Category: News

Elon, Larry, Mike and More

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Starman_SpaceXIt’s been a very long time since I have felt the rush of excitement that I used to get whenever a new space mission was televised. I grew up in an era of rocketry firsts that literally took my breath away when they were happening. I saw Alan Shepard become the first American to go into space. I watched John Glenn make history with his orbits around the earth. I was tuned in when Neil Armstrong uttered his famous words as he stepped onto the surface of the moon and worried with the rest of world when the crew of Apollo 13 announced to Houston that they had a problem. I marveled at the Space Shuttle and the very idea that there might be a vehicle that could return from a journey to be used again and again. I was watching in horror when the Challenger blew up just after launching. I enjoyed the advances that allowed astronauts to make repairs and live for weeks in a space station. I believed that the most wonderful qualities of humans were encapsulated in the space program and as it all seemed to fade away I felt a sadness that was difficult to explain. Then seemingly from out of nowhere came a most remarkable feat that has reawakened my belief that one day in the future we will be able to journey across the universe.

The launch of Falcon Heavy by SpaceX last week was so stunning that I literally found myself crying tears of sheer joy and excitement. Everything about the event was spectacular from the music by David Bowie that accompanied the liftoff to the glorious humor that sent a cherry red Tesla into orbit with its Starman passenger gleefully hitching a ride. Perhaps even more stunning, however, was watching the booster rockets return to earth and land precisely on target to be used again, a triumph that at one time seemed impossible. Elon Musk, the innovator and maestro of the flight is surely a pure genius, who like Da Vinci and Einstein before him has an ability to see the world in ways that move all of mankind forward in our quest for knowledge. He is one of those people who does the impossible. He has managed to make America and humanity great again in ways that no politician has enjoyed.

Progress has always depended on those who are unafraid to gaze into the future. They are the dreamers and risk takers among us. Sometimes we scratch our heads as they announce their ideas, thinking them foolish or worse. We can’t always comprehend the seeming silliness of their notions, but they believe nonetheless and are compelled to move forward in spite of the negativity that often surrounds them.

I have a friend named Larry who long ago announced that he wanted to start a business selling t-shirts with messages and illustrations on them. This was at least fifty years ago at a time when shirts of all sorts were generally plain and of all one color save for stripes or plaids. The very concept of clothing with more personality seemed strange to those of us with whom he shared his proposal. He wanted to set up a kiosk inside a mall to sell his wares. He had heard of a machine that would place a decal on a shirt using heat. He imagined people flocking to personalize their clothing, We instead insisted that he would be wasting his money and his talents to pursue such a bizarre notion. How were we to know that he was indeed on to something very, very big? He was a seer of sorts, while we were too tethered to thoughts of how things had always been to be willing to accept his out of the box thinking.

On another occasion when we visited Larry he proudly showed us a huge box near his television. He explained that the machine would record any program that he wished to keep for the future. We were polite as he explained how it worked and what its uses might be. Inside our heads, however, we felt that his had been a ridiculous purchase. After all,  we wondered, who would ever want to make a recording of a show? Once you watched it why would you want to see it again? We simply did not have the vision that Larry had. Our ability to see ahead was far too limited. Unlike Larry we were not willing to think of the world as it might be.

My brother Mike was very much like Elon Musk and Larry from the time that he was only three or four years old. He walked around with a book written by Werner von Braun that told a tale of man one day  going to the moon. He tucked it under his tiny arm like a treasured toy and gazed at the illustrations of rockets and living quarters in space vehicles as though he was enjoying the characters of a little Golden Book. He told everyone who would listen that one day a man would go to the moon and that he was going to be a mathematician so that he might help to design systems for building the craft. Adults laughed good-naturedly at his assertions, but he was totally serious, and he built his life around those goals. He created a marble computer when he was in high school that won him the Grand Prize at the Houston Science and Engineering Fair. He went to Rice University and studied mathematics and Electrical Engineering. In time he went to work for Boeing Aerospace in conjunction with NASA and eventually authored the computer program for the navigation system of the International Space Station. He too was someone who was always able to envision a future that was far more exciting and complex than most of us are capable of realizing and he sustained the confidence to follow his journey.

Now I have a grandson named Jack who is imagining the possibilities of one day being part of the SpaceX team designing software. A granddaughter named Abigail is already recording ideas for making the care of animals more humane. Grandson William is writing stories about the future. The odyssey of the mind continues with amazing individuals who see a box of junk as a source of possibilities. These kinds of people turn problems into magical creations. They are the thinkers and dreamers who move us ever forward. They are the future and instead of chuckling at their imaginations we would do well to encourage them to propel us forward. 

It’s Ten O’Clock

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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“It’s ten o’clock. Do you know where your children are?” If you grew up or were a parent in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s you heard this question every night before the late newscast came on. It was a public service announcement that made sense then, but may be a bit confusing in today’s world. Back in those decades most children were what we now call “free range kids.” They played outside for hours at a time, often with little or no supervision other than a quick glance outside a window from a parent. They wandered away from home to visit with neighborhood friends, not always bothering to check in with parents before doing so. It wasn’t unusual at all for children to return outdoors after dinner to play in the dark under a street light or on someone’s front porch. It was a time of innocence when parents and kids both rarely worried about being harmed. Everyone knew everyone else and watched over one another. Perhaps the freedom that little ones enjoyed back then was fueled by naivety, but it was highly unusual for someone to be lost or harmed, there was little reason to worry.

The closest thing to a dangerous experience that I recall came when my youngest brother was playing a game of football in his bare feet in an overgrown field of grass. Hidden in the tall weeds was a broken bottle with its ragged edge pointing upward. When he stepped back to catch a pass he placed his unprotected foot on the shard of glass which immediately severed his achilles tendon. He bled profusely, but my mom and I miraculously got him to the doctor’s office in time to get it stitched back in place. I remember my mother instructing me in how to apply pressure to the wound to keep the bleeding to a minimum while she drove the car. I was quite frightened but didn’t let my mom see my fears. Of course at that time none of us were wearing a seatbelt and my mother did not carry health insurance either. The former was not yet invented and the latter was too expensive. The doctor did all of the surgery in his office proclaiming again and again that it was a miracle that my sibling didn’t bleed to death on the way over. I suspect that our final bill was little more than around twenty dollars and that even included pain medication that the doc threw in for good measure.

Needless to say times have changed so very much. Parents who allow their children to roam freely today run the risk of being reported to CPS. Few doctors would meet a patient at the office and take care of such a serious situation, especially if the family was uninsured. The world often feels far more dangerous than it ever did back then. Most of the time there are very few children playing outside for hours, and never all alone. They are busy with more carefully planned activities. Play dates have become the norm rather than random knocks at the door from friends seeking adventure. Children spend hours involved with computer games and surfing online. The real dangers lie in encounters with child predators masquerading in anonymity. Bullying either online or with texts has become epidemic. It’s no longer a matter of wondering where your kids are, but of whom they may be encountering on the worldwide web. The simplicity and innocence that marked my childhood and that of my own children seems to be a relic of the past. Parents have to be more careful than ever, even as they hover nervously.

I’m  not certain when everything began to change. Perhaps my experiences come from living in a city that had fewer than a million people when I was young and then somehow became a behemoth of over four million in a short period of time. Being in a place that large certainly makes a huge difference in how willing parents are to allow their children the freedom to interact without their watchful eyes. The dangers seem to grow exponentially in a major urban area. Still it just seems that over the years we have become more worried as a whole society. Maybe our twenty four hour news cycle has made us more aware of what might happen if we ride a bicycle without a helmet or drink from a water hose. I still wonder nonetheless why we no longer see children roller skating down the sidewalk or climbing the tree in the front yard even when their parents are around to guard them. Where are the street basketball games? When did our kids stop playing hop scotch on the driveway? Are they missing something wonderful, or is their world actually just an improved version of ours?

Children today certainly appear to be happy enough. I’ve always known youngsters to be quite adaptable. They tend to accept whatever reality is theirs. They don’t feel that they are missing something that they have never experienced. The child who lives in a high rise building in New York City learns to play in different ways from a counterpart growing up on a farm in Iowa. Both of them will tend to be perfectly happy as long as they are nurtured and loved. Perhaps the nostalgia that old folks like me have is thought to be quaint or even strange by the children of today. They would think it unwise, perhaps even crazy to ride down a highway in the bed of a pickup truck. They might easily bore of lying on their backs staring up at clouds searching for shapes of animals.

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if things are getting better or if we have lost something special that we once had. I suppose that the reality is that we will always move ever forward, and while it may feel pleasant to lose ourselves in memories we are better served by joining in the forward progress. We have surely learned a great deal about how to be healthier and safer than ever before. We understand what smoking will do to our overall health. We realize that wearing seat belts and engineering safer cars has truly saved lives. We have used our common sense and our inventiveness to prevent harm and injuries to our most vulnerable. I suppose that it is a very good thing that we no longer have to ask where are children are when the clock strikes ten. 

Bogey Men Under The Bed

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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Not long ago I awoke in the morning to find that we had left the garage door open all night long and forgotten to lock the door into the house as well. I flew into a state of panic considering what might have happened to us had we not been very lucky, and I began to think about my experiences as a child. Back then our windows were wide open all summer long, all night long. We didn’t own an air conditioner, so we relied on the breeze from our attic fan to keep us relatively cool. It never occurred to us to be frightened that someone might enter our home quite easily, but it would have required little effort to pop out the screen and climb right inside. In fact, we had done just that a few times when we didn’t want our mom to know that we had been out and about a bit too late. She no doubt wasn’t fooled by our antics, but we thought ourselves quite adventurous. At no time did we imagine that someone with criminal intent might one day use the same route as ours to invade our home. We always felt quite safe whether we should have or not, and nothing ever happened to change our beliefs.

During the day we kept the doors to our home ajar as well. Friends and neighbors came and went with little more than a quick knock and a shouted “hello” to warn us that they were incoming. It was as though we were just one great big happy family in our community with nary a thought of home invasions or such. Perhaps we were naive, or maybe it really was as secure as we assumed.

The funny thing is that my mother was quite relaxed inside our little haven, but she was quite guarded whenever we were traveling through the city, especially at night. She was distrustful of strangers and instructed us over and over again in the necessity of avoiding any kind of contact with people that we did not know. She freaked out royally when I once accepted a ride from a man that I only minimally new. She raised such a ruckus that I found myself almost running if a stranger even looked my way. I suppose that I was more afraid of her anger than I was of someone that I did not know. Luckily it was quite rare for unknown persons to come our way.

I watched our little world change over time. My brothers and I moved away from home and my mom purchased a new house in a different neighborhood where she never felt quite as relaxed as she had in the home where I had grown up. She put chains and extra bolts on the doors and screwed her windows permanently shut. She installed peepholes and kept her blinds and drapes tightly shut. There was little wonder for her caution for not only was she living alone, but  she had also been burglarized multiple times by then. Fortunately the robbers only came when she was not home, but her fears grew nonetheless, as did my own.

I was living in a very nice apartment project where I had many good friends when i learned that one of them had been raped upon returning from the laundry room one day. A man had followed her back into her place and threatened her with a knife. She silently submitted to his demands because she had a sleeping child in another room, and she feared what might happen if the baby awakened. I recall the horror that all of us felt along with the unadulterated fear. My husband often worked an evening shift during that time and I grew more and more uncomfortable living in that place. I was somewhat relieved when we finally moved, but my sense of complacency was forever gone. Never again would I be lax in protecting myself, even when I lived in a neighborhood where I knew everyone and felt quite secure.

As a society we have become very afraid, sadly often with good reason. Virtually everyone that I know has been the victim of some kind of crime, from the somewhat trivial to horrific incidents. One of my husband’s uncles was bound and gagged in his home while thieves ransacked his belongings. But for the grace of God they chose to keep him alive. The worst of the terrifying situations were the murders of two of my former students in unrelated incidents.

Our streets and our homes have seemingly become unsafe, and so we install cameras and alarm systems in addition to heavy metal doors and locks, even when we have few possessions that would be of much worth to home invaders. The idea of sleeping with the windows open is unimaginable.

I sometimes wonder if those who speak of “making America great again” are thinking less about issues of equality and more about a time when crimes against strangers were unusual rather than as frequent as they now appear to be. Given the ages of the supporters of the MAGA idea I suspect that they remember an era when everyone felt incredibly safe without walls or locks or loaded guns. Maybe they actually believe that given the right circumstances we might once again return to less fright filled lifestyles. My guess is that they long for the serenity that once felt so commonplace.

The saying goes that you can’t go home again. I suppose that we are long past the days of openness to the extent that we enjoyed fifty or sixty years ago. We have to adapt to the new ways, but we needn’t become overly afraid either. The fact is that in spite of rising crime rates and the need to exercise caution, we mostly enjoy our lives without incident. The reason that hearing of terrible events is so shocking is because they are still mostly rare. We don’t have to lock ourselves away as long as we have a bit of common sense, which includes checking doors and such before going to sleep. We don’t need to be so lax as to leave ourselves wide open for trouble like my husband and I accidentally did, but we don’t have to be constantly worrying either because given the odds most of us will blessedly never encounter trouble.

I’d truly enjoy having the same peace of mind that I experienced as a child, but in reality it came mostly because I was too innocent to even imagine that I would be touched by violence. Bad people were out there even back in the day, but I paid little attention to them chiefly because my mom sheltered me from such things. We had a neighbor who was murdered by her husband, and my sweet mother explained that the man had just been very sick and we did not need to worry. Our response was to avoid walking near the house where the crime had occurred, but otherwise having little concern that something similar might one day happen to any of us. Our innocence was in actuality not that far off of the mark, and we would be wise to carry on with our lives without overthinking our possibilities of being harmed.

Humans have worried about boogeymen under the bed for centuries. Sometimes they are real, but mostly we are just as safe as we have ever been as long as we take care not to place ourselves in harms way.

Charts and Graphs

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

AAEAAQAAAAAAAAfPAAAAJDBhNTVkMGFiLWI0MDUtNDQxOC1hMjBjLTg0MzA3ZTEwYTQ2YwDoes anyone else remember when Ross Perot ran for President of the United States? He was a funny looking little guy with big ears and a Texas drawl that wouldn’t quit. He was a third party candidate in the election that included George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Bush was defeated in his bid for a second term and many folks thought that Perot was the reason that he lost, noting that Perot took votes that the President may have received. Anyway, Perot was a much tougher guy than he appeared to be. He had amassed a fortune making him a billionaire, and when Iran took several Americans hostage, he was the guy who planned, financed and executed their escape. He became a kind of folk hero in spite of his somewhat wimpy appearance, and at some point his groupies encouraged him to run for the highest office in the land on two different occasions. In many ways he was the precursor of Donald Trump, but with  a more pleasing kind of “aw shucks” personality.

Perot was most notable for giving visual presentations of his views on the American economy. He used posters and a pointer to demonstrate the problems in our nation and the solutions that he advocated. While people poked fun at his methods, there was something about his way of explaining things that brought clarity to ideas that had previously been rather difficult to understand for the average person. He won over a number of followers because he laid out his ideas with his charts and graphs in a highly understandable folksy manner. He was a cross between a kooky professor and a cowboy, a strange fellow who had managed to outfox the bullies and the naysayers in real life.

I didn’t vote for Mr. Perot, but I still think about his visual aides and I often find myself wondering if we need someone with similar tendencies today to show us the truth about the various issues that we face in today’s supercharged atmosphere. There is a great deal of chatter about various topics, but very little effort to elucidate what various ideas and laws really mean. I have learned for example that there is real confusion over the so called Dreamers, immigrants who were brought here illegally by their parents when they were children. Many people feel little or no pity for their cause because they think that they should have done the work to become citizens before now, little realizing that it was not possible for them to become citizens because of their illegal status.

I sometimes imagine Mr. Perot with an easel and a set of posters outlining all of the truths about the Dreamers, one visual at a time. Of course his instructional moments would need to take no more than three minutes or so, because I have learned over time that few people have the ability to concentrate and comprehend for more than a couple of minutes before they begin to drift away into their own thoughts. Still I think that with a targeted series of demonstrations everyone would eventually understand all of the issues surrounding DACA and the Dreamers far better than they presently do.

Knowledge is power, but we are provided with so little of it these days. Instead most of our leaders leave us with soundbites, tweets, rants and memes that keep us in a state of ignorance. Mr. Perot on the other hand actually wanted us to know the facts, and while I didn’t exactly agree with his points of view or solutions for problems, I liked his style. Perhaps because I am a visual, linear learner I appreciate the clarity provided by seeing a sequence of visual explanations for things. They don’t have to actually be old school posters on easels. A nice Power Point presentation might work just as well, but then again there was something rather catchy about Mr. Perot’s homespun looking presentations without the bells and whistles of today’s Instructional programming. They were eye catching simply because they were so primitive.

So I’d like to suggest that either a politician or a journalist be very very honest in outlining all of the information surrounding the big issues of the day. We need to be taught about chain immigration including when and why it came about and what it’s effects are today. We must know more about what actually happens when the government shuts down and which agencies and individuals are actually affected. It would be good to take some time to go through lessons on the constitution, where we might learn about how each branch of government is supposed to work. Our discussions might move from the irate to the rational with proposals for solutions that actually reflect the realities of various situations. It would be quite a change from the ignorance that is almost encouraged these days to keep us in the dark and in political trances. Perhaps even our memes would change to brief but accurate sources of information. The possibilities are wondrous.

Somewhere along the way we’ve been led down a garden path. The politicians know that we are rather busy and can’t get around to gathering all of the information that we need to make good decisions, and so they have learned how to play on our emotions and turn us against one another. While we’re busy brawling, they are kicking the can of responsible governing farther and farther down the road. They leave office with guaranteed health insurance, pensions and usually more money than they had when they arrived. We in the meantime are more confused than ever about what to think. Let’s bring back Mr. Perot and his pointer. He’s only eighty seven. Surely he has the energy to be our guide once again. We don’t want to know his philosophies or ideas, just the facts, only the truth. Perhaps his true destiny has finally arrived.

A Time To Remember

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

prodigal_sonI grew up in Catholic schools and we were not exactly Biblical scholars. I understood the gist of the stories and parables in that great book, but I would be lost if I had to name the chapters and verses that contain various elements. Still I have enough familiarity with the four books that comprise the volume that I am able to relate both the history in the Old Testament and the story of Jesus in the New. What I learned is that Jesus was all about love and redemption. Over and over again he pushed back against the rule oriented Pharisees and preached the importance of understanding that He had come to remind us all that God is open to each and every one of us and that it is never too late to ask for forgiveness.

Jesus was often misunderstood by the people of His time which ultimately resulted in His being hung from a cross like a common criminal. So it is little wonder that even people who profess to be experts in the interpretation of His words might come up with ideas that appear to be more in line with the Pharisees than with Jesus. Somehow we can all hear or read the very same passages and come up with differing interpretations of them. It’s been happening for centuries and no doubt will continue as long as we humans attempt to unravel the instructions of how best to use Jesus’ instructions for how to behave toward one another.

One of my favorite parables was that of the Prodigal Son. Jesus told this story after the Pharisees and other critics suggested that He was often sinful in the selection of people with whom He associated. They disliked that Jesus was friends with tax collectors and women of dubious character and such. They worried about how He flaunted the religious laws by performing miracles on the Sabbath. They felt that Jesus too often excused bad behavior when He should have instead condemned it. What they didn’t appear to understand is that Jesus was preaching a new way of living that promised every human a pathway to amnesty regardless of how egregious their sins might once have been. Somehow large numbers of people who purport to be loving Christians have forgotten this message and instead use fire and brimstone passages from the Old Testament to defend their unforgiving stances on various issues.

The whole idea of illegal immigration, and in particular the Dreamers is a perfect example of how very religious people have somehow become unwilling to even consider the idea of forgiving those who broke the law or those who were brought to our country without consent when they were children. We have forgotten the story of the the Prodigal Son, perhaps the most powerful tale that Jesus ever related. In it he spoke of a very wealthy man who had two sons, one of whom became impatient to receive his inheritance and asked his father to give it to him immediately. The errant son took his father’s treasure and went away with it, forgetting about his family and living a profligate life. After losing everything he was starving and desperate. He came back home with the intention of begging his father to take him back as a servant to earn his keep. Instead when the loving father saw his son returning he rushed out to meet him, instructing the servants to clothe his child in fine robes. He not only forgave his son but planned a celebratory meal for him. When the other son who had been faithful to his father heard what was happening he was irate, questioning why his brother should be honored when he had been so thoughtless. The father reminded the angry son that a parent’s love is unconditional and that by prostrating himself the prodigal son had demonstrated his willingness to change and seek forgiveness.

I think of this parable whenever the subject of illegal immigration is mentioned. I realize that we cannot as a nation continue to allow people to break the law without consequence, but there are people here who came for very good reasons which we may or may not understand. They have lived peacefully among us, working hard and doing their best to fit into our society. Since we did little to turn them back initially they have little hope of returning to their native countries and finding a livelihood because they have been gone for too long. The truth is that we sat back for decades and did nothing to stop them. Now many among us want to simply turn their backs on these people and send banish them without any thought to what doing so may mean. There are even some who wish to punish their children who were brought when they were too young to even understand what was happening. Like the Pharisees so many Americans and lawmakers only see the rules and not the humanity of the situation. They shout down any plan that might rectify the status of these individuals without giving them actual citizenship, but requiring them to come out of the shadows. They speak of amnesty as if it is a dirty word rather than one that Jesus Himself would no doubt have appreciated given His propensity for forgiving people thought to be hopelessly broken. 

I tend to believe that our political leaders who continually oppose all immigration plans that propose even a smattering of forgiveness are mostly concerned about losing political power. They don’t seem to realize that their unwillingness to bend and compromise even a bit is only exacerbating the problem. They spread silly ideas that they should not concern themselves with the fate of immigrants rather than the safety of Americans. They point to the lawlessness of those who would cross our borders without permission and insinuate that most who come here are criminals. They raise the fears of our citizens by suggesting that terrorists will be coming if we do not have a hard line. Instead of telling us what chain immigration is and why we have it, they just make us afraid of it. They point to criminals who came here through chain immigration as though such incidents are the norm. They constantly speak of rules that must never be broken, forgetting how often Jesus did just that to emphasize our need to be compassionate and loving. They conveniently forget the ultimate message of redemption by His death on the cross.

As I write this the government shut down for a short time because our leaders were at an impasse. A few days later they grudgingly agreed to a short term fix, but left all of the big problems for another day. Who knows how well those discussions are going to go given the fact that we haven’t had many bipartisan moments in years. We appear to no longer be able to compromise. I suspect that if our Founding Fathers had been this way we might all still be part of the British Empire like Canadians. They would have argued infinitely and gotten nowhere, which is where we are now. 

There are those who want to lay blame for the state of our union and I would like to suggest that there is plenty to go around to everyone including those of us who vote. Of late we have turned our backs on anyone who has shown the desire to bring the country together for the general good. While we are bickering real people are being hurt and we are forgetting about all of those beautiful parables that Jesus taught us, and yet Jesus Himself would be loving and understanding even of those of us who have sometimes forgotten or ignored His message. Maybe the time has come to remember it the way it was intended to be.