Mission to Mars

It can be difficult to listen to the daily news when you see things from a different perspective. Somehow, I got saddled with a global view of things, a "big-picture perspective," and it's very hard for me to shake. I'm being genuine when I say that I often wish I could look at things on a much more local, individual level. I'd be a calmer, quieter person. I wouldn't be such a pain in the ass. 

For example, yesterday, as I was driving home from work, I heard a story on the radio about an effort involving students at some of our top universities (Duke, MIT, Stanford, UConn) to send a time capsule to Mars. They are now engaging in crowd funding this project, which will cost an estimated $25 million. The plan is to send a satellite, with the time capsule, on a rocket that is scheduled to launch in 2017. Now, I am normally a strong supporter of science and research, because I recognize that all of the world has benefited from the technological advances that came about from ideas that were once perceived as crazy, or at least impractical. And, maybe this is just a case of me getting old and jaded, rather than of me looking at the big picture. But, I couldn't help but feel a little exasperated when I heard this news story.

Seriously? This is what we're going to do with $25 million dollars? We're going to send a bunch of photos and videos and recordings of ourselves to Mars, where they will sit, untouched, forever because...wait for it....nobody lives there!?! Nobody even visits there! 

Setting aside the fact that time capsules have always seemed to me to be nothing more than ego stroking, I'm floored that a collection of brilliant young people would want to spend any of their intelligence on such a ridiculous project. There must be some important scientific knowledge that will be gained from this that I just cannot see. I'm not a scientist and I don't have the training and understanding that scientists have, so I must be missing something. Please, tell me I'm missing something!

When I heard they were raising $25 million from people paying, $1 at a time, to send their photos to Mars, I immediately thought of the Central African Republic, where a sectarian war has been raging for over a year, leading to a million displaced people and thousands of deaths. Today, about 20,000 people are trapped in 16 different communities because, if they leave their homes, they could get attacked before they can reach safety. Could we use $25 million to get these people to someplace safe, help them get re-settled, help them find jobs and get their kids in schools? Maybe.

I also thought of Syria. More than 6 million people have become refugees or been displaced by the civil war in that country. It's clear that $25 million would be a drop in the bucket to help those people, but gosh, it's better than nothing, right?

And, it's not just about the money, is it? I fully support space exploration. I support nearly all scientific endeavors, so it's painful for me to say this, but...shouldn't we be putting our great minds to work on clean water, healthy food, renewable energy, carbon-emissions reduction, and health care to every person on the planet? I mean, we should have nailed these things down by now, right? Hell, there are still people in the US that don't have the health care they need, while our politicians raise billions of dollars every year to get elected so they can go to Washington and make sure that those people continue to not have the health care they need! My perspective makes it hard for me to support any politician. When I look at one of them, all I see is someone who wants power in order to be powerful, not to help anyone. I don't see people who want to make things better. I see people who want to be powerful and rich and in charge. 

Are these the kinds of questions that philosophers wrestle with? Does anyone actually know a philosopher, someone who, when you ask, "What do you do for a living?" answers, "I'm a philosopher"?

Of course, it doesn't help that the Time Capsule To Mars web site declares that, "A focus market for educational engagement will include K-12-aged kids from all over the world." I've known for a long time that there were many people and organizations that viewed our public schools as opportunities to make lots of money, and I don't oppose making money, in general. We enjoy our standard of living because we have had generations of Americans who have focused on making lots of money, so I'm behind capitalism. I just don't like seeing people referring to students as a market, especially at a time in our history when our schools and the people who work in them are under attack. I became a teacher in 1987 and it's pretty much been a constant stream of attacks from politicians, business leaders, and pundits. My sister, Maggie, warned me about the damage Reagan would do back in 1984. I didn't realize that it was a turning point for public education. Maggie, you're like a prophet.

I seriously want a new perspective on things. Scientists, please help me see the value in this time capsule thing. Point out to me how I'm looking at it the wrong way. 

Extremism and Poverty

I’ve been particularly appalled by recent events in Nigeria. Boko Haram, a terrorist organization, has kidnapped hundreds of girls from their school and threatened to sell them. The Nigerian government has, so far, had little luck in finding the girls. Their efforts are hindered, to some degree, by the fact that many people in the area where the girls went to school support Boko Haram. Many others are indifferent. Although I’m sure nearly everyone would agree that it is wrong to kidnap people, attitudes toward extremist groups are often complex and difficult to navigate.

There’s so much in this issue to address, and I’d love to hold forth on how easy it appears to be for many people in the world to treat girls and women as property. But, that’s for another day. Right now, I’m thinking more about the relationship between extreme poverty and extremism/terrorism. For a long time, I thought I knew what poverty was and I felt grateful to have escaped it. After a little research on life in Nigeria and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), I have revised my understanding of poverty. I know nothing about true poverty.

In Nigeria, most people are illiterate and hardly anyone goes to school at all. The average life expectancy in Nigeria is 52 and almost half of the people don’t have access to clean water. Electricity is just a dream to most Nigerians. Diseases that we thought were gone, such as polio and cholera, are still public health concerns for Nigerians. And yet, the country has the 30th highest GDP in the world and it is the second largest economy in Africa. People often live in mud brick houses, but there are also plenty of multimillionaires in Nigeria, including the President. So, there is a chasm between the wealthy and the rest of the Nigerian population.

Life has been difficult in Nigeria for a long time. It was a British colony from 1914 to 1960, when it gained independence. However, a series of military coups in the 1960s and military juntas through the 1990s left the country poor, underdeveloped, and divided along ethnic lines. Recently, there’s been significant economic development, but most elections are seen as fraught with fraud, and corruption continues to be pervasive. Child marriage is common and slavery still exists within Nigeria.

The DRC has been described as the “rape capital of the world,” which gives you an idea of what it’s like to be female in that country. Economically, the Congolese are among the world’s poorest, with the 4th lowest GDP per capita in 2013, according to the World Bank (the CIA puts it at 2nd lowest). There have been ongoing armed conflicts in the country since 1998 and, although there have been some recent signs that the government is gaining control, there are still armed groups in the eastern region of the DRC. Because of the conflicts, there have been few opportunities for children to attend school and 5.4 million Congolese have died since 1998, mostly due to diseases brought on by the unsanitary living conditions of displaced persons. Half of all children under the age of five are malnourished. Less than 10% of the country has electricity and most do not have clean water.

The DRC is also a former colony, although it belonged to Belgium. In 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium took control of the territory and named it the Congo Free State. He set up an administration that was brutal in its treatment of the people and ruthless in its extraction of natural resources. In 1908, Leopold’s rule was ended by the Belgian Parliament. Eventually, the DRC was created when it gained independence in 1960. After armed struggles for control, the country came under the leadership of President Mobutu and changed its name to Zaire. Mobutu was forced out of the country in 1997 by Laurent Kabila’s forces and Kabila declared himself President and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has been president ever since.

In both Nigeria and the DRC, armed conflicts continue due to terrorist or insurgent groups in parts of the countries. What the groups are trying to achieve varies, but their goals are generally related to their ethnic or religious affiliations. In both countries, colonization meant that disparate ethnic groups were brought together in a newly created territory with foreign leaderships. Some of these groups had been hostile to each other prior to colonization. In some cases, those hostilities continue today. But the difficulties in these countries today aren’t caused exclusively by ethnic conflicts. 

Extremist groups continue to recruit, mainly among those living in rural regions. Some of these recruitments are forced, with some groups using children as soldiers. However, not all of them are forced. So I wonder why someone would choose to join an extremist group in an armed conflict. What I’m left to conclude is that abject poverty is the main reason. Poverty in these countries is so extreme, so different from what is currently poverty in the US, that it may be hard to really imagine what life is like for the poor in Nigeria and the DRC. 

Imagine you are a woman in your 20s living in a town in the north of the DRC. You have not attended school, you cannot read or write, and you live in a tent. Your tent is located in a small collection of tents of other families. You have no running water, no electricity, no mode of transportation. You have a young child. Your husband has left you to raise the child alone. Every day, you must walk to get fresh water and haul it back to your tent. You farm and gather food without any equipment. You wash your clothes by hand. There is no reliable local government, so no police force to help you when a soldier in the army comes to your tent one night and rapes you. The people around you see the rape as somehow your fault and tell you to be embarrassed by it. 

Would you be angry? Would you feel hopeless? Would you want revenge against the government that employs the soldier who raped you? The government that is full of corrupt individuals who are rich because they have taken the funds that could have been used to give you an education? The government that is led by people who have electricity, running water, all the food they can eat, and transportation? The government that allows you to live in fear, without a reliable source of food and water, without any health care? What kind of justice would you want?

This scares me, because I can see a possible future for the US in which economic disparities worsen, corruption worsens, and extremist groups get more powerful. Given the number of guns in the US that are not owned by our military, this could create a horrible situation in which there are multiple, well-armed extremist groups around the country. It would take a while for things to get that bad, but it could happen. If we don't change how we treat people who are poor, and if we don't change the rules that have made it so hard for people to get ahead, it could get very ugly, indeed.

Poverty is a terrible thing. Extreme poverty is dangerous. When people don’t have hope, they become desperate. Desperate people do dangerous things.  

An Awesome Weekend

I saw Rhett Miller perform on April 5th at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro. This was, I think, the 4th time I’ve seen him performing solo and, as usual, he was great. He really throws himself into his performances and he’s got a charming stage personality. He did several songs that will be on the new Old 97s album and they sounded fantastic. I had a great time.

The coolest part, though, was that I got to meet him - twice. During the opening act, I was second in line for the bathroom, when who should come out but Rhett, himself! I was so surprised I just stared and yelled, “Oh my God!” The woman who was in front of me didn’t even seem to notice and just went straight into the bathroom. But I was dumbstruck. He was very nice and smiled and held his hand out for me to shake, saying, “I just washed my hands,” which was nice but I really don’t think I would have cared either way. I actually was able to speak after a few seconds, at least enough to answer him when he asked my name and to ask him if he was sick (his voice sounded hoarse). I then switched from fan-mode to mom-mode and asked him if he would be going home soon, because he needed to rest. Yes, I really did. Full-blown, dorky, mom-mode. He said he was flying home in the morning after a 2-week tour. I said, “You must really miss your kids.” Yes, I really did. He was very nice and didn’t seem to mind that I was acting like his mother and agreed that he did, indeed, miss his kids quite a bit. Awwwww!

After the show, he stuck around so that fans could get his autograph. Andrew was wonderfully patient and stood in line with me,even buying me a t-shirt (after I did some shameless whining) while we waited to get our picture taken with him. When it was our turn, I walked up and was going to re-introduce myself, but he looked at me and said, “You again.” Clearly, I had made a wonderful impression. Anyway, I did introduce Andrew to him and he even smiled for our picture, because he's just a great guy. 

So, I've had another brush with greatness. As I said to Andrew, now I've met Walter Payton and Rhett Miller. Not too shabby.

Have I mentioned, by the way, how much I love my husband? He puts up with my nerdy enthusiasms so patiently and in such good humor. The next day, when I insisted on sticking around in Chapel Hill until my favorite store, Office Supplies and More, opened at 1:00 PM, Andrew didn't complain at all. He even took our daughter to Subway for a drink so I could have time to browse alone. I got a Lamy Studio fountain pen in Imperial Blue. I've been wanting one of these pens for a while, so I think it was an outstanding weekend.

It's Music, Teacha!

What is it about music? It goes so directly to my emotions and memories, physically. It moves me and makes me move. And this seems to be universal. Everyone I know can identify some songs or music that are meaningful, that evoke moments or sensations. Some songs are triggers for me and can immediately make me melancholy, thrilled, wistful, randy, or whatever my association is. I’m like a dog hearing a bell and salivating because I associate it with being fed.

Thinking about something like this makes you realize how close we are to other animals. The difference is just that we have the ability to reflect on our reactions, although I guess we don’t know that other animals don’t also have that ability. Who can say what goes on in the mind of a dog or bear or elephant or ferret? 

My younger daughter has always been able to sing. When she was a toddler, before she could talk, she could sing along with songs she’d heard at home or at pre-school, even though she didn’t pronounce the words accurately and she had no idea what they meant. One of my saddest memories of her is sitting with our family in the food court of a mall while the song “Standing Still”, by Jewel, was playing, and hearing her sweet little voice singing along with it. Even though it made me unbelievably sad, it’s one of my most precious memories of her as a child. Just beautiful. 

She still sings, and now she can also talk. We know that music is an effective way to teach children and, in my daughter’s case, it worked pretty well. She learned songs and, eventually, the words transferred to allow her to communicate with people. But, it all started with that musical beginning; I think it was an emotional connection. Did she need to feel the emotional piece first, before she could understand or see the reason for speech? No idea, and I’m getting a little carried away here, starting to sound like one of those mystical, “I might not be religious, but I’m spiritual” people. I’m neither, but I know that there is a direct line between music and emotions and it’s great and powerful and terrifying. Educators should use it more and music should definitely be part of everyone’s schooling. Teachers have been told for years that their students will need to feel an emotional connection to them and to the content in order to learn deeply, so why not use music to help with that? When I was a teacher, I used music, albeit not as much as I could have, to teach culture and to help my students reflect and make connections. I was surprised, more than once, but the reactions they had, which were sometimes intense, sometimes disdainful, and always interesting.

Here are some songs that always get a strong reaction from me and what I associate them with:

• “Reach Out, I’ll Be There”  - The Four Tops (love, but the really intense first-time-falling-in-love kind that is also really scary)
• “April Fools” - Rufus Wainwright (happiness that comes with setting out on a vacation or road trip)
• “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” - The Temptations (fear)
• “Unsatisfied” - The Replacements (this one used to make me feel like the future was wide open and I had unlimited potential)
• “Freeze The Saints” - Stephen Malkmus (wistfulness)
• “You’re My Favorite Waste Of Time” - Marshall Crenshaw (bliss and love)
• "Summer Breeze" - Seals & Crofts (confusion and trepidation)
• “Brown Haired Daughter” - The Old 97s (sex, sorry if that creeps you out)
• “Every Line Of A Long Moment” - Roddy Woomble (I don’t know what this evokes in me. It’s sort of a painful kind of happiness? A slightly violent transcendence?)
• “This Will Be Our Year” - The Zombies (thrilled, like when someone whispers something really sweet in your ear and you get chills down your spine)