60-Second Realisation
Why John Glenn’s Space Flight Allowed Me to Ditch My Lace-Trimmed Bobby Socks
Last Updated on Monday, 20 February 2012 10:34 Written by Lisa Anjozian Monday, 20 February 2012 00:00
When John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth 50 years ago today, I was a one-year-old, curly-headed girl who wore crisp dresses, clean bobby socks, and polished shoes with pearly buttons that my mother favored. Though it was the 1960s, it was the very early ‘60s, and attitudes for fashion and proper decorum for young ladies held over from the 1950s shaped how girls were treated. John Glenn’s space flight on February 20, 1962 helped change all that.
Reams have been written about the women’s movement, counterculture in the 1960s, civil rights, protest and free speech, and all the other momentous happenings that helped change American life in that tumultuous era. It was a busy and scary time to be young in Los Angeles, where change was happening everywhere. As a very young girl in the early part of the 1960s, I was too young to really absorb what all those changes meant. But being young when America’s space program was young meant we grew up together. For humanity, it meant we were no longer physically bound to the limits of our extraordinary planet. For me, a girl, an eldest child of very traditional parents, it meant I was no longer psychologically bound to millennial-old roles that culture and society decided for females. John Glenn went into space. I, and a generation of young boys and girls followed him there with our attention and aspirations.
Within the decade, America had men walking on the moon. Out of the scientific discoveries that enabled that to happen, space-age technology—such as transistors—made its way into everyday American life. I had an asymmetrical, pentagonal shaped transistor radio—the 1960s version of the iPod—and I carried the technology with me that allowed me to tap into the news and music of the day, and the commentary of the deejays, and I went walking in my bell-bottom jeans to see what I could discover.
"Trying to find the latitude and longitude of the nearest pie."
Last Updated on Tuesday, 17 January 2012 11:37 Written by Lisa Anjozian Tuesday, 17 January 2012 00:00
A road trip always begins with at least two elements: a traveler and a conveyance. The traveler may be going solo, the conveyance may be a sedan, and the destination may not necessarily be predetermined. But one thing that is predetermined is the desire, or need, to go somewhere. Another element of a road trip is the search for comforts along the way. This is especially true, and more insistent, the longer the trip is. Certain biological needs must be attended to, and hunger is a powerful force that drives discoveries of country fresh fruit, shoreline crab cocktails, a city’s simmering soups.
Slow travel—relatively slow travel—by car allows you to see the topographical changes that an air travel hopscotch of latitude parallels and lines of meridian doesn’t permit. Slow travel also heightens any craving for quotidian fare that the mind decides is more critical the more miles are traversed. I have discovered this any time I’ve hit the road in the very early morning, hoping to find a roadside establishment where I can secure something as complicated as a cafe latte instead of settling for a cup of joe. Sometimes a barrier appears, such as an ocean, necessitating backtracking. Desire for the juice of a burned bean has contributed to my driving endurance.
Distance—of time and space—from the usual and accessible foods we consume expands like rising yeast dough to fill nearly every corner of our waking thoughts until the craving is finally satisfied through some half-baked idea to drive another 100 miles to a town big enough to have a population that could support a market, a restaurant, a cafe.
Satisfying a food craving is also apparently powerful enough to open a mind previously closed to science. When John Wesley Powell made his first run down the Colorado River in 1869 with some mountain men as part of his geographic expedition team, the mountain men bitterly complained of the delays Powell and his scientists took in making measurements and recording data, and locating lost trails on clear, star-filled nights by dead reckoning. But after sodden and slogging weeks, Powell found one of the mountain men had a change of attitude. In his report on the trip, Powell writes, “While we are eating supper, we very naturally speak of better fare, as musty bread and spoiled bacon are not pleasant. Soon I see Hawkins down by the boat, taking up the sextant, rather a strange proceeding for him, and I question him concerning it. He replies that he is trying to find the latitude and longitude of the nearest pie.”
The desire for crust and confection as a route to exploring the fruits of science.
Amundsen and Scott in their push to the South Pole—A One Hundred Year Anniversary
Last Updated on Tuesday, 03 January 2012 11:15 Written by Lisa Anjozian Wednesday, 14 December 2011 00:00
Before it causes numbness, stupor, and then death, extreme cold lances sensitive flesh with a thousand hazardous pricks. People weren’t shaped for exposure to the environment the South Pole offers. It takes a certain character to attempt visiting such a place, let alone striving to be the first to claim it in an era of limited technological gear and support. Yet one hundred years ago today, on December 14, 2011, a Norwegian team beat a British team in a grinding slog of a race through Antarctica to win the explorer’s glory at the geographical point where all longitudinal lines meet. But as every adventurer knows, the destination is only half the journey. The trip isn’t finished until arrival at home, and all along the way, out and back, a number of personal choices aid or hinder the pursuit.
Roald Amundsen was the leader of the Norwegians, and by accounts, he was a pragmatic leader who knew that dogs were essential as units of work—to drag heavy sledges over the frozen continent—and later as feed—butchered and served for hungry men and the stronger dogs. Robert Falcon Scott, the leader of the British team, felt that using dogs was unsporting. His men became beasts of burden, dragging their heavy sledges after their ponies and motorized conveyances quit. When they finally trudged to the point at the bottom of the earth, they found the flag of their rival team, a letter addressed to the Norwegian king written five weeks earlier, and a note for Scott. Scott was to carry the letter back to Europe if Amundsen did not return home. It was Scott who stayed, and died, with his men—slowly, in the cold, wearing down by degrees over their last couple of months.
Life is our choices, those that lead to success as well as the miscalculations that direct us away from our goals, sometimes to tragic ends. Luck plays a part, but to a very large degree, our personal orientation shapes how we operate. Though Scott perished in Antarctica, his story has held popular attention and sympathy. Perhaps it is the recognition of disappointment, those familiar “what ifs.” In his diary, Scott wrote, “Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”
Photo of Robert Falcon Scott
Mars crew discovers green-eyed monster aboard
Last Updated on Tuesday, 08 November 2011 13:41 Written by Lisa Anjozian Tuesday, 08 November 2011 00:00
Six young guys who were stuck inside a small isolation module for 520 days, to simulate a mission to Mars, found a green-eyed monster inside. Scientists had designed the Moscow-based experiment to test what stress and isolation will do to people in close quarters, and what resulted wasn’t a surprise to anyone who’s ever been on a long road trip in a small, packed car: People get on each other’s nerves.
Another result—which is not a revelation to any dog, chimp, elephant, or brother, sister, girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband—was that jealousies developed. Scientific Program Director Alexander Suvorov shared with a Russian news website that some crew members had to do much more work while other crew members had a more passive role. Children at a young age recognize what isn’t fair, and those basic attitudes about justice might become obscured as people mature and learn ambiguity, but most still know it when they see it.
Uneven work distribution wasn’t the only source of bitter feelings. Those who received more news from family and friends than others were also targets for the corrosive emotion.
The six men of the Mars500 crew came out of isolation a few days ago, and were, according to the Russian program director, all physically healthy. The experiment was staged to prepare for an actual trip to Mars, which Russia hopes to do 25 years from now.
While astounding advances have been made in the medical field—in treating illness, keeping the body healthy, and increasing longevity—we’re still the same emotional people that led Shakespeare to characterize Othello’s obsession as a green-eyed monster. And it was an old metaphor when the Bard used it, since ancient Greek poets had warned, many hundreds of years earlier, of that green-hued sickness. Neither education, nor training in rational thinking are barriers to jealousy. Not so long ago, an astronaut was reported to have diapered up to drive non-stop across the U.S. to accost her romantic rival. Will the Russians find a cure for this emotion in the next 25 years?
A Day for the Dead
Last Updated on Thursday, 06 October 2011 08:48 Written by Lisa Anjozian Thursday, 06 October 2011 00:00
You might have felt a little palpitation had you glimpsed her out of the corner of your eye, as I first did. The skeletal mask painted on her face had cracked, and she looked like a Dia de los Muertos sculpture come to life.
It is true that Halloween is weeks away, and any mischief by ghouls and specters, ghosts and spirits, apparitions and phantoms are not on the calendar until the end of the month, unless by clairvoyant appointment or some predestined misfortune.
Still, you had to admire the beauty of her costume, and shiver at death personified, walking around in broad daylight looking to increase population counts in that inclusive zone beyond the River Styx. Adrenaline (the hormone that juices us up for flight or fight) is accompanied by pleasure-producing endorphins (the morphine-like substance we produce in our bodies), so who knows what part we’re so exhilarated about. Beauty and fear are twined.
Ghost stories abound from culture to culture and throughout human history, and some stories are so well crafted, and strike such a universal note in capturing the dread and curiosity about what comes after that they become archetypes. The Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is one that has always resonated with me. There’s poor Orpheus—a musical genius who has no rival but the gods alone. When he plays and sings, there is no limit to his power, and he is irresistible to everyone. A pop idol of the ancient world. He’s grief stricken that his new bride Eurydice has died from a sting by a viper, and been taken to the underworld. Orpheus decides to charm the debtor who is always paid by playing him a song so he can rescue Eurydice from Hades. So great is his art, no one can refuse him, even Death. But Death gives him a condition: Orpheus can take Eurydice above, to life and the earth, but he must not look back as she follows him.
Of course you know from the moment you hear this qualifier that Orpheus doesn’t have a chance (who knows human nature better than Death?) because Orpheus is human, he’s curious, and sometimes it’s hard to trust in things. He’s at the top, on the crust of earth, and he just wants to make sure she’s really there. So he looks. A fatal error, because Eurydice is pulled back down to the underworld and Orpheus is barred from entering that place again while he is alive. After that, his spends the remainder of his life in wild solitude, playing his music for the rocks, rivers, and trees.
Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos: We celebrate those we knew with artistry, song, costumes, food, and stories, because after they’ve gone, the only way we can join them here is by remembering them.
Photo: Lisa-Natalie Anjozian
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