Tag: History

John Glenn and The Big Idea

Fifty years ago today, we took a guy from Ohio, sat him on top of 100,000 kilos of high octane fuel, lit the match and shot him straight out of our oxygen-rich atmosphere into the void of space.  And the only reason we did it is because we could.  We had the technology to throw man and machine off our planet entirely so we did.  John Glenn didn’t have to put on his polyester suit and plastic helmet and climb into Friendship 7 that morning.  He wasn’t an essential component of the mission.  In fact, he was considered extra weight by Von Braun’s aeronautical engineers.  He was, as Chuck Yeager called him, “spam in a can.”  Nor was he the ground-breaking first person in space: Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin beat him there by ten months.  He wasn’t even the first American: Alan Shepard and “Gus” Grissom got there first.  However, John Glenn is the one we remember because he was part of the Big Idea.

The Big Idea is that magical mystery phenomenon that galvanizes a people and motivates them to reach for the stars – in this case, literally.  It grabs our imagination and brings our best qualities forward to achieve what might even seem to be impossible.  It’s a vision of a better future.  It ignites the human spirit.  It can be as simple as The March of Dimes to end polio or as large as the Interstate Highway system.  But the one common denominator of the Big Idea is people believe.

Six months after John Glenn orbited the earth and returned home safely, President John Kennedy stepped up to the podium at Rice University in Houston, Texas and told America what the Big Idea was.  He said:

“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet.  Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain?  Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?  Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too”

Kennedy could have held a Washington, DC press conference and mambled on about committing billions of dollars to rocketry, computer technology, material fabrication and the exploration of space, but he didn`t.  He went to a university where his future technicians would come from and said, “Hey! What are you doin’ after graduation?  Let`s all go to the moon!”  He told those bright-eyed kids that they could be the first generation to defy the laws of gravity set down by Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century.  He told them they could slip the surly bonds of earth and follow Copernicus and Galileo into history.  He turned their faces to the shiny thing in the sky that has fascinated humans since the beginning of time and told them they can go there.  And he told them their studies, their work, their very lives had a purpose, a meaning, a fulfillment.  He gave them the Big Idea that they could do something larger than themselves.  They could make a contribution, however small, to the continuity of civilization. He gave them a tangible target and said go get it.

And the Big Idea caught fire.  For seven years those kids and others worked long hours, suffered setbacks, had triumphs, dug in hard and gave their creativity and time to every problem and their enthusiasm and energy to every solution.  They built one of the most complex systems in history, and in July, 1969, they took another guy from Ohio and put him on the Moon.  And they walked away proud of their accomplishment in a world that was better off because of what they’d done.

Fifty years ago today, John Glenn made a giant leap into space.  He did it because somebody had to.  He was one small step on the stairway to the stars, a single part of the Big Idea that said “We can do this.”

Half a century later, even though we can live in space now and send our machines to Mars and the outer reaches of our solar system, we still have staircases in our world.  They lead to hungry places, places without light, places where people suffer needlessly in a world of plenty.  Sometimes, it looks as though these are insurmountable problems that will plague humanity for all time.  They aren’t.  There are still Big Ideas in the world; we’ve just forgotten where to look for them.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee

Today, February 6th, 2012, is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.  For sixty years, Her Majesty has been the Queen — and that’s the gist of it, really.  She is not a queen, one of many queens, although there are still many queens in the world.  She is The Queen – universally recognized.  This is partially to do with the enduring power of the British monarchy – nearly 2,000 years old – but mostly it’s to do with the Queen herself.

In 1952, when Queen Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, Britain was still an imperial power.  Winston Churchill, who had served Queen Victoria, was the Prime Minister of Britain and Harry S Truman, a haberdasher from Missouri, was President.  He was the last President who did not have a university degree.  Joseph Stalin, a peasant from Georgia, was the ruthless master of the Soviet Union, and Chairman Mao, a librarian from Hunan, ruled China.  Vladimir Putin, Sarkozy, Merkel and David Cameron weren’t born yet; nor were Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama.

People wrote letters to each other.  Telephones were attached to the wall, and long distance calls were an event.  People still sent telegrams.  In 90% of the British Commonwealth (as it was called) television was an intriguing rumour.  Most people didn’t fly, and great distances were covered in boats and trains.

In 1952, the majority of Queen Elizabeth’s British subjects earned (in American dollars) less than $250.00 per month.  However, beef was 85 cents per lb, chicken, 56 cents and apples (when you could get them; Britain still had wartime rationing) were only 19 cents per lb.  Fresh fruits and vegetables were outrageously expensive out of season, and there was no such thing as fast food.

In 1952, walking on the moon was the stuff of science fiction; Sir Edmund Hillary hadn’t even walked on Mount Everest yet.  Although transistors had been invented by Bell Laboratories in 1947, it would take Sony, a Japanese company that didn’t exist yet, three more years to commercially market the Transistor Radio.

In 1952, Queen Elizabeth was Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” and nobody thought that sounded strange.

In 1952, automobiles didn’t have seatbelts.  Cyclists didn’t wear helmets, and consumer products didn’t come with warning labels.  There were repair shops for household items.  Doctors made house calls, and lawyers didn’t advertise.

In 1952, the world was halfway through the 20th century.  The good old days were vanishing and our contemporary society was just being born.

It is a testament to Her Majesty that, despite the upheavals of a world that now seems to be spinning faster than most of us can understand, she has maintained an unassailable dignity. For sixty years, she has represented the best of what we are supposed to be.  Quietly and continually, she has done what was expected of her, not perhaps what she herself wanted to do.  She has spent a lifetime dedicated to her task — without comment or complaint or the flares of ego so common these days.

Few, if any, institutions have survived intact from 1952.  They’ve all been swept away by history.  Yet, Queen Elizabeth II remains The Queen.

Hiya, 2012! How are ya?

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At the risk of clinging to a dead horse, I’m not finished with 2011 yet.  I think it was such a cool year we should extend it for a month or two.  I’ve got nothing against 2012.  I hardly know it, actually.  In fact, we’re barely acquainted, so I’m not going to rush to pass judgement.  I’m willing to give it a chance but at this point, all 2012 has to offer is the reality show “Who Wants To Be The President?” and the Mayan End of the World.  Tres boring!  Meanwhile, 2011 had so much stuff going on it’s hard to imagine it’s over.  It’s like when the rollercoaster comes sliding into the flat part at the end – you’re crying, your heart’s racing, you just about threw up and you’re going to need the Jaws of Life to deal with your underwear — but you’re kinda not finished yet, even though the ride is, and you want to go around again.  That’s the way I feel about 2011.  I’m like Oliver Twist, “Please sir, I want some more.”

The media echo chamber has done The Year in Review ad naseum and besides if you’re reading this you were obviously there, so it’s not like there are any surprises from last year.  However, if we cast a more critical eye over it, I think you’ll agree 2012 is going to have to be one kick-ass year to top 2011.

First of all, we got rid of some bad guys.  Ben Ali and Mubarak got tossed out of North Africa.  Muammar and his kids didn’t take the hint in Libya and they got the boot, too – with extreme prejudice, I might add.  In December, according to the local media, Kim Jung –il invented death in North Korea.  However, the brightest black star on the In Memoriam calendar was Osama Bin Laden who got double-tapped in Pakistan in May.  Too bad 2011 ran out before the people of Syria could turn Bashar al-Assad into a piñata and it’s going to take more than twelve months to adios what’s-his-name (I’m a dinner jacket?  Ahmadinejad?) out of Iran.  The same goes for Chavez in Venezuela, although ….  Meanwhile, it looks like a remake of The Lion King in North Korea where a weird wicked uncle is running the show until all-powerful adolescent Kim Jung-un grows into his daddy’s jackboots.  All in all, not a good year for villains.

The debt crisis in the United States proved that Republicans are just about as stupid as Barack Obama — which is going some — but it’s a great lead-up to 2012’s ultimate game of Survivor.  The various tribal councils (read state primaries) will determine who is voted off the election island but the real question on the Republican side is whether tired ideology will beat out pragmatic reality.  Stay tuned!

Across the Atlantic, in what was once the post Cold War European dinner party, the credit cards are starting to come back declined.  The purveyors of the feast, Papandreou, Berlusconi and Zapatero have all conveniently found the exits and Frau Merkel is getting the sinking feeling she’ll be stuck with the bill.  Good luck, Angela, and keep in mind, your date, Monsieur Sarkozy, might not be around long enough himself to help you cover the tab.  The question in 2012 may very well be: how many Deutsche Marks does it take to cover a Euro-failure?

However, even though the Western monetary crisis isn’t global – yet — it’s already showing some positive results.  There has been a serious cull in the herd of pretentious wine snobs that have plagued us for the last decade, and people are beginning to worry more about what they’re going to have for dinner than what Snooki ate.  Every dark cloud has a silver lining.

Fortunately, the biggest load of crap from 2011 seems to be dying a natural death, although a few hangers-on still believe they can resurrect the corpse.  The Occupy Whatever! Movement, which started out as a marketing campaign from Adbusters Magazine and ballooned into a half-inflated media beach ball has fizzled out.  The onset of cold weather cooled the ardour of even the most passionate proponent of social change.  Shivering for one’s ideals was just too much to ask of this generation’s activists.  They tend to run more towards social media and sun screen than a sustained attention span.  With any luck at all, the Occupier will continue to fade away and the whole thing will turn into a 2011 version of Woodstock: a “wasn’t that a time” nostalgic lie to tell the grandchildren.  If not, the summer of 2012 is going to be another pain in the ass for the people who are actually working on changing our social structures.

However, time marches on.  There’s no use living in the past even if it was only a couple of days ago.

Okay, 2012, show me what you’ve got!