Come again

Most people would tell you that time is linear.  I know that is how it appears in the smaller increments like minutes, hours, and days.  The progression from sun up to sun down makes us experience the linear nature of time.

But then, there's the measure of a year that masks linear time and makes us see that time is cyclical.  The seasons make us know that somehow we have been in this period of time before.  Each spring we feel hopeful for what is to come and look forward to seeing life all around us come to life all over again.  Each summer brings its special delights of travel or other enjoyment.  Every fall we settle in for the beauty of leaves falling and weather changes.  Every winter we hibernate to the comfort of our warm houses.

And, to some extent, decades and centuries act cyclically as well.  We feel that others have passed through this time before us and had many of the same kinds of experiences we have had.

Inside my mind tonight, I look back down the line of time.  I pause at the places I want time not to march past, but to stop.  Several of those spots bring laughter or joy or pleasure to my heart.  And then there's this one spot... ahhhhh this one place... where, when I look closely, the line becomes the circle of the yearly cycle, and where the laughter, joy, and pleasure last as if time is in slow motion.  More than anything, I wish the loop here would not simply slow down but change again into the circles of infinity.

Eventually, however, even in slowed time, the cycle runs its course and straightens again into linear time.

But tonight, I am inside that slow-moving loop... cherishing each of its seconds... loving the joy of those seconds... and having faith that another loop with the same moments will fill a spot soon on the timeline.

Light and heat

Cold and dark are not two terms a person really wants to hear.  They suggest that something is amiss or miserable.  They conjure up something unrelenting or hard to bear.  They might even suggest an eclipse of the human spirit.  Tonight as the sun set and night crept in, it was cold and dark.

Fortunately, I could go inside where light and heat shut out the dark, cold night.  I could relax and eat and enjoy my evening despite the conditions outside.

I think everyone, in the chambers of his or her heart, has a person and some places that serve as houses where light and heat exist.  And how necessary they are against those who make us miserable and try to eclipse our human spirit.

Christmas closing

Narratives in a novel can be the author's best friend if written well.  They can convey setting and feeling all at the same time. On this evening of the first white Christmas in a long time, the following narrative capsulizes my closing thoughts for the day:

Outside, the howling wind that brought the blowing snow had subsided.  Inside, the breeze of air that brought warmth to the living room from the central unit had just clicked off.  That left the man in absolute silence.

His outward appearance would make a bystander think that he was frozen like the beautifully white landscaped scene outside the doors and windows.  But, inside this man's mind was a flurry of activity, not of this particular day, but of a time that brought happiness to his heart.  And, he wanted to heighten the perceptions of those scenes going through his head of that time not so long ago, so he allowed his senses to add to each scene.

He heard echoes of an unmistakably familiar voice followed by laughter, so light and full of cheer.  The sound relaxed his whole body.  He remembered the fragrance pervading the space around him.  The aroma had arrested his attention as he awaited the next movement that would waft a pocket of scent again by his nose.  His mind switched to tactile sensations and his fingers felt smoothness, softness.  He recognized every movement in the scene, every color, and he tasted the air of the memory.

His mind lingered on the captured memory.  But the lateness of the hour overtook him eventually.  The man would sleep deeply and happily this bitterly cold yet robustly warm night.

Very deserving

Sometimes you hear, "She's just the nicest person."  Sometimes it's, "You won't find a kinder, more optimistic person."  Now and then you hear, "She's just the best; everything she touches works out right."

But if you watch this person at work, everything goes right.  Lemon kind of days are even turned into lemonade.  If you watch this person with her own children you see that she knows what each of them needs and nurtures and provides for that need.  She has that gentle touch with them, never breaking their spirits when she could.  They thrive.  If you watch this person with friends, you see them light up because she cheers them and makes life lighter for them.

Happy birthday to an amazing person.  People say all the above and more about her.  Her children call her "Mom," without knowing she's the best mom.  Her mother calls her by her name, but knows what a jewel she has raised.  Her colleagues call her nice, kind, optimistic, cheerful, helpful, insightful, diligent, determined, ambitious... simply amazing... and deserving of the best possible day.

Stretched

I saw this caption on a poster on Facebook today.  "All in all, today was a fine apocalypse."

I love this caption because it captured the irony of some disastrously predicted day with the calmness of the actual day.  I guess it's the contrast that I appreciate.

And that gets me to thinking about other contrasts that I see regularly.  I see contrasts in my daughter and my daughter's daughter.  I see contrasts between my mother's life and the life I have carved out for myself.  I see the difference between the life of my own siblings and my own.  Given our common background, our lives many years later are so different from each other, not merely in personality.

And then there is the contrast of who I was before 2009 and after.  I had resigned myself to a rather minimal existence.  Since then, it's been a fine apocalypse (which translated from Greek  means something hidden being revealed, a disclosure of something not known before).  Call it broadened horizons.

Dabbling in the possible

Just about 4 more hours and the end of the Mayan calendar, corresponding to the end of the world, is supposed to take place.  It could happen. Anything is possible.

The calendar is right about several things.  The Earth finishes its precession, its 26,000-year wobble in its orbit.  The sun is aligned with the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.  The winter solstice takes place.  Earth is a part of the alignment with the sun and center of the Milky Way.  The sun will appear brighter to objects around it in the galaxy because it will appear inside a dark rift.  Perhaps, all this alignment foretells the end of an epoch.  If so, it is supposed to end drastically, disastrously.  Anything is possible.

If the end happens, I know what will be on my mind on the way out.  I will be calling up episodes from my own personal epoch, one that carries a voice, a face, lots of cheer and laughter and happiness.  I am grateful to have those visuals in my mind, and they'll be replaying themselves tomorrow.  In the event that I live beyond the 21st of this month, I want the next epoch (even though it is not accounted for in the Mayan calendar) to replace the former visuals with reality.  Anything is possible.

Differences in time

The Earth is the same, and so are the people on it. But, when the people 5000 years ago looked at the sky, they couldn't envision what I do today. They saw only blue sky in the daytime and starlit sky at night. The Earth was the center of their existence. The sun literally rose in the east, set in the west, so it must have been on the move around the Earth. Nature had spirits that controlled it. There was the spirit of the forest, of the ocean, of the hills or mountains, of the river, of the sun, etc. Somehow the mysterious spirits were linked to the mystery of the skies above since people looked up when they thought of powers greater than themselves.

I look up and see distances between Earth and moon, Mars and Earth, Earth and Venus because we've been there. I have pictures in my mind of their surfaces. I know what all the planets look like. They're not mere twinkles against a black background. Travel to the moon for vacations begins in 2020 for those with the money to make the round trip. I know the names of some of the other suns that are close to our own.  The number of suns besides our own is around a billion in just the Milky Way alone. I know the shape and name of the galaxy of these billion suns. I can see the the neighboring galaxies that make up the cluster the Milky Way is in.

The moon controls the tides on Earth to an extent. The tilt of the Earth on its axis determines the length of the day. The position of the Earth in its revolution around the sun determines the season of the year. Solar winds can affect the magnetism and electrical charges on the Earth because of the solar winds during the 11-year peak of the sun's own cycle. Spirits of earth, wind, and fire don't apparently have any connection to any of the mysteries that exist today.

Only a cupful of time, 5000 years, has yielded a comletely, 100% different view of the sky between a viewer in 3000 BCE and the viewer in 2000 ACE. And that's how I feel from where I stand now in life and where I began my journey not that many years ago. My view of life is as radically different now from my early college years as the viewers of the sky 5000 years apart.

Most importantly, I know what moments in life are the ones worth keeping alive in both memory and in faith that they will repeat. I know the value to put on someone who brings cheer, laughter, optimism, vitality, determination, and stamina. I know the premium of someone who makes me better, creates synergy when together. I die a little each day without that one.

I don't look up at the sky and wonder what is out there. And I don't look at life and wonder who and what is important. There's a 5000 year difference, a lifetime of difference. And, it feeds my faith that I will one day create synergy with the one who makes me better.

December warmth

Let me check... yes, there are orange and red leaves blowing down the street, collected against the curb and strewn across the front yard.  Good to know.  Judging from the near 80 degrees outside, it seems like an earlier month. 

Quick check... The calendar still shows month 12.

What a mild second half of autumn.  Twice in the last 2 weeks a record warm temperature has entered the books.  November was the fifth warmest since temperatures have been kept for over 100 years.  December is already working on being the hottest one ever during the same time period.  It is certainly not the norm.

I hope that this December in my life will be the hottest one on record .  I have too many memories of frigid air pervading the month's weather.

How I wish...

Shift in analysis

The elliptical phrase is something I learned in high school.  She is taller than I is an example.  My sophomore and senior English teachers helped me to understand the concept.  She is taller than I is the sentence and (am tall) is the portion of the sentence that is left out, or ellipsed.  Thus, She is taller than I (am tall) is the way to understand the sentence.  Some people actually say, She is taller than I am, and only leave out the word tall.  So, the elliptical conclusion made sense to me.

This knowledge lasted about 20 years, but then I noticed that people under the age of 40 prefer a different sentence, She is taller than me.  That begs a different analysis.  These people heard the taller than I part and didn't think it matched the construction of the language they spoke.  They thought the word than acted more like a preposition, which is followed by an object, rather than a comparative adjective followed by a connector to an elliptical (invisible) phrase.  So, very logically, they placed the object form of the first person singular pronoun after the preposition than.  That makes good sense to me.

The shift in analysis shows a couple of truths about language.  First, speakers of a language can change the language at any time they choose.  (A couple of other examples of this truth is found with the words hart and ye.  Hart fell into disfavor and disappeared from the language altogether, and the second person singular pronoun ye was not liked after the 1700s, so it dropped and people substituted its popular twin you.) Second, what makes sense to one generation of speakers doesn't make sense at all to a following generation, so they change the analysis to use a form that does make sense.  (An additional example comes from the fact that so many speakers have decidedly not accepted the split infinitive rule as a sensible analysis.  People will say to not like (something) in preference to not to like (something) over and over again.  They don't agree that to should not be separated with another word from its verb .)

I find that in areas of life that don't make sense, I will inevitably "fix" the problem.  I will analyze a situation and drop or change the part that doesn't fit for something more sensible.  That explains a few shifts in thinking I have experienced lately.  Not only am I comfortable in making the changes, I enjoy life more since those changes fit a more suitable paradigm.

Override

I was raised in such an austere, rule-saturated environment that when I was in my 20s, I remember wondering why there was such a thing as desire if one had to always trump the heart with the reasoning of the head - self-control my parents had called it. 

As I experienced more of life, I followed what I had been taught, but I still wondered what the role of desire was when it came to a duel of heart and head.  I realize now that responses need to be measured in most instances, but measured doesn't mean that reason always prevails.  There is a purpose for having a heart.

The heart and the head were made to decide things together.  Reason doesn't always prevail.  It analyzes and suggests.  The heart tells what is desirous.  They, together, come to an agreement.  When the heart wants a stronger say, it wins, as it should.  The head merely guides it down its desired path so that it doesn't steer completely off the road.

I have trained myself for so long to override my heart that occasionally I do so even when my heart is racing with desire and should take the decision away from head.  One of those occasions recently occurred.  How stupid it was to succumb to reasoning in light of every fiber in my body telling me to do otherwise.  Stupid doesn't even get close to describing how poor a decision I made.  I should have acted with reckless abandon and shown the content of the desires of my heart.

I realize that it is a bit unusual for circumstances to recur, but if this one ever does, I know exactly what to do... and it starts with repressing every thought related to reason that I might have... and it ends with expressing every thought stored in my heart... in the same way a star explodes brilliantly against a night sky!

Breath of life

Understanding words' origins sometimes helps one to appreciate a word's meaning.  Aspire and inspire are two such examples.  They are very close in meaning.  Aspire means to desire something of high value. Inspire means to influence someone to be better than that person would normally be.  Both words use the root spire, a derivation of Latin, to build on.

A quick look back in time shows the word spirare was used by Romans to mean breathe.  So, spirare was a really important word.  If a person stopped "spiring," then he or she would no longer exist.  When the word was used in the offspring language of French, it still meant breathe.  But the French introduced spire to the English after 1066, who began to augment the word with a couple of notable Latin prefixes.

At first in+spire meant simply "to breathe in" (inhale), but the English began using it to mean to breathe into oneself, and thus, to make one better than he or she normally is.  Aspire's history paralleled inspire's in both time and type of development.  The English added the Latin prefix a to spire to make a new word:  to breathe upon or toward.  And, of course, no one would breathe toward something unless he or she was desiring it.   And, who would desire something that was not of great value.
 
The English did one other thing - they retained the Romans' idea of "life-giving" or "spirited" with the word spire.  The Romans had another word for simply the intake of air.  Its history took a different route into English.  So, inspire and aspire took on a life-giving quality, or at least an increase of spirit, for its base meaning.

I'm glad to know this story about "breathing."  Life is easy to bog down in and to quit "spiring," so in order to rise above the bog and continue to "spire," one has to turn to someone who will give him life... someone who will breathe toward him... someone who will breathe into him... make him better, and alive... one of high value to be desired.  So, I am turning to catch that one's breath.

Satiation

Euphoria  (eu=well, pherein=to bear, > to bring to a well feeling) was a word coined using two Greek words to help doctors describe one becoming healthy after being sick.  As the years have passed, it has come to also mean a state of complete happiness without a hint of sadness.  I can't imagine that one could experience anything other than euphoria if a drought in his life has been been broken and his parched soul is soaked with rain from the one who gives him life.  I guess the meaning of the originally coined term applies too.  But, what the word has come to mean is the reason for the smile on my lips.  I am sooo very thankful.

Falling

The saying is, "Into every life some rain must fall."

Occasionally the rain is cold, in the form of snow, and it envelops you, soaks the hat you're wearing, lands on your face and nose, and slickens your hands making you lose your grip.  And, when you think you have slipped on ice for the last time and can't get back up, something beautiful happens...

because of faith.

A little proof

Today, while watching TV, I saw a commercial for Dragon software, a program that allows one to speak into a microphone for it to translate the spoken sounds into written words.  A grandmother wanted to help her grandson's written expression in school, so she bought the program for him.  The grandson then gave a testimonial.  He said that having to use pencil and paper distracted his thought process to the point that he couldn't focus on what to say.  Speaking words helped him to bring the process of thinking and "writing" (in this case, seeing the spoken words in written form as feedback) together again.  He could write without distraction.  [This is a commercial so even though the writing process has been grossly oversimplified, the bottom line is often true.]

This is the most apparent evidence yet that writing first, and then reading soon after, are in their dying throes.  One of the most asked questions when I make such statements is, "What will take their places?"  The statistics of the growth of YouTube illustrate phenomenal growth.  People use YouTube for everything from watching music videos to presenting concepts as a teacher would in a classroom.  Recently, my brother's daughter wanted to send a heartfelt message to my family, so she videoed herself playing a song she had played and sung on the piano and emailed a message and a URL so that we could watch her song.  So, I would suggest that the new format already exists for what the future holds in the place of writing and reading.

As far as format goes, perhaps the National Geographic Channel's series of programs presenting how the different land features were formed on the Earth is the new model.  The series was called How the Earth Was Made.  I reference here the episode called America's Gold.  In this 43-minute video, you meet several experts, you see actual mining taking place, you see explanatory graphics, you hear an easy, but very organized narration of how gold was formed in America, and you hear a recap of the important information at the end.

No one knows what format the ultimate form will take to replace the pen and page, but it seems to me that the visual is already on the screen (a parody of the writing is already on wall, ha).  All kinds of opportunities exist with this format.

I am so ready to welcome the easier-to-make and much-better-remembered formats of YouTube and NGC as the first wave of presentation.  And, I'm even more ready to say goodbye to the painful, time-consuming art of writing.  See ya runes. Good to see you pics.  You couldn't come soon enough.

A relative world

Growing up, I leaned that honesty was the best policy.  But, that value is only relative to what people want others to think of themselves.  "Honesty will get you nowhere" seems to be the active rule of the day.  It is the one people really live by.  If I have nothing someone wants, I am treated a little deceitfully until the person wants something, then I get a little honesty out of him/her.

I'm not saying it's the best way to be.  I'm just reporting what I see most of the time  Nearly every value is relative to the person's desire in a situation.  Yes, it's a relative world... relative values, relative truth. 

Almost there

There are, of course, the notable examples.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer and dissenter, was sent to a number of different labor camps from 1946 to 1956 for his crime of writing about Stalin in a less than admirable light and writing about the labor camp system in general.  He was stalked by the KGB for the next 13 years.  They seized most of his manuscripts during this time and discredited him whenever he wanted to publish something. The writer's union in Russia never approved his writings and expelled him in 1969.  He remembers thinking that his works would never see the light of day.  Life was utterly miserable for Solzhenitsyn.

No one knew that in 1970 life would change for Solzhenitsyn.  He was awarded the Nobel prize in literature for copies of his works that had been partially published in the West or had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union.  Influential political figures in the West put immense pressure to release him from his internal exile.  Finally, in 1974 Russia deported the world renowned dissident.

In 1974 on the eve of his release, unaware of any attempts by the West to gain his release, Alexander tells of thinking of trying to escape.  He felt like he would have been killed since he didn't have a real plan.  But, a person he didn't know came to him to talk, thus thwarting his plan.  A day later he was released, and his life totally changed for the better.

Nelson Mandela, the South African president, wasn't always liked.  At age 44 he was arrested for his activities against the British government.  He spent the next 27 years in a tiny prison cell off the coast of South Africa.  Unbeknownst to Mandela the world changed while he was locked away.  Dynamics between blacks and whites shifted.  Finally, immense pressure was brought by the U.S. and other countries to end the Apartheid policies of whites against blacks.  Mandela became the symbol of the end of the Apartheid because of his dissenting activity at age 42.  But, he didn't know any of this as he lay in prison.

He didn't know when he lay his head down to sleep on February 10, 1990, at age 71, he would be released from prison the next day.  Three years later he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize and a year later be elected president of South Africa.  Mandela later would talk of the mind games he played in order to remain alive to get him to February 11th.  On February 10th, he was a miserable, failure of a human being.  A day later his whole life changed.

There are, of course, the unnotable examples, people in every town who have stories of success by waiting for their their lives to be fulfilled or to be changed.  They don't win prizes or have positions of prominence, but they wait.  And one day, without notice, their path radically changes.

The two notable examples are inspiring stories for people who are not in the position they want to be.  No one knows really what will happen in the future.  But, for some, it is the day before their release.  They won't know it until tomorrow.  They lay their heads down tonight as failures.  But the message from the two notable men (and from the unnoted ones) is to have faith.  Release is imminent.  Wait just a tad longer... life will change in the morning.

A special case

I love anomalies.  They are nature's way of letting humans know that things aren't always neat and tidy.  Life has ragged edges.  Information has outliers.  Daily events aren't always consistent.  And, explanations for all of this untidiness are not always apparent.

Particularly, I love the anomalies of the English language because they stump and frustrate those who feel a sense of arrogance in knowing all the classifications.  They're those patches of word stickers that defy the class.  Verbal particles are one such patch.  Traditional grammarians say that verbs always follow the rules assigned to their category and are easily identifiable.  One such rule is that the last word of a verb must be one of its four principal parts.  The verb never ends with any other word.  Auxiliaries and principal parts are the only possible word categories permissible.  Even if a verb ends a sentence, the last word word of the verb is a principal part, not, say a preposition.  Sentences can't end with a preposition.  Traditional grammarians don't even recognize the term verbal particle because to do so would be to acknowledge that something doesn't really abide by the descriptions that they have spent years learning and feeling so knowledgeable about. 

Oops, what about that last sentence?  "About" is one of those apparent prepositions.  But, is the sentence not a natively formed spoken grammatical structure?  Of course it is.  But the grammarian is quick to point out that the sentence is a bastard sentence, a sub-par sentence, a non-standard sentence.   It has an easy fix: ...descriptions about which they have spent years learning and feeling so knowledgeable.  Oh, ok.  That change would follow the rules all right for both verbs and prepositions although nearly all Americans would be "wrong" when saying it their more intuitive way.

But then, there are those instances that don't have the "fix" available.  "I want you to shut up," is such an example.  "Up" is normally an adverb, but in this case, "up" doesn't tell how, when, or where to shut anything.  Sometimes adverbs double as prepositions (as in "the climbers went up the mountain").  However, changing to "up which to shut" is not a possibility.  The infinitive form is "to shut up" not "to shut" plus an adverb or "to shut" plus a preposition with a relative pronoun preceding the infinitive.  Now, there's your anomaly.

And how about "behavior you don't have to put up with?"  Is the grammarian going to tell you to fix it by saying, "behavior up with which you will not put?"  Not even they would be so foolish.  The infinitive of the verb is "to put up with," not "to put" plus an answer to how, when, or where, or a transformation of "with" to the beginning of a prepositional phrase ("with which you will put up" still strands "up" as a part of the verb).  Ludicrous!

And then there's the phrase, "rules to go by."  This is a synonymous expression to "rules to follow," right?  Well, if you take the traditional fix, "rules by which to go," then the synonymity vanishes because "to follow" does not mean "to go."   Instead, "to follow" means "to go by."  And how about "to do (something) over."  Is that the same as "over which to do?"  Never in a million years!  Is it the same as "to do" something and then answer the adverb question when? Over.  Perhaps, except that the native speakers have coined a noun to name the action (which occurs frequently, such as "to brand" becoming the noun "brand" or "to try" becoming the noun "try").  Natives speak of "do-overs" as a single word, a noun.  That suggests they see the term "over" as a part of the action.

All of the above is to reiterate that when anomalies occur, their explanations are meaningful and explicable even when not apparent.  One of my most cherished times is an anomaly on the landscape of my life.  It defies normal classification. Oh, an explication exists, just as there is an explication for words after verbs - a new way of thinking about verbs - a particle (part of another category) that attaches itself in a way that doesn't include the whole category.  The explanation is, though, special-ized, making the anomaly on my landscape special-ized as well.

A note about value

I have read a number of books and articles that explain the underlying theory of how the brain developed over time into what we have now.  The theory states that the brain developed in a way so as to help humans survive long enough to reproduce and ensure the survival of the species.  Such a view places great emphasis on environment, but even more emphasis on what is encoded into the DNA for the next generation.

So, in order for the brain to develop to another stage it has to know what is important as opposed to what merely happens and is routine or unimportant.  That means the brain also assigns value.  What is the value of anything that happens?  Is the event tagged with a rank order number, or is the value assigned according to a binary system of "This is important/This is not important."  If the former, then what is tagged with something less than most important has a probability of entering into a decision that is made for survival or reproduction at less than 100% (and could be as low as a single digit percentage).  If the latter, then everything deemed important is relative to survival or reproduction, but for the moment only.  Otherwise it has no value.  Each decision is relative to the event and the circumstances surrounding it.

That's when I begin thinking of our reason for education, and more to the point, education of the masses.  The curriculum does not relate to survival and reproduction by either type of value system.  Do children see that what they learn as having anything to do with survival of the species?  No.  Which means that they assign a low value number to the educational events in their lives (according to the rank order idea) as it relates to their survival.  Or worse, it means that they assign no value to the educational events in their lives (according to the binary system) as it relates to their survival.

School is supposed to prepare one for success.  First and foremost is the success as it relates to survival of the species.  So, curriculum will die (albeit a rather slow death) on its own because it is not related to the way the brain is constructed, or the species will shrink because survival didn't hold its a priori place.
Well... I am trying to do my part to pass on to posterity what puts bread on the table.  That's the universal bottom line.

(Or the theory could be wrong, of course, in which case our schools are performing magnificently since the curriculum now is better than it ever has been).

Why this time

Tomorrow will be a day of great activity.  Family will gather.  Conversations around a meal will keep everyone updated and informed.  It will be a great time, a ritual well worth the time and effort each member of the family who comes gives and.makes.  I look forward to it.

Right now, though, it is very quiet.  It's the time of day that I draw strength from because it allows me to rejuvenate my inner being.  I have time to go deep inside the caverns of my mind where laughter from previous great times are still echoing, where past happiness continues to resonate and bleed through into the present, and where unfaded writing of those recorded memorable events still graces its walls.

The silence of the deep night pours the new foundation for what tomorrow will build on it.  And, now I am ready for the ritual well worth the time.

Parallel tracks

Masquerade.  It's a verb and a noun.  Sometimes it's a way of hiding behind something; sometimes it's a way of showing off something.  Sometimes it's an event for all to participate in; sometimes it's an event in which just one person reveals.  I see the behaviors and know the events.  I loathe both, but can't cast the first stone.  Who can?

Manifest.  Wow.  A verb and a noun too.  Sometimes it hides one among many; sometimes it brings to light the several, the many.  Sometimes it's a record of participation; sometimes a mass in which one name is buried.  I know its uses and places.  I appreciate both, but won't brag that I always make the list.  Who could?

In for the long haul

In a sleepy town long ago, a man and his wife lived in peace.  At least, that was the outside point of view.  The man thought his wife, for no reason, was always on his case about getting more work, about shirking duty, about everything going wrong because of lack of activity, blah, blah, blah.  One day, the man decided to take a walk away from the house to give himself a reprieve from the constant hounding he received.  On the walk, he encountered some men bowling in the hills close to his house.  He participated, and all the while he was drinking their ale.  Soon, he fell fast asleep.

Of course, the tale is Rip Van Winkle written in 1819 by Washington Irving.  Most people know the next part.  Rip woke up 20 years later.  His wife had died.  His son by his same name was the official Rip Van Winkle of the small, sleepy town.  He missed the buildup to the Revolutionary War.  He missed the actual fighting of the war.  The picture of King George in the town's tavern had been changed to George Washington.  Rip was no longer recognizable because his beard had grown a foot longer during the 20 year interval.

 I think of this tale because some days I think on my rather simplistic childhood days and compare it to the present.  I grew up in my earliest years before color television had been discovered, before FM was a possibility on the radio dial, before interstate highways had made it from drawing board to reality, before the locally family owned soda fountains had been replaced by MacDonalds and Burger Kings, and before integration was the law of the land for schools and colleges.  Beatniks was a viable word; the non-party line phone had only been available a few years; an all electric house was as rare as central air conditioning; and power steering in a car was a luxury feature.

If I make the simple comparison between childhood and later adulthood, it's as if I have missed a forty year period of time.  Most of my food comes from a microwave or restaurant rather than the kitchen table, and everything else is controlled or accessible by my smart phone in place of going places and talking to people or doing things.  My own children don't recognize the words beatnik, party line phone, window unit, or soda fountain.  I could swear my beard is a foot longer and the space between Eisenhower's picture and Obama's has enough room for 9 other pictures.  What's that about?

The end of Irving's tale shows the townspeople finally recognizing Rip Van Winkle and being a bit envious of his luck in having missed a considerable period of time of taking a drumming by his wife and  the turmoil the Revolutionary War caused.  Thankfully, though, the time between my simplistic childhood days and my later adulthood are not unconscious years.  The turmoil of the years experienced have given me perspective in life which I would rather have than blissful ignorance.  And, I would rather have the pockets of months that have made life beautiful and given me vitality than trade them for a million years of sleeping.  As appealing as Rip Van Winkle is for some people, I am fully satisfied with being conscious for my life.  I even have faith that my future still holds some great enjoyment.

Beauty of recall

What a wonder it is to watch the night skies!  And what stories those stars do tell.  Tonight I am reminded of Pleiades, made up of 7 stars and located not far from Orion's belt.  Sometimes it is seen as a haze, sometimes as very distinct stars.  One of the 7 stars is called Alcyone, and it is around this star that the Mayans claimed that the Earth's solar system revolves.  As far-fetched as that sounds, astronomers have actually hypothesized that the Earth's sun has a twin star that it revolves around.  These scientists haven't been able to identify the twin yet, but who knows, it could be Alcyone.

Be that as it may, the Mayans claimed that someone from Alcyone gave them their knowledge of the stars.  That also sounds far-fetched until a person ponders the kind of precise knowledge the Mayans had, reflected in the alignment of certain temples to the cycles of Venus and the configuration of their temples to the Pleiades.  This precision gives one pause.  Consider that their calendar is built around three cycles: Earth years, Venus' alignment with the Earth and its transit schedule with the sun, and a 26,000 year cycle of alignment among Venus, Earth, the sun, and the black hole in the center of the Galaxy.  I stand amazed that they could understand the workings of the heavens without telescopes, spacecraft, or advanced mathematics.

I truly marvel at their understanding.  The Mayans depended on the cycles for their daily lives - for water, for crops, for beliefs, for community, and for travel.  I can appreciate that dependency in two ways.  I love its consistency, and I love its beautiful symmetry.  I identify also because my own well being depends on an alignment of sorts.  I need the beauty of pleasant recall to make it through the shorter cycles of my life: the cycle to combat troublesome times, to contemplate enjoyable times, to track the roller coaster times, and to laugh amidst austere times.  I do as the Mayans and celebrate once and a while those alignments at the beginning and end of cycles.  Many of the great visuals I have available in recall come from one great time period of vitality, that  once-in-a-26,000-year alignment.  It's my Pleiades, my Alcyone, around which my contentment revolves.

Reflection

"The question is, 'Does literature reflect culture or does it influence culture?'"  Those words were posed in my American novels class years ago to get the discussion started.  Since the 1700s in England, the people rather than the scholars began enjoying reading.  This was partly due to DeVere's popular plays with the commoners a century before (known as the Shakespearean corpus) and partly due to the rise in popularity of the newspaper beginning with the Tatler.  The Romantic Age writings of the time presented themselves because the people liked them 75 years before the name of the era was used and despite Alexander Pope's proclivity to use Greek and Latin classical literature.  Scholars have decided to name Pope's period Neoclassicism after the content he liked to write about, but the people read the authors who were writing Romantic themes.

However, the people prevailed... and for a long time (at least in literary age terms) Romantic themes continued. There was a bit of a shift in what Romanticists wrote about halfway through the period scholars have assigned to them, but even by the advent of the Victorian Age literature of the 1830s, Romanticism was still in the air of some of the writings.

Romanticism has been singled out because it was the historical point where the people read what they wanted to even though other literature was being produced.  Up to this point in history, literature had been the domain of the rich who had chosen to write what they wanted the people to read.  After the 1700s, people began to choose for themselves what they wanted to read.  Charles Dickens was a good example of the new power of the reader.  He is only known today because the people responded overwhelmingly to the nonromantic themes he offered.  He wrote under a pen name at first because he was embarrassed to try introducing a new theme not favored by the likes of Keats.  So, the new authors reflected the desires of the people.

It is still that way.  Schools may teach so-called great literature.  But, when all is said and done, it is the people and their consumer dollars that determine what gets read.  It was the people who supported the books of Hemingway and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald; they couldn't get enough of Poe, Twain, and Thoreau.  Readers of the 1800s and for three quarters of the 1900s chose what they wanted to read.  It didn't influence them, it reflected them.

In the 1970s, the format for storytelling began to change to viewing from reading, but even so, it was truly consumer driven.  Baby Boomers chose to end the pessimism of 1900s Postmodernism, opting to pay to see and read several new themes.  They loved the edge, the risky, the physical, and the real.  Following them, the next generation seemed to enjoy the real well enough, but wanted to add a touch of their own.  They liked themes of polar opposites: the elite and the underdog, the successful and the struggling, the glamorous rich and the despondent addict.

Reflection, not influence, is the rule of the day.  Modern storytellers follow the dollars.  They publish and produce stories that consumers will pay for.  No longer is the story in the domain of the wealthy or educated elite.  It is in the court of those willing to pay the cost of a ticket or to tune into a movie channel for a second run.

I know this is true of my own story.  What I choose to pay hard earned dollars to see (although I do read some) reflects my values... my hope that life will yield contentment... my faith that life will deliver its most enjoyable moments.

It'll be just fine

Inventions, discoveries, and resulting new philosophies change the world every so often.  People who lived among the saber tooth tigers, sloths, and woolly mammoths had to band together to bring one down.  Their artifact spears tell the tale.  But, then the ice age happened.  The big animals were wiped out.  So the people decided to not travel in tribes around the countryside looking for game, but to congregate up and down the banks of rivers.  Eventually, the population of the River Valley Civilizations outstripped the amount of space needed, so they spread out along the trade routes developed between the civilizations.  When writing was developed it seemed to help in making land transactions, recording epic tales, and in journaling the deeds or chronologies of their kings.  Math concepts were not far behind.  Then the heavens yielded their secrets.  Transmission of information, written and visual has most recently changed the world because paper is not necessary.  Records, therefore, are stored differently; anyone can see records with the right passcodes or if the author makes it public.  What's next?

The history of humanity has been exciting.  I would love to have been around right after the eruption of Mount Toba when the human race was reduced to under 10,000 people on the Earth's face.  I would have thought it fascinating to see how people moved about and cooperated during the last Ice Age.  I would have wanted to be present at the building of the Sphinx.  I would like to see one battle that a Roman regimen fought.  I would love to have watched King John sign the Magna Carta.  Meeting Ben Franklin would have been a pleasure.  Being a recipient of the world Steve Jobs touched has been a privilege.  Who or what will appear next?

Since the decades of my own life resemble that of humanity's ages, it means that something new and exciting is yet to come.  I would love that to happen.  I know those big changes happen only every so often.  But, surely over the next couple of decades...  I don't have a periscope, but anticipation tells me I might like it just fine.

Your hand, please

Conceit

Give me your hand

Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and the love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand.

Maya Angelou (2003);

The literary term conceit is a metaphor whose comparison is more complex than the simple comparison of most metaphors.  So by naming her poem the literary term, Angelou is telling the reader that there is more than something simple here.  If the title is merely sarcasm of the types of poems people normally write (as stated in the stanza saying that others could have the poetry about love lost), then the poem fails in being complex.  So, what is meant?

Angelou is wanting to go beyond what is normal.  Those who love, write poetry about their loved one or their experience of love, especially lost love.  But, she wants to ensure that she is not writing about love lost.  She wants to be above words.  Others can have the privacy of their words.  She wants the active love in addition to the verbal love.

The poem starts and ends the same way... almost.  The first line has no punctuation.  It anticipates explanation.  However, the last line ends with a period.  The explanation is finished.  It is time for love... at least by invitation.  Extending an invitation should be simple.  But this invitation is more complex than merely asking for your hand and is best understood through a play on words.  The expression of love through the rage of poetry is compared to a higher expression of love: rising above the rage.  The pun on rage is intended.  Normally, people cathardically spill their rage (anger) by scribbling off a few lines; they should rise above it.  And, the invitation extends to escaping the fashionable (rage) response - jilted love.  She doesn't want to be a casualty of either anger or fashion.  Angelou is asking the one she loves to make room for her - escape with her.  

So... give me your hand.

Living in temperate places

The Earth has two poles, and both are extremely cold places to live.  Humans have decided not to tackle living in the extremes.  They have opted for all the places in between, especially the temperate zones.

Inside every person are two poles of realization about living.  One is represented by T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men. He very pessimistically penned the words representing his world:

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion.

The other pole is represented by the psychological notion that what we think of ourselves in the world is what we actually become in the world, also known as inner self talk.  This notion was put forth by Albert Ellis in the form of an ABC model (A is an activating event, B is one's belief as a result of A, C is the consequence of B).  Eldon Taylor has commercialized this model in his work with subliminal messages, helping people create a robust belief in themselves.  He tells them that through positive inner talk they can achieve what they desire or alter their mode of operating.

Most of us have decided to live according to realizations of our own somewhere in between the extremes of the Hollow Men, where nothing counts for anything and the world ends "with a whimper, not with a bang," and the positive inner self talk, where the world is merely a reflection of the perception of ourselves.  Those poles are too extreme to live at; it's much more temperate between them... and I'm satisfied with that.

False measures

The exercise was to define success.  The audience was a group of adults who had never attended public schools with one exception.  They all defined success in terms of performance, determination, or hard work with the exception of the person who had attended public school.  That person defined success in terms of high grades leading to success in the workplace.

That's very troubling to me, not because I think that those who make high grades aren't successful but because the correlation between high grades and success can't be made statistically unless there is a clear definition for the term.  If something can be defined, it can be measured, and if it can be measured, then some conclusions can be drawn.  I suppose a person could survey a large number of people and find out what factors surface most often in their definitions of success, but that would still pose problems in measuring it since the factors would have to be weighted according to their frequency in the surveys.  As it stands, it's just as likely that drinking sodas is a factor in success as it is that grades or anything else are a factor.

If success can't really be defined, then it leads to another question about the message public schools are sending with their grading systems.  If grades led to success, then I would say, "Grade away."  But if success is some nebulous idea, then I say that grades don't show progress toward anything except the percentage of retention in the short term for a subset of skills.  If stamina is a contributing factor to success, then measure stamina.  If determination is a factor, measure it.  If ability to solve problems is a factor, then students need to develop that ability.  If oral communication is a factor, then measures should include that.

Giving an average of grades taken over a subset of skills disconnected from the package called success doesn't measure what is contained in the definitions I received for the word.  It's high time to halt the practice of equating grades with success.  Even if grade averages accidentally were the right measure  of academic success in some explainable way, a quantum leap still exists in correlating academic success to what adults define as success. 

If we want more successful people in society, we need to define that concept and reshape what we tout as paramount in our schools.  What IS measurable in the business world is the amount of money it takes to reeducate young people in what businesses expect people to know.  They could use some help from those in charge of educating our youth in the first place with teaching and measuring what counts in the workplace.

Behind and ahead

In the early days of recorded history, people looked at the skies and saw that the stars rotated, that the sun rose in the morning and set in the evening, and that the days were longer in summer, shorter in winter.  There are monuments built by them that highlight the solstices, rotation of the stars, and their understanding of the days of the year.

Thousands of years passed, and finally, in the Middle Ages, people figured out that the Earth revolved and rotated, the sun was the center of the universe, that the 8 planets also revolved around the sun as the Earth did, and that the moon controled the Earth's tides to a large degree.

A few hundred more years passed.  Then, people figured out how to calculate distances in space. They also discovered that the stars represented other solar systems, ours was just one of many, that galaxies existed everywhere, that black holes and white holes served as mechanisms to destroy and birth stars, that galaxies were on the move toward each other, destroying each other, that galaxies were connected by a solar type of matter that appeared like thread, and much more.

I'm thinking that as we learn to terraform and populate Mars and learn to travel beyond the solar system we now inhabit, that we will continue to be spellbound and  unravel the great mysteries that will have arisen from our knowledge.  An astronomer working for NASA was interviewed about all of our current exploration, including the search for a habitable planet like Earth in galaxies far away.  She said, "If we ever find an Earth-like planet somewhere else, it will profoundly change the way we look at the skies."

I guess our own lives are microcosms of the journey civilization has taken with the skies.  We are trained to reason a certain  way until we are about 30 before we start exploring on our own.  Then, we learn the world around us so well that we began to manipulate it to our advantage.  Eventually, we discover the more accurate truths about living and change our thinking to match our new knowledge.  But, there's that one pending piece of knowledge, that if discovered, will profoundly change our thinking.

I have changed my thinking already... a lot... along my way.  But I also know of an Earth-like planet that exists in a sphere outside of mine.  If I ever get there, it will profoundly change the way I look at and live life.

There's always something

The island bustled with the activity of all of its 200  residents.  They were busy getting their wares set up for the tourists to buy because they represented a number of different countries and quite a few states from across the nation, thus a great opportunity for money to be made.  The wares being sold weren't cheap.  They weren't trinkets.  The island was 5 miles around the perimeter.  Bicycle riding was the main mode of transportation for both tourists and residents.  People had gathered to soak in Atlantic beauty as it washed up on a rocky coastline.  Other islands dotted the view all the way around the coast of the one at the center of the view.

That was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, idyllic really.  I look at those pictures from time to time so that I will remember the feeling of utter relaxation.  One notable memory, though, marred the otherwise celestial scene...  all that oceanic majesty was enjoyed by one person, not shared by two.

Life presents circumstances that are many times so cruel.  I think that is supposed to make a person stronger somehow, or perhaps clearer headed so that a strategy can be developed for not allowing the circumstance to happen again.  I'm sure, though, that the angst created is greater than the spectacular vista and the lesson to be learned.  I find myself still shouting at the gulls circling the waves crashing into the 20 feet sheer sides of the stony bluffs, "No, no, no!"

Keeping that edge

Writers all have something that drives them to write for others who read their work.  Their motivations are many, but they will tell you that they need that reason to drive them because they normally don't finish their work in one sitting.  They rely on something to keep them coming back to the computer to type until they get finished.  And we're all glad they do because a little something for everyone's interests are contained in those books.

That's a pretty good analogy for the way life is.  Some days are hard to get up for.  But, we all know we have to, and it's nice to also perform at a decent or high level while we're up for the day.  But what keeps us going day after day?  Something drives us; perhaps, someone inspires us.

And if we ever lose that reason, that person... well... it's not pretty.  For writers, the story turns south or doesn't get completed.  In life, one's edge is lost, and that works itself into many different endings.

What a long night

There is an American saying, "the night is the darkest right before dawn."  For the most part, that is true literally and figuratively. Sometimes life intensifies before catching a break.  But I do rely on the fact that around the corner darkness breaks.  A more poetic version of the above saying is, "as sure as the night follows the day, so day breaks at the end of each night."  I'm not thankful for the first part of the cycle, but when that part of the cycle is in force, I do count on the truth of the second part of the saying.

I'm waiting on the turn of the Earth for the hint of the sun's rays.

Different Worlds

"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write." H.G.Wells

 Well, that's what I was thinking too.  Apparently, though, there is another school of thought.  I volunteered to "crunch" numbers for a cause that the executive director of a charity could use to make herself and her cause look very good.  Nope, she didn't bite.  She had a different perception of statistics.

"Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted."

Albert Einstein 

OK.  But I don't want to hear any moaning and groaning when suddenly things unravel and the things that should have been counted weren't, and the things that counted weren't.  Signiificance, trends, central tendencies, growth, and decline can be known factors.

Oh well.  I tried.  For free even.  But I think she thought I was arrogant or didn't really know what I was talking about.  Even if the first part was true, she should have looked past the attitude for the benefit to her.  She'll never know whether the second part was true or not since she couldn't ever understand that my offer contained something besides the raw numbers she was presenting in a table and calling statistics.

 

The two of us live in different worlds.  She wants to marvel at numbers.  I want to know what the numbers mean.  It's a matter of efficient citizenship to me.

First blood

USA Today carried an article two days ago of a survey taken.  I need to read the full survey before making too many comments.  And, a survey is the softest kind of statistical data to base too many predictions on, but I do want to comment on the direction the percentages suggest.

The article was about companies' hiring practices in the U.S.  Companies are still hiring people in the baby boom generation over younger generations for two reasons: 1) they are more reliable, and 2) they don't have to be reeducated to have good communication skills.  That's not as surprising as the pecentages given for reason 2.  Companies had to retrain 5 times as many younger workers as baby boom workers in the area of communication.

On one hand the percentage is surprising.  It is not often that the business world opts for older workers over younger workers.  On the other hand, it was predictable.  Jane Healy's book Endangered Minds was one of the first to speak of young people's "fuzzy grammar" in 1991.  Many people then and since have noted the effects of teaching to tests in favor of presenting a non-uniform, robust curriculum transferable to unpredictable situations.  Over the last decade, that fuzzy grammar group has begun and is continuing to come of age.  That's good news for baby boomers... at least for the moment.

The other side of the coin will take place soon, but certainly no later than the death of most of the baby boomers.  Communication will adjust itself to whatever the younger generations want it to be.  And that is the point of this blog.  The survey supports the idea that the major forms of communication are about to change.  Judging from the amount of You Tube activity, even for education, the amount of video consumption from TV to cell phone, the format of tracking one's life through pictures and short video clips through many formats including Picaso and Facebook, and the advent of holographic transmission, communication form has no choice but to be transformed.

Reading and writing are being phased out.  It's beginning to show up now in statistical data, not anecdotal data.  Soon more quantitative studies will surface showing the same trends that the survey showed.  Dinosaurs take note.  The KT boundary is now being put in place separating the Old World from the New. 

Quantifying satisfaction

In baseball, many a batter has envied a batting average of 200 or better.  Pitches come in fast and low, sometimes fast and high.  Pitches curve from left to right and from right to left.  Balls come straight for the corner of the plate, then tail off.  Sometimes the pitches change up and come in more slowly than anticipated.

That's why it is enviable to hit more than 200.  Every ball a batter hits, counts.  It increases the average by a small fraction of a point.  That translates into about a point and a half for each hit a batter is lucky to connect with.  An average of 250 is even harder to achieve.  Batters would love to have that average and work extremely hard to achieve it.  Not many actually do.

200 is written as .200.  It's a percentage - 20%.  That's not much.  Such an average fails in school.  One would expect a professional who gets paid millions to do much better than hit and become a base runner 20% of the time or even 25% of the time.  Occasionally, amazing players come along and put 250 to shame, hitting 3 out of 10 pitches.  A person in a business who showed up for work everyday but only was productive 30% of the time would go bankrupt or be fired.  An accountant who only made right decisions about numbers 30% of the time would retain no client.

But, context is everything.  3 out of 10 is what I am shooting for right now. I will come by all I've wanted if I but only achieve 300.  I'll outstrip the 200s and 250s by excelling to 300.  30% and I'll be the most satisfied person alive.

Savoring the flavor

Among my vices is good ole fried chicken.  I call it a vice because it is not really the best food for me to be eating.  It raises my cholesterol level immediately and adds three pounds to my weight.  Working out removes the effects well enough, but it takes twice the number of exercises or daily walks to accomplish that removal.  So, I don't eat it often, certainly not as often as my taste buds create the craving.

Fortunately, I can spare an extra cholesterol spike or a couple of pounds on the body every once in a while so that deprivation doesn't drive me completely crazy.  And fortunately, in life I have a hint enough of fried chicken experiences to keep me from wasting away with the diet that is required to keep me getting up in the mornings.  Just that hint of beautiful visuals in my mind's eye sets my mouth to watering every time.

Non-plused

Headlines about education in today's newspaper were supposed to be sensational - and would have been if the year was 1990.  The Secretary of Education announced that the day of the physical, bound textbook would be over with the next adoption of any subject's textbook.  In 1990 for sure that would have been absolutely sensational.  In 2000 the announcement would have been notable and admirable.  But, in 2012?

In my world in the last week alone, I never wrote one word other than my signature.  I typed everything I sent or used.  The files I typed were either saved to a resident hard drive or to a drive in the cloud.  I transferred money and checked balances at three different banks electronically.  Everyone I needed to contact for some reason or another by written word was sent an email or a text.  I made a presentation to a group of people during which I projected a YouTube interview, typed live feedback into a Power Point program, then showed pictures for ideas from a website suited for that purpose.  I read correspondence from my doctor and saw a table detailing results from blood work done on a website the hospital uses for all of its patients.

And, of course, last week I used the handiest device yet invented.  The news I receive daily was not on my driveway in the mornings, but on my phone whenever I had time to read.  I also took a poll from my phone for USA Today and a split second later saw the results of voting from my city, state, and nation.  I received pictures of people important to me by phone and attended a song writing session via Skype with my cousin.  When I picked up prescriptions from the pharmacy, I knew they were ready because I had received a text message saying so along with the amount.  To pay for them I signed an electronic pad authorizing insurance coverage.  I had to buy a motor for my dryer this week also.  When I paid the amount at the end of the service call, the repairman took out a white square card reader, attached it to his phone, swiped my card, had me sign his screen, and sent an sent a receipt automatically to my email account.  A little later, my granddaughter sat in my lap, and we watched my phone screen as I streamed in an episode from Disney's Snow White.  And, I did use my phone  to make a phone call, but I never dialed a number.  I touched the name or picture of someone or pressed a linked phone number. 

I'm pretty sure the good Secretary lives in the same world.  So, he knows that his announcement today is really an announcement that is at least one decade late, two in my opinion.  So, his words were not even important or relevant for 2012.  Now, if he had said that the new textbooks would be readable from an app on a phone or a television, then I might have taken notice.  If he had remarked that the schools would be required to make teaching videos available like the ones called Kahn Academy, then I would have applauded him.  If he had announced a partnership with Exxon Mobil to to fund the use of the new 3D Google Maps for geography, holographic, virtual labs in STEM courses, and 3D manipulative software for reading the stratigraphy of the Earth in geology courses, I would have loved his forward thinking.  If he had acknowledged the existence of online high schools and that brick and mortar schools would be phased out in favor of funding for new digital tablets for students to attend the online schools, then I would have been ecstatic.

But he didn't.  He announced the use of technology available in the last decade of the 20th century.  Electronic textbooks have been available for more than 10 years, widely available for more than 5 years, and most school districts already have them available to both students and parents.  Even RSS feeds from a teacher and school are as old as electronic textbooks.  So, Mr. Secretary, once again you are acknowledging the state of ill repair for the public schools you oversee.  Apparently, you want the nation's students to continue their slide into new depths of failure and ignorance, distancing them behind more and more developing countries.  Our country's higher education schools have world class status.  But, our lower education schools are second class rather than second to none.  Our nation is full of students who would like to use today's tools for information that will prepare them for tomorrow rather than see themselves forced to use yesterday's tools for information that prepare them to maintain what is already known.

The little we know

I have stopped being amazed at the enigmas ancient civilizations pose to us modern people.  Out of the jungles of Mesoamerica emerges a metropolis that has a temple with a square base that is the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza.  The base held a half pyramid but the size was the same with tunnels dug throughout (just like the Egyptian pyramids).  It  was amongst other great stone buildings which were configured after part of a constellation (also like the pyramids of Giza).

It's also pretty symmetrical that they are half a world away from each other and date back to roughly the same time.  If the two happen to be connected, then there is one site for the side of the planet facing the sun and one for the side in the dark at any given time.  One notable difference is that the stones used to build the Mesoamerican city contained mica and transparent quartz throughout it all.  Mica has properties of withstanding heat from radiation, the kind used for spaceship reentries through the atmosphere.

Perhaps, the explanation of such phenomena includes alien help in our ancient history, or perhaps, it merely means the humans had access to much more than we know about, that they were very advanced and then, for some reason, they were destroyed and humans lost some prior knowledge and had to start over again.  Either way, the history books need revising.

Life gives us wonder and beauty if we but look hard enough, and sometimes those two elements are not at all found in what we expect but derive from what is surprising.  We end up playing the "what if?" game to see if the surprises could be true.  I like the taste of the "what if's" that have surfaced and they tantalize me to keep looking for what could underlie our simple understanding of times gone by.