsible for the AC motor, radio, Tesla Coil, vacuum tubes, X-ray, hydroelectric generators, the loudspeaker, fluorescent lights, radar, the rotary engine, microwaves, diathermy, remote control, synchronized electric clocks, and radar.  That’s only a few in the bombardment of what Nikola Tesla gave the world. The names Edison, Forest,  and Marconi in regard to light and radio?  Forget them.  Tesla was there first.  Tesla received 800 patents which does not include the light, radio, and vacuum tube amplifier, all of which he achieved and then some. These inventions were patented by the aforementioned people, however, as to who invented them first is another story.  Patents speak louder than truths.

My husband and I find Tesla to be history’s most fascinating genius, quirky in his own right, he was a scientific and engineering demigod, surpassed by no other. Had he been rightfully represented at The Smithsonian, we would have left the American History Museum with more respect, knowing that their information was on target. As it is, we refrain in a slightly mournful surrender to the ongoing and undeniable fact that history is won, not necessarily by truth, but by the more rich, and the most ruthless.

Nikola Tesla; the forgotten genius who literally put the entire country of America on the move and in the light.

War in a Wheel

The voting jars for political elections and the draft wheel from The Civil War are hallmark insignias on the history of America’s political marks.  From The Civil War to Vietnam, no choice militia marks our history for centuries.

The draft wheel, designated the fate of individuals during The 1800s fight when the nation was split in two.

The mood of doom hauntingly present in the draft wheel, were counterbalanced by an aura of peace that the table and two chairs gave to us as we passed them by while contemplating The Civil War.

All of this being said, I chose five things that were on my list of favorites in the American History Museum at the Smithsonian and what they symbolized to me.  

1- The end of a nation divided.

The Smithsonian recognized the value of the table and chairs where the surrender was signed by the South with the North to end The Civil War.  I’m not sure why this particular piece of history is so passionate to me.   I wanted more.  I wanted the white flag they donned as they were coming in, I wanted to see the pen they used to sign with, the weapons they surrendered, everything.  It was a day of reconciliation.  The estrangement of an empire was over, so of course, the table and chairs were a memory keeper; such a small table that became the part of a history of such a monumental resolve.  It was not even the size of a card table.  The chairs were unmatched and anything but extraordinary.  Still, they carried a mood, a sort of sixth sense of peace and moving on.  The end of blood shed from an entire nation divided was realized at the heart of three pieces of furniture that would otherwise seem typically plain.

The “Surrender Table”: the table where General Grant signed to end The Civil War at Appomattox.

2- Abraham Lincoln’s hat tugged at my heartstrings.

He was a poet, he was a leader, he was a saint.  Loved by all of history, Abraham Lincoln stands at the forefront of moral virtue, tireless leadership, and gifted with words of inspiration.   I have always looked up to him.  Going through the Smithsonian, I felt his spirit walk alongside of me in every artifact they had on display for him.  Clothing, his pocket watch, his writings, and the legendary hat that is his signature of everything he was.  The hat; the very icon of Abraham Lincoln brought him to life for me.  He was no longer just a legend, he was flesh and bone, living and real, separated from all of us only by time.

This is one item I never expected to see.  I looked up ahead and there it was.  That moment of impact, brought me to my knees.

3- The “original” Washington Monument is a work of art designating democracy and freedom, not a statement of relentless power. 

My husband was obviously right about the original founders of the country and their ongoing influence.  He is a native of  upstate New York and his observation seems to be on target.  As soon as I saw it and read the plaque as to why it was replaced by the “sky monolith”, if you will, I thought about all of the stories he told from back east.  The Puritans founded this country.  Modesty was their middle name.  God fearing church goers paved the way into a future that rejects the very fabric of anything such as this.  In the end, they won out, the “Washington Monument” was scrapped because of the bear chested “indecency” and replaced with a tower of power that stands today.

Personally, I prefer the statue.  It is an honor to place Washington in the company of the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome  by the toga he wears.  He is  a philosopher in his own right. He sits on a throne holding out the handle of a sword, as if he is giving power over to the people.  What a remarkable statement made simply at the onset of our nation.

Toga and sword is a statement of relinquishing power to the people. This idea of honoring Washington was, I feel, a more artistic and clear voice to his meaning in history than the huge pinnacle they settled on later.

The Washington Monument that was given approval still stands today.  In its day, it was the tallest “building”.  It still stands taller than any in Washington DC.  It seems to me that the only statement it makes is one of great power and prestige.  Big is better is the statement it makes.  ”Might is right,” type of thing.  This is a far cry from handing over the power to the people who look like ants meandering around its foundation and it has little to do with the political philosophy of George Washington.  Not a part of the Smithsonian, I can leave this here as it is.

A little different mood is set off by the Washington Monument that honors our first president. It is a depiction of his power, a near opposite of the statue that portrays his surrender of power to the people. Personally, I liked the other one.

4-  The Watergate Evidence; A Twisted File Cabinet that Blew Trust in our leaders.

I lived it.  I was there and because of it, I never missed the news.  Watergate.  It was a time of mistrust and Watergate cinched it.  I came of age in this era, working for local politicians and embracing my citizenship.  I believed our country was infallible and its leaders were saints.  Watergate was my first lesson in American greed and quest for power.  Assassinations, one after another, Kent State, and a cultural civil war spawned in Vietnam stacked up to the unquestionable conclusion that man is fallible and flawed. Watergate and the legend of Deep Throat put a flare on the bubble that burst as I came to know that mankind is far from superior.  Watergate is a signature of human shortcomings, desperation, and impulsive choices that disappointed us all.  It was a test of trust where our leaders failed miserably.  Watergate made us all suspicious, scarred us with paranoia and the forgone conclusion that politicians were, after all, tainted.  It was a hard and steady look at who we really are and what lengths we will go to in order to keep the throne.

Staring at the file cabinet gave me pause.  It was the kind of pause that leaves us in a gape and a stare down while we try to make sense of nonsense.  I never did figure it all out.  I just realized and went into a personal life that distanced me from it all.

Then I remember the feeling while I was standing in front of the glass window that put the Watergate evidence on display, so blatant.  It all came back to me.

The Watergate evidence that stunned a nation during a time when it was already damaged with distrust and violence.

5- The Original Script from The Wizard of Oz – This Gives “Cut and Paste” an Old meaning.

When they say, “cut and paste,”  they mean “cut and paste”.  My son and I were laughing at the staples that held on to the hand written section of script which was changed midstream in this movie.  To my son, it was pure humor, being so savvy with technology and with a mind that works faster than even his quick reflexes can keep up.  He is young enough to have known only the best of technology so the technique of literally cutting and pasting the script was entertaining.

To me, it was endearing.  It brought me back to my college days when extensive papers were a huge part of the ritual.  One of my majors was philosophy so writing was an every day occurrence.   I went through dozens of bottles of white out and sometimes, I would type out paragraph long corrections, glue them over my changes then Xerox them at the local library,  rather than retype a paper ten pages in length.  I got this script upgrade at The Smithsonian in a memory of times past that spoke volumes about simpler days.

I list this as one of my faves because of its nostalgia, its pulley that grabbed my experience in the now then jerked me back to a time when there were no word processors. The typewriter was all we had, that and our hands to write and revamp.

Most people know that the screenplay of The Wizard of Oz was written by many people.  It is a collage of many creative minds so it is no wonder that there would be cuts and pastes and staples over corrections left and right and backwards.  Still, to see the original, aged rendition of such a monumental classic and to see the literal cut and past was more than interesting.  The Wizard of Oz is everyone’s history, not just America’s.  Accompanying it inside of the Smithsonian were the scarecrow’s shoes and his hat.  (I realized that Ray Bolger was a relatively small built man. ) There were, of course Dorothy’s shoes, but not just any pair of ruby slippers.  There were six pairs of ruby slippers used in The Wizard of Oz.  This pair was exceptional, they were worn out on the bottom because they were the ones that Judy Garland used to rehearse and perfect her dance on the yellow brick road, and they also happened to be the vary pair that they filmed her dance that very dance on that very road.

It is always the best of the best; The Smithsonian.

The Wright Brothers – A Smithsonian Venture (part 3)

I’m not quite sure what stood out so much about this exhibit on Kitty Hawk.  I never would have expected it to be so magnetic.  In the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian, I think we spent most of our time in the Wright Brother’s room.

Family Counts

It wasn’t so much their accomplishment, as it was their history.  The hypnotic  elements about the Wright Brothers were about their family; the environment they grew up in.  Their parents held the highest values, raised on an appreciation for education and humanity as a whole.  I was taken in by the quality of their family, certain that this is the reason for their success.

“If I were giving a young man advice as to how he might succeed in life, I would say to him, pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio.”
–Wilbur Wright, 1910

The first stop on the exhibit is an immediate family history. The emphasis is the strong core values that were instilled in the children.  You walked away from the model of their home with the feeling that some people were meant to be parents.  Milton and Susan Wright were those people.  They taught their children that the world is an “unscrupulous place”. They were taught that it was the foundation of family that will make or break survival in a world such as this.  His parents were intellects, educated, well read with a high regard for education.  His mother was capable with tools, made toys for her children and was very mechanical minded.  Both parents were on the same page when it came to how they raise their children, their core values, and their passion for learning.

Best spoken by Orville:

“We were lucky enough to grow up in an environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interests; to investigate whatever aroused curiosity. In a different kind of environment, our curiosity might have been nipped long before it could have borne fruit.”
– Orville Wright

Ambition

It is said that their supportive home life gave the Wright Brothers a strong belief in themselves. They rejected aeronautical theories from more experienced scientists and continued on to their own ends to success in flight.  They were convinced that it was their strong bonds with their family ties that helped them to keep going even when they were having difficulty.

At one point the brothers said, “Man will not fly for a thousand years.” Frustrated, they kept trying.  The quotes was so heartfelt and so “human” I bought a hat that dons it.

Wilbur was highly intelligent, an avid ready, talented writer, and a devoted son to both of his parents.

Orville was with the most passion for science.  He was always doing experiments, taking thing apart, and inventing what he could with whatever means he had.

The younger sister, Katheryn was only 15 when her mother died of tuberculosis.  She took on the “female” duties of the home while attending college.  She eventually became a teacher while continuing to be in charge of the domestic chores in the home.

“No family ever had a happier childhood than ours. I was always in a hurry to get home after I had been away half a day.”
–Katharine Wright

I also found it interesting that despite the close ties within this family the oldest child estranged himself and never made amends. How odd.

Passion

It was the bicycle manufacturing business that they were in, which summoned their success in flight. The exhibit stressed the influence of the innovations of the bicycle as their foundation for the flight.  This thriving business is also what funded their success. I guess you could say that the opportune time in our history for flight was handed to Orville and Wilbur on the silver platter of the bicycle craze that was sweeping America. Indeed, the contraption that took so much attention at Kitty Hawk was much like a flying bicycle.

I looked in every nook and cranny in the space and aeronautical museum to find the first plane that sustained flight at Kitty Hawk.  To no avail did I find it.  I didn’t know much about it, only old time movies I had seen.  Then when I had given up completely,  I stepped inside of the room devoted to not only Orville and Wilbur, but their entire family and the historical respect that they have earned.

There is was, massive.  It was the reverent elephant in the room, center stage, all other exhibits surrounding it, 360 degrees of history that has led to the planting of man on the moon.  The original flyer that they kept in the air at Kitty Hawk was proud and eternal.  It won an honored spot in the Smithsonian. As a matter of fact, they built a room around it.

I was humbled, almost to my knees with an awe inspired wonder.  Nothing else was in the moment but the first “airplane” boldly bragging in front of us all.

What is it Like Being Human – A Smithsonian Venture (part 2)

“So what did you think of the Hall of Man exhibit at the Smithsonian?” I asked my husband.

“It was remarkable,” he said.

From there, we began a week long conversation on evolution, and still going.

The bigger picture of the Evolutionary Hall in the Smithsonian is best conveyed by the words of the museum’s curator, Rick Potts.

“We are the last remaining species of a once-diverse family tree.”

I felt like it was emotional.  The hours we spent in this exhibit were the hours that I spent feeling the rope of my DNA lasso the past, on into 6 million years.  I walked out knowing the very core of my roots and my intricate connection to the landscape of Earth.  I am, we all are, a manifestation of a long, eternal tale of cause and effect.

Just as we entered the hall, after murals of time travel to the distant past of our ancestors, we were greeted by a sample of Earth’s life and the degree of our similarity by a measure of our DNA.  From there, it just got better as the exhibit narrowed in on our most recent ancestors.  

I turned to see a young boy approach the welcoming wall with a sense of amazement in his eyes.  He declared, “Hey, Mom!  Look at this!”  I turned just enough to see out of the corner of my eye.  His mother pulled on his arm as he resisted then said, “We aren’t going to come in here, let’s go.”    

I suppose there is a major conflict of belief systems inside of these walls, conflict like no other.  

“There’s no Adam and Eve here,” curator Rick Potts says flatly. If you believe that the world — and man — was created in seven days, and that it’s only thousands of years old, you might have a little problem with an exhibition that talks about a process of 6 million to 8 million years. Not to mention with the wall panel stating that we’re not just related to apes, but to the banana tree, too.

Discovery:

The anthropological find of Lucy (a named coined by the music they were singing and dancing to upon her discovery; Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds) was something I visualized along the line of Neanderthal, except maybe a few insignificant steps back.  I had no idea that Lucy was so small and so….ape like.  My first thought when I laid eyes on her was a satirical question, “That’s the ‘missing link’?”  That’s a long way from “in between”.  I pondered less than three seconds before I drew the forgone conclusion:  ”That’s an ape.”

More upright than other primates, Lucy’s claim is the missing link between modern humans and our most primitive ancestors.

The skulls on the wall:

The wall of skulls shows a visual of our roots over millions of years. This is just one part of the skull wall exhibit.

The revelation of the skulls on the wall divulged the secret of the unspoken obvious.  The genes of Homo Sapiens in the North are a homogenized blend. Even without walking through the Smithsonian as a modern equivalent of a visual library of Alexandria, I questioned this suspicion time and again.  I questioned it many times over the past decade. The Smithsonian’s hall of man gave me the answer to the question I’ve been asking:  ”Aren’t we more than the product of just one missing link?”  I mean we are all so diversified.

The humans of the north have physical characteristics not shared by the earth’s deep south. No adaptation to any environment would yield the difference between us through evolution in a few hundred thousand years.  Genetic intermixing would explain it.  I always believed that. In other words, some of the physical characteristic differences we see between the inhabitants of different continents from Europe to Africa to Asia are more than just a response to the different environment.  Some are the cross breeding of previous species of humanoids that have come before us.  Uncle Neandrathal played hanky-panky with other humanoids outside of his specie.  Because of that, his genetic material lives on and into Homo Sapiens today.

The old school of thought that says Neanderthal became extinct needs revamping.

There is now a commercial invitation to offer DNA studies to anyone who wants to analyze how much Neanderthal is in them.  Just swab your cheeks and send it in.  They will send you back the results.  However, if you send in your cheek swabs from southern Africa and round about, you will find no Neanderthal in your results so you might as well not bother.

At one time, only two and a half million years ago, there were five different humanoids coexisting at the same time.  There were two groups of Australopithecus, Aethiopicus paranthropus, Homo Rudolfensis,  and Homo Hibilis.

Today there is only one; homo sapien.

Wow.

But don’t our numbers make up for that? Indeed.

DNA testing has revealed that  northern inhabitants of our planet hold a percentage of genes from Neanderthal.  Those inhabitants of the south, deep in the hemispheres of Africa are more “purebred”, if you will.  They carry no genes of Neanderthal.  The reason speculated is that their degree of geological separation made it nearly impossible to intermix with the Neanderthal.  In the north, where Neanderthal roamed, intermixing of the species was a part of our natural history.  Perhaps, put simply, Neanderthal did not die out at all.  He just kept walking in the vessels we carry for genes; our bodies.

Neanderthal became “extinct” about 28,000 years ago. That’s not even a blink of an eye in geological time. Some of us carry his genes if we are of European descent, so is that really “extinct”?

Modern DNA research has proven Homo Erectus to be a “purebreed” by his own right.

Darwin was right and Other Little Tidbits of Smithsonian Learning….

We are so closely related to chimpanzees and bonobos, we are classified as a member of the Great Apes.

Modern DNA study shows that Homo Sapiens and chimpanzees split from a common ancestor species between 8 and 6 million years ago.

The last common ancestor of monkeys and apes lived about 25 million years ago.

We are within 1.2 percent of a perfect genetic match to chimpanzees.

Homosapians are a diverse specie that evolved from more than 20 humanoids in its ancient ancestry.  (This fact astounds me.)

Another epiphany  I learned from the Smithsonian presentations of man is how crucial our social constructs are.  My father was always right.  We are social beings.  Our very sanity is contingent on the degree of acceptance we feel with others.

Cro Magnon was an aggressive specie that still lives within us today. He was a most successful survivor.

Entering this exhibit is like coming to terms with who we really are and we walk away with the distinct feeling that we are not better and no worse than other life forms on the planet.  We are just another manifestation of nature’s will to survive through DNA reign and its sovereign power.

The Geology Hall – A Smithsonian Venture (part 1)

I  love it when you have something on your bucket list and when you go to strike it off, then think to yourself, “That was even better than I thought.”

From Abraham Lincoln’s hat that he wore to Ford’s Theater, to the Hope Diamond, The Smithsonian is described by some as  ”the nation’s attic”.

How do you blog on The Smithsonian?  There’s too much to say while it took centuries (no, billions of years) to unfold.   If I wrote for the rest of my life and did nothing more, I could never do the Smithsonian justice.  If I took a thousand pictures and displayed them to the world, every day, the experience would be short changed.  Even where to get started is a dilemma.

So I’ll start with my passion.  I’ll start with the obvious, where all things begin; in outer space. I’ll start with the hall where geology is bragged upon. Oh yes.

The Geology Hall on the second floor of the Natural History Museum.   Yes.

Walking through the bounty of natural rock art that our Earth offers  was profound and heart stopping.  There were a few times when I had to stop just to gasp and tear up and hold on to the vision for one second longer before moving on to another “rock”.  I never thought that I could ever see something more profound than what our local university offers on display  in my home town. The Smithsonian proved that I was wrong, dead wrong. I was wrong two hundred fold.  Most likely we will never again see such a high concentration of beauty and awe inspiring geology again, ever.

Quartz, one of the most abundant minerals, can give us some shocking beauty when it is married to minerals such as albite.

It’s not only that the specimens were drop dead gorgeous, abundant and charged with light, this particular part of the Smithsonian was ordered and magnetic. It was ordered in a way that allowed you to  feel like you were pushed along in a time machine that created our very DNA.  I left feeling humbled, yet filled with grandeur knowing how much a part of everything we are.  The Native Americans got it right when they said we are a part of the rocks and the mountains.  Carl Sagan was precise in his claim that we are “star stuff”.  Oh, yes we are.

The asteroids that carry the earliest foundations of life’s potential were everywhere.  I left with more questions than I had when I walked in, and that is the anatomy of discovery.  The Smithsonian handed us the evidence and theory that  our origins are extraterrestrial.   I would have given all I have ever owned or achieved to know exactly how much.  The passion of knowledge makes you thirsty like that.

The exhibit greets us with a three and a half billion year old rock that is streaked in iron oxide.  We come to learn that it is the earliest evidence of oxygen on our planet.  Imagine.  Take a breath.  If you give it enough seconds in contemplation, you realize that in this specimen, you are looking at the creation of life, the same thing that is moving through your blood and lungs and back into the atmosphere again as you give up your breath to carbon dioxide.

This picture was shot with my micro.  It shows the iron oxide found in this rock that is nearly as old as the planet. Not all rocks go through the “rock cycle”. This one has been in this state for well over three billion years.

At the Smithsonian, you may be facing the origins of life as you look  upon the Australian meteorites which carry to Earth, the building blocks of life; carbon based compounds including sugars and  amino acids. The debate now is whether or not it carried enough.

Combine this with the asteroids that hone in on our world through its seemingly willful gravitational pull, and you have the hand of God.  At the Smithsonian Natural History Mineral exhibit, you come to feel that you are witness to that very hand of God.

I was taken by all of it.  The scientific ramifications of the meteorites, the fossilized bacteria that dated back three and a half billion years, the evidence of oxygen in the rocks that were at least as old, and the fossilized life in microbes that was discovered on rocks that they believe came from Mars.  All of it.

Grandiose words of oneness were written in the Martian stone there to touched by our human flesh.  I couldn’t believe they allowed it.

This is a rock from the Martian surface. Touching it can’t be described.

Trying to picture Mars with more abundant water in its atmosphere was easy, as I traveled the solar system in these displays.  I live on and love Earth, and want desperately to believe that our neighbor was once as spectacular and filled with the versatility and beauty of our own world.  What was difficult was to imagine that our planet may be just as barren one day.  I wondered, if only for a second, not whether or not man was going to contribute to its demise, but rather, how much.

Onward past the hand of God in the creation through science.  We delved into evidence of life itself with stories to tell, seemingly tall tales but really, there can be no such thing as exaggeration when it comes to the messages within Earth’s rocks.

We went on to discover the makings of our romantic moon and the slap stick evidence of its birth.

There is a wisp of space debris that lies captured in glass bottles under the eye of a microscope by our command.  This debris seemed to be Earth’s arms outstretched in a plea for a taste of its galactic home by our world’s persistent longing to embrace its maker.

Minerals Mined and Exploited

One thing I found extraordinary was the sociology of this exhibit.  In this, the visitors became part of the museum.  The reflection of our culture and its passion for jewels and wealth anxiously left the natural beauty of the earth behind and gathered in crowds to worship idols of gems  into the room that stretched out from the Earth’s natural state.   As the mineral exhibit turned to gems, the crowd grew thick and reached its climax at the exhibit which housed the Hope Diamond.  So packed with lusting onlookers, we would have to push aside several layers of people to even get a glimpse.

To my husband and I,  the minerals in their natural state were far and away more lovely. I left the gems to the women in make up and fashion, and their husbands who made promises to one day endow their wives with pleasures of gems.  I skipped the gem hall completely and marveled, instead at the raw diamonds projecting out of their rock beds, the opal intermeshed within layers of more kaleidoscope colors anew with brilliant calicoes shimmering in even the dimmest lighting.  I burned to touch the virgin turquoise, the marred sapphires still embraced in the arms of their parent stone.  To me, that is beauty; the natural essence of  gems unscathed, untouched and raw.

We took photographs of everything we could but not enough.  Half way through, my camera became hot to the touch.  There was just not enough memory to store it all in my memory card, not enough time in the day to capture it all, not enough light in the world to embrace it all.

When I left, I knew I’d seen Eden, lived it, and became a part of it.  Here is just a small piece of Earth that moved me to tears.

Thank-you, Smithsonian Institute for the ride.

Now manufacturers capitalize on man made opals in order to gain more fire at a lesser price, no amount of manufacturing can give the authentic beauty of genuine opal created by perfect conditions of silica.

Microcline is an igneous rock, cooled more slowly to form the crystaline effect. I dare say this may be the most unique volcanic rock I have ever endeared.

Quartz in all of its magnificence. These museum pieces make a statement that Earth is the most skilled and gifted interior designer.

This is one of a countless number of dense meteorites in the geology hall at The Smithsonian. Can we just think of them as mini moons?

Amethyst, a rather purple variety of quartz is often found in geodes. Ancient Egypt appreciated this splendor. No generation, age or portion of the world can resist the seduction of this beautiful flaunt of Earth at its finest.

Fluorite has earned its dubbed name, “The most colorful mineral in the world.” Even under fluorescence this mineral will give a color display that is beyond mystical or fantasy.

Easter’s Gift

I rather think of Easter as a new beginning.  Just as surely as the spring brings in the extended sunshine, this holiday is a reminder of the continuity of life, the love of each breath of air we take, and the strength to hold on to all of the manifestations of that love.

Easter is a rebirth in more than a literal sense.  It is the promise that in all of the loves lost, there will be loves new.  In all of the sadness we have suffered, there is happiness on the horizon.  In all of the betrayals given, there are new faiths to keep.  In all of the cold hearts, there are warm glows to melt the ice.

In the deepest thoughts of the mind’s eye, Easter’s spring is the affirmation that who and what we are is valuable and true.  In our core, we are what is good and valued.   We are awakened to a new day of promise, trust, appreciation, and fulfillment of dreams, never again put on the wayside.

Spring is the light that enables hope.

Have a “feel good” day today, and appreciate every breath you take because everyone is a miracle, and every day is a gift.

Las Vegas Luxor Presents The Titanic

The Genius of James Cameron

I remember talking to her on my way to work.  I love mornings like that, especially in the spring.  The sun shines more warmly during those times, of course.  But a morning rich in conversation with a wonderful person who has a Ph.D. in classic literature is enough to keep your mind going for the rest of the day.  My sister-in-law is inspirational.  That particular morning we were talking about the Civil War and John Jake’s historical fiction, North and South.  We were comparing it to the over-rated classic,  Gone With the Wind.  Gone With the Wind came up short in comparison.  I hailed that.  Then when we got on the topic of Hollywood’s rendition of each, she was emphatic in her claim.  Neither one is realistic to true historical accounts.  As a matter of fact, anything surging from Hollywood is going to be warped.  All this time, I was convinced that the Civil War was depicted realistically through John Jakes.   However, I had enough respect and faith in my sister-in-law’s intellect to give her opinion its due. She also had enough savvy with her “professor” skills to convince me anyway.

The Titanic Exhibit at The Luxor in Las Vegas

The first time I doubted her was when I walked through the Titanic Exhibition in Las Vegas, Nevada this last weekend.  I walked out of the exhibit with the same feeling captured by James Cameron in the movie, Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

We live in a serious and inequitable class system.

Crossing over is moving into foreign territory.  The movie left me in the same state of mind as the exhibit. Being born does not give us equal rights. Not only are the “frivolous rich” gluttonous and arrogant, they are willing to sacrifice their soul to prove it.

Maiden Voyage doomed for failure. Another tragedy behind Titanic is the arrogance and gluttony that lives and breathes in upper class entitlement while hollowing out the rights of poor.

We drove 6 hours just to see it.  I don’t gamble, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I’m a prude by design.  So, the last city in the world where I want to plant myself is the Sin City of the American West, Las Vegas.  We still went.  All I wanted to do was see this exhibition at the Luxor.  The cost of $35.00 was too little.  This was a “museum” of time, the foreign frontier of ocean peril, a museum of tragedy, the American dream, and it is a museum, especially, of social class system in the industrialized world.  It is also a museum of moods.  In about the same amount of time that it took the Titanic to sink, we moved through this visual history, relishing every second and coming out in true mourning for inequality and for the lives of everyone who were victim of this mishap.

The Passengers

By the time we left, we were introduced to the passengers as individuals.  I felt like a petty thief, delving into their private things, their letters, their jewelry.  When you are given a glimpse of someone’s belongings, there is something about that invasion that jerks the conscience.  It’s private, it’s personal.  They become a part of you.  Maybe because I grew up in poverty, maybe it is because I believe that having children is the greatest deed we can give this world, maybe it is from a sense of compassion for the underdog, but I felt a particular compassion for the third class travelers.

What All of Us Don’t Want to Admit

Yes, there were more first class survivors and far less first class who perished.  Yes, there was a long list of third class victims and a much shorter list of survivors in third class.  No matter how history treats the statistics, no matter how much of the frenzy and manipulation of the system that the White Star Lines practiced, there is no way around the fact that the first class travelers had a higher proportion of survival.  The third class was led back to bed with the assurance that nothing was wrong while the rich were preparing to abandon ship.  Just as Cameron revealed, the passages to the upper deck where the life rafts were filled, were literally gated off to the third class travelers. Where is the absolution in that?

For a detailed account of the survivors aboard Titanic in raw numbers, see the following web address:  http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/titanic.html

The Details of Luxury or Not

Titanic's Grand Staircase passage for First Class Travelers

The grand staircase, the open spaces, the royal treatment, and rooms as lavish as the finest hotels were offered to first class travelers.

First class accommodations aboard The Titanic

Third class hallway aboard The Titanic. This is a far cry from the Grand Staircase. Note the gated hallway, a death sentence for some.

Bunk beds with thin blankets and military design, with as many as ten people sleeping in small quarters were offered in third class.  Their quarters were down near the boiler room where the hum of the ship’s heartbeat kept its steady noise.  The first class stood on thrones in the higher levels of the ship.

Third class accommodations aboard The Titanic

The third class patrons had toilets made of metal, second class, porcelain, and first class had toilets made of marble.   The different classes were separated from one another.  Third class was not allowed to mingle with the upper classes, and though first class could go anywhere in the ship, they never visited the decks below.

James Cameron portrayed this mood of our tiered class system as he interwove the injustices in the story of The Titanic.  I knew he did an excellent job portraying this, but until I saw the exhibit, I never realized how close and exact he came to real history.

The Cost of Fate

In first class, a ticket on the doomed Titanic to sail across the Atlantic was  $57,000.00 in today’s dollars.  There were two first class placements that topped over $100,000.00 .   Wow.  The third class ticket was equivalent to $900.00 in today’s dollar.  This is the price of a ticket to board a plane to cross the ocean.  Do we all live in a “lower class” system by comparison?

Yesterday and Now.  We’re Losing Ground.

I was left thinking, as I saw the list of higher class citizens and their careers, that even many professionals today would not be able to afford even a second class ticket which cost around $6,000.00.  There was a teacher aboard the Titanic who traveled second class, a boat architect who traveled first class, businessmen, etc.  Only the most high ranked businessman today can afford a ticket to travel upwards of fifty grand.  In no way can a teacher afford a $6,000.00 ticket to attend a sibling’s wedding.

One thing that stood out in all of this was how much lower today’s citizens in industrialized countries fall on the class scale of world economy compared to the rich who traveled in the days of the Titanic.

From a sociological perspective, this exhibit was an eye opener.

This is the dinner plate that was used in third class. The "White Star" symbol does not name "Titanic" because they wanted to use the same dinnerware interchangeable on all ships. Below, find first class dinnerware.

 

Interesting historical trivia:

Third class had two baths for 700 passengers.  In today’s perspective, that would be far too little.  However, in a time when people bathed once weekly, it was ample.

The bristles on shaving cream brushes were often suspect of carrying anthrax.

The “large” dinner plates were much smaller back in the day than they are today.

The ship was fastened together with three million rivets.

The Big Piece, on display at this museum was so huge and heavy, they had to fill bags with diesel fuel to help it rise to the top of the ocean.

The Titanic, today is under 6,000 lbs of pressure per square inch where it lies on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. There will be an ocean excavation to retrieve it because with every decade, we lose more of the relics through the corrosive elements of the sea.

Quality of the Exhibit

The exhibit was arranged in a genius order.  We were first introduced to the propaganda of what White Star Lines has to offer its passengers, the 4 year construction that went into the “unsinkable” ship, man hours and the many hands that worked tirelessly on its construction.  From the very idea in a mind’s eye of the colossal ship to the falling, the ghosts never left our side as we went through the rooms.  It was haunting and it was real, while I doubt that any guest who went through this exhibit escaped the fate of that low, dull sinking feeling of the monumental tragedy that the industrialized world suffered in this part of history.

When we got to the iceberg, there was a quiet mourning that followed the visitors to the room.  Intentionally kept cold to give a feel for the fate of the passengers and crew, the room was decorated with a man made iceberg, real and cold to the touch. Tourist hand prints embedded in the ice told the story of the desperation of the people who perished.  There, stood what was left of the ship’s steering. It was broken and seemingly insignificant.

What James Cameron did not know, because it was not discovered until after the movie, was how much human error was a part of this saga.  In fact, the ship was steered right into the ice berg by panic and human short coming, before it was steered away.  One wonders how many lives were taken because of a panic oversight on the part of one mortal man.  The reason why this was not depicted in the movie has nothing to do with error.  It was a deliberate cover-up that White Star shushed for an entire century.

Making it More Real

This April 15th marks the hundredth anniversary of the falling of The Titanic.   Like soldiers that fall in battle there is a list of every passenger and crew member on the wall at the exhibit’s end.  Before we enter, we are given an assignment; we are to represent a person assigned to us as we are haunted with this cold and sociological reality, making our way through.  At the end, we were to see if our “character” survived.

I represented Mrs. Stephen Hold (Annie Margaret Hill was my maiden name). I was 36 years old from Cornwall, England.  I boarded The Titanic in the company of my husband, Stephen Hold.  We are on our way to Sacramento California. My husband and I hurried to England in November 1911, because of an illness in the family.  After several months of visiting, we were returning to California.  We had originally booked passage on another ship.  However, because of the coal strike, we were reassigned to the Titanic.

I survived.  My husband went down with the ship.

Stunned and in Mourning, Even Still

This exhibit is worth seeing.  I traveled 6 hours to see it and I would have traveled twice that.  Far more than just a few relics on display in glass, there is a mood of  ”life” and the encroach of death that follows you through.  You feel the arrogance of some, and the poverty of others.  You feel the haunting ghosts of personal things and items that sit untouched behind glass cages in their own graveyard of reminders.  You are taken back in time to a place where life was mechanical, not technological.  You are taken into the personal lives of real people, in a day when a ship was a God of the highest order, invincible, yet too vain to realize its shortcomings.

The Impact was More than the Iceberg

The impact of the Titanic involved  more than the iceberg.  It was more than ghosts and a piece of history eaten away on the Atlantic floor. It was more than a memory or a list of artifacts.  It was the sinking of this ship and the great loss of lives that revamped so many maritime laws.  Titanic carried 2,227 passengers and crew. Only a handful over 700 survived.

Shortly before midnight on April 14^th, the ship struck an iceberg, this gouged open six of its sixteen watertight compartments.  The sea rushed into its belly. The Titanic sank in just under two hours.  Over 1500 of her passengers and crew were sacrificed to the water. At the time it was heralded as the worst disaster at sea in history, and many today still regard it as such.

As soon as the Carpathia docked, Senator William Alden Smith of Michigan (a sort of “olden days” Ralph Nader who was in charge of the safety of the railroads) went into action interviewing witnesses for months.  It was clearly established that the modern times of White Star travel had laws that were far outdated.  A wireless telegraph was assigned to all ships, an invention first presented by Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian physicist. Direct communication was ordered between the bridge and the wireless room; one of the missing safety factors in the Titanic disaster.  Radio operators now had to be licensed. They had to adhere to certain bandwidths and a large part of the radio spectrum was put aside for official, important business for the Navy. A permanent ice patrol was ordered in the area, assigned to the Coast Guard.  A larger number of life boats were ordered to ships.  These boats are to have propulsion engines.  There was also a requirement to have life boat drills for crew members. New ship building regulations were set in place. A police system was put in place on all ships to keep order in case of emergencies.

The public outcry was “Never Again!”  To this day, there has never been a disaster that is in the same league as The Titanic.

At 2:20 A.M. on the morning of April 15th, 2012, if the reader is up at this God-forsaken hour, or working a late night shift, or awakened from a dream of disturbing elements full of uneasiness,  perhaps we can give a moment of silence to those who went down, and remember.

Where is Michael Landon When you Need Him?

Little House on the Prairie.

I think I’ve seen every episode.

I used to watch it with my children while knowing in the deepest depths of who I am that my kids were in good hands with Michael Landon.  The media influences they were given in their formative years were good people who live to make a difference in the lives of others.  Examples are the lyrics of John Denver, the productions of Michael Landon, and the writings of children’s books with themes such as The Giving Tree and Rainbow Fish.  I tried to keep them away from the more modern negativity such as video games that were the antithesis of Little House on the Prairie and all of the blood splats of Hollywood. Eventually they come into their own and,  with a conscience in tact, they picked up life on their own where the mentors that were chosen left off.

My children did well.  I am happy to say that they have a conscience, know that feelings are part of all of us, and that we all have the privilege of service while making a difference in the lives of others. They don’t gossip and accuse or judge, they have no passive aggression, and they have mindfulness always at the forefront in their dealings with others. I owe these qualities to some of the works of Michael Landon.

Michael Landon is an icon of good media values during a time when we were losing our social mores. I am grateful that he was there for my children during their impressionable years.

This week, one episode keeps coming to mind because of events that have been happening in the life of one of my friends.  I don’t recall the exact story in this episode, but I remember that it had to do with fine china.   In this episode, Caroline Ingalls reminded her daughter, Laura, that family consists of the most important people in our lives.  When Laura asked her mom if she was going to save the fine china she received for guests, her mother’s answer was, “No.”  Because, you see, the best things go to family because they are the most important people in our lives.

Family deserves preferential treatment.

That scene has stood by me for years. Even when I heard it, I echoed, “Yes!” Then I made a comment to my children about the value of her statement.

Being mindful of our loved ones is not a common habit of human nature.

In another episode called, “If I Should Die Before I Wake”, Laura makes the statement that it is not fair for loved ones to ignore a birthday and always show up for a funeral.

It is our loved ones who hold the most power over us, so it is our loved ones who can hurt us the hardest.  For some, it is our loved ones that we tolerate the most, and for others, it is our loved ones we tolerate the least.   In a two hour dinner at a upscaled Italian Restaurant, we discussed our friends’ dilemma with them and came to terms with reasons why people feel the need to hurt others, particularly family.  In the end, we found no solutions for this imbalance.  The only  thought we could hold on to is, “Where is Michael Landon when you need him?”

We did come up with some simple thoughts organized as to why others hurt people; thoughts that little Laura Ingalls would never understand.

People hurt others for a reason.

1- Sometimes it’s just for pleasure. There are people in this world who get a sort of euphoria when they hurt others.  These people initiate suffering because it is pleasurable to them to watch others hurt.

2- Some people are manipulated into hurting others.  Whether it is by a church, a friend, or another family member, there are intrinsic dictators who believe that they own people.  In their shadow are the puppets who never question, never think for themselves, and follow blindly into the massacre of others.

3- Some people don’t know that they are hurting others.  These people can be misunderstood and carry on with their attitude obliviously without regard.

4- Some people hurt others out of an act of vengeance.  According to professionals, this is the most common reason for hurting someone else,  even if it is family.

5- Some people “allow” others to hurt them.   We are sometimes responsible for how other people treat us.  When we tolerate too much, we are giving the signal that they can get away with anything.  Learning NOT to be nice all of the time will set you apart from those who will be the sponge for the “angries” in life’s perceived dramas.  We bear the blows of people who mean a lot to us until they step one step too far and burn the bridge between us.  Sometimes the culprit might not even know that they burned a bridge.

Do you have to be a special kind of person not to abuse people who treat you well?  I hope not.  Treating the meek with respect isn’t always easy for a member of a specie who has been around for millions of years, trying to survive with “selfish genes”.   The concept of the “selfish gene” was introduced by Dawkins in a book of the same name.  He asserts that we are puppets to our DNA which uses us as a vessel for its own survival.  The selfish gene explains everything from homicide  to taking the last chocolate in the box.

Every one of us has been hurt by and hurt others.  We cannot escape life without these experiences.  Whether the hurting happened because someone thought it would be a thrill, because we or they were manipulated into it, because of vengeance, unknowingly,  or because we were not strong enough to stand up against it for ourselves or for someone else, it is still something that is a part of life. Not many of us, if any,  have found a solution.