“Top This”
This week I contribute an article to our corporate newsletter. The feature is called “Top This” wherein we, the road savvy technology savants, relate our encounters with peril and pleasure of unexpected dimensions. Presumably each posting will be a challenge to our gaggle of consultants to out do the last contributor.
This reminds me of efforts to challenge my neighbor to a game of “HORSE” with a basketball in the side yard. I, the infallibly un-gifted player, would be assigned a letter from the word “horse” for each time I failed match a feat performed by my him with the ball and hoop. Once in a while I could pull off a three point shot from a distance roughly the same as center court to keep from falling farther behind but I consistently failed to achieve even a semblance of a layup. Consequently I became the first, and usually only, player to reach the humiliating rank of ‘hor…’ (a fate worse than simply losing) while my competitors toyed with ‘h….’ or no letter at all.
In this context I consider the challenge; Who can top the tornado filled twilight of Dave’s (the previous contributor) recent Memphis trip? To recount sufferings such as my series of sweltering sojourns on the unbiquitously unpleasnant United Airlines would hardly measure up!
So, rather than trivialize my misery, I offer my best adventure to date; A snowy trip to mid-town Manhattan . I flew in from New Hampshire on the Sunday night before classes were to start. As my cab crossed the Tri-Borough bridge from Queens a snow flake struck the wind shield. Considering my good fortune I commented to the driver that had I booked a later flight I probably would have been canceled.
By the time I reached my hotel a light but steady snow was falling and I enjoyed looking from my hotel room window. The room was, surprisingly, graced with a balcony and I stepped out to watch the snow. Beautiful.
After dinner I pulled the shades, read for a while, and eventually fell asleep. Near dawn I got up and prepared for the day. Only after I dressed and gathered my gear did I open the shades again. The balcony was buried in three feet of snow.
Standing on a chair to get a better view I could see Madison Avenue to my right as empty as if it were an unplowed drive providing access to a remote vacation cabin in the Great North Woods. For some reason I had carried boots with me and changing into them I headed straight out to the streets. I made the hike to Time Square and stood at the center of that triangle looking more alone than a survivor of a post apocalyptic world. Nothing, no one moved. For an hour or so I traveled through various neighborhoods past city landmarks where even as late as 10 o’clock in the morning there were only a handful of pedestrians. The city was shut down.
A bagel vendor near the hotel walked across the Brooklyn bridge to get to his shop and were it not for him I would have been pretty hungry. The hotel lacked a restaurant and their delivery service didn’t deliver. By dinner I was on my third trip to the bagle shop and loving it.
I had no camera with me, a mistake I have not repeated, or I would have some relics of the trip. As it is, I have my memories… not bad fare at that.
Tool Time
Been in the basement a lot this week. Making clouds of dust to see what I can produce just short of spontaneous generation. I am reminded of high school when we were taught to politely sneer at the ‘science’ that proclaimed life could emerge ‘spontaneously’ from a pond. How simple minded those pre-enlightenment fools were to think that fish could just spring into existence as if of their own volition.
Today we teach our children an either-or tale of similarly stunning foolishness. We teach them that life either sprang, like Athena, full grown from the divine skull or it popped into being from an accidental combination of various compounds. Maybe we should coin a new phrase to label our own implausible possibility; “the divine mistake”. There was a god who liked to spend time stirring dust in the cosmic basement. Being a careless divinity some etheral compounds leaked onto the pile of molecular debris and, voila (this instance of divinity must be French, of course), life was percolating on the cellar floor.
So, there you have it, perhaps we are the product of a cosmic Tim Allen. Isn’t that just as comforting as the alternatives offered by the battalions of opinionated critters engaged in our current cultural war?
Our Rest
Crisp air, an autum breeze
Coverlet drawn to the chin.
A nap
Cool amongst dead leaves.
Our rest ends the summer days.
A Tale Told Twice?
Preachers, sales people, and raconteurs tell tales, we know. But our tales tell more than one story. Often it is the unconscious story by which our world view is shaped. I am not an advocate of political correctness but I wish to champion the role of story tellers as those who help shape our perception of the world around us.
In the comments that follow I am equally subject to the indictment that I would lay at the feet of others. Mea culpa.
Recently I read an attractive story of a drought apparently relieved following the prayers of many people. Among those who prayed was a child who bore an umbrella; a sign of deepest faith. It was touching as such stories usually are.
What struck me in the tale was the role played by each of the characters. I thought of how predictable the arrangement was and it seemed to comply with an unstated rule, “Children have faith and adults don’t.”
In many circles ‘child-like faith’ is idealized. Set aside the biblical precedence, please, and indulge me for a moment. It seems too easy for story tellers to rely on children to have this kind of faith but I wonder how much more powerful might the story be if a child is presented as a skeptic. Maybe the child was admonished by her parents to show evidence of faith by grabbing an appropriate talisman such as a bible, a rosary, etc. Maybe the child is cajoled by his mother on the way out the door and as a form of protest he seized an umbrella from the corner where it has lain, dusty from disuse.
Imagine how the story might proceed as the child raises this symbolic act of skepticism and watches the rivulets of water wash the dust from the protective shroud?
By avoiding the easy road where the story teller admonishes us to, “look at this childish act of faith” and by taking a less predictable path we who remain skeptical are confronted. Before us emerges a new possibility of grace rather than dregs of remorse over the loss of our childish innocence?
We live in a skeptical age. Unlike the scene in the New Testament where children are viewed as incapable of appreciating Jesus for who he is, it is we, the adults, that appear to suffer from an impaired capacity to believe. To paraphrase, Jesus might well have said, “Suffer those who struggle (and yet believe) to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”
On a whim... 