I already wrote about my strange obsession with the Celts, a European Bronze Age and Iron Age people  dominant between 700 BCE and 77 CE. In 51 CE, Julius Caesar “pacified” Gaul. The first slaughter of druids on Anglesey (Mona) in Wales the home of the last druid “college,” came in 61 CE by Suetonius Paulinus. Then he got to feeling like Julius.. Paulinus chose to ignore the treaty with the Iceni that established right of succession for their  lands. When Queen Boudica’s husband left the Iceni lands to her and her daughters, Paulinus seized her lands. When this “stroppy woman” objected he flogged publicly her and let his soldiers gang rape her daughters.

Boudica did not take such treatment well and led a revolt first slaughtering half the residents of Londinium only to be narrowly defeated later. Paulinus limped back to Rome and about fifteen years later Gnaeus Julius Agricola conquered Mona, after the Boudican revolt.  The Celts were finally subjugated in Britain.

Celts might disagree, and there are six “nations” still speaking Celtic languages, and no countries speaking Latin.  But Celtic dominance in Europe was over at this point.  Still seven hundred and fifty years ain’t a bad run, and influences persist today.

Many holidays we celebrate stem from Celtic Fire festivals, Christmas (Historians tell us that Jesus was likely born in the spring, but Christians celebrate his birth around the Solstice), Groundhog day, (Imbolc) celebration of lambing and mama-sheep lactation. May Day (Beltane) was first usurped by young women showing off moves around the maypole, now by the International Communist Party for Labor Day, (except in the US where we are allergic to red).

And let us not forget Halloween, the Celtic New Year’s Eve, known as Samhain (a Gaelic word pronounced “Sah-Win”). This won’t be a revelation to any horror movie fans because this fact has been written into many scary flick scripts released around October 31

The Celts tracked the time of days from sundown to sundown. (Does Judaic tradition track time that way?) The Celtic year similarly ran from the dark to the light from November 1 to October 31.

The Celts were also genealogy obsessed. They evidently introduced themselves by giving their lineage. I am the son of______, who was the son of_____, etc. A tradition that survives with the prefix Mac, or Mc, of Scots and Irish names and the O’ in Irish names like O’Brien, O’Connor, etc. (Is this parallel to the Bin or Ben in cultures in the Middle East?)

I know a little about ancestor obsession because my wife is an amateur genealogist. On gift giving holidays some relative, stuck for a gift, will give her a mug which says “I know where the nuts came from” or a tee shirt that says “I seek Dead People.”

For Celts, though, the dead weren’t, you know, dead and gone, desiccated skeletons in barrow tombs; they were just in the “Other World.” On New Year’s the walls between the worlds were thin. At a time, when you might be thinking about your plans for the next year, your dead family might show up with a lot of unsolicited advice. Further some of your dead friends might want you to come hang out with them and some of your dead enemies might show up to settle a score.

So if you were staying home, you decided to leave some food on the stoop to appease or  distract those uninvited guests. And if you had to be out and about on the start of Samhain you might wear a disguise to keep undesirables from recognizing you.

As happened with a lot of traditional pagan holidays, the new religion in town, Christianity, was smart. “We don’t mind if the people celebrate. Let’s just reframe “what” they are celebrating.” So November 1 became “All-Saint’s Day” a time to rethink your future in the context of emulating the martyrs and All Hallows Eve became a time to dress-up to scare away the Devil who stayed up this night trying to distract you from a holy life.

The whole Carved Pumpkin thing is much later. In the eighteenth century an old Irish myth emerged about Stingy Jack who tricked the Devil several times including tricking him not to take his soul to hell. The devil kept his word, but when heaven wouldn’t take Jack, the devil set Jack wandering the earth with only a coal from hell placed in a carved turnip. The Irish and Scots brought the myth to America, where pumpkins were more plentiful and less edible and Jack o’ Lanterns were born.

I won’t blame the Celts for American’s obsession with giving out candy to kids; that’s probably the work of the American Dental Association, (just kidding dentists). And Celts may not be the only ancient people who contributed to this holiday and its bizarre celebration.  The Celts were a completely oral culture; they never wrote anything down so the accuracy of this may be suspect, but it all makes sense to me.

I will certainly dress-up (usually as a wizard) and hand out candy, but I’ll also contemplate the coming year, my ancestors who came before me, and the thin space between life and death and my Celtic heritage.

I will also squirrel away a few of the Twix bars for myself, (shhh – don’t tell Billie!).   

 

Will, Marne, and Surance

When William Wehn was younger he left his parents farm. Will was the third son and knew his brothers would inherit the small family plot. William travelled, working where he could, mucking out some farmers barn, helping bind and thresh wheat from another’s field.

Will was a good worker. His employers often suggested he come back through for next year’s harvest and Will often promised that he would, but he seldom did. One road just seemed to run into another. Years passed

Will stayed at a tavern or with a widow who took in boarders. It was on one such occasion that Will met Marne Pleurn, an “old maid,”  still unmarried in her late twenties. Marne lived with her sister’s family, helped with the children, cooking, and household work and took in washing, cleaned rooms and served drinks at the town tavern, which is where Will met her.

Will picked apples and helped cidering and was waiting to gather root vegetables in a week’s time. One night Marne asked will if he’d like a second ale after dinner and Will declined. “Thank ye, but the second always wants the company of a third and then all of ‘em conspire to pound my head.. “Sides I’m savin’ for a place of my own. Say what is on that twine around your neck.”

Marne pulled the cord up to reveal a gold coin. “That’s my surance.  A reminder to work hard and not drink my wages. I’m savin’ a bit myself.”

And so a longer conversation began. Will and Marne handfasted at Springfest and married at the Solstice and after a few years of boarding at the widow Ecks’ they bought their own farm with rocky clay soil on the south facing side of the mountain.  A mountain stream flowed down to the field outside a broken down cottage

Will and Marne rebuilt the little cottage. They mostly grew root vegetables, hemp and flax for trading, kept chickens and some goats. They had one plowhorse for the hemp and to barter with other framers. Will planted some vines up on the rocky hillsides. “Grapes!” he beamed.

Folk sadly called them the “childless couple” for Will was “over forty and Marne not far behind.” Then in four quick years they had four boys, Henry, Michel, Nils and Jahn. Four young children are a lot of work, but Will and Marne never minded. Will played with and taught those boys and Marne “kept ‘em civilized.” When the boys objected to her strict discipline, Marne would say, “it’s my job to grow you into men that others respect, because you respect yourself and others.”

When Jahn, the youngest was four a fever came through. William and the boys were all down with it, but Jahn was really ill. Marne stayed up day and night and finally Jahn’s fever broke. Everyone ate hot broth and collapsed into bed, but in the morning Marne’s body was cold. She had passed to the beyond during the night.

Will was devastated and when he took Marne’s surance coin to the orphanage the neighbors thought he would give up some or all of the boys. He didn’t and he didn’t look for another wife either. “How could I look at these boys with Marne’s eyes all day and sleep with someone else at night?”

 The Boys

The local women helped him some, and the boys went to the town teacher for lessons, but raising four boys by himself was hard. Will occasionally got frustrated with their misbehavior, and would say, “What would Mama say?” “Respect,” the boys would mumble, but they stopped misbehaving.

Henry, Michel, Nils and Jahn were good boys. Everyone said so. They were polite, respectful to adults and liked by boys their own age. But they fought each other terribly. They were competitive; they roughhoused, wrestled and boxed. When Jahn was eleven he was the same size as Henry who was fourteen, what started as a slap and run game turned into a fist fight. Michel and Nils’s their cheering turned into a fist fight too. Noses bled.

Will stopped work fixing a window of the cottage ad yelled “Stop!” Will didn’t raise his voice often. The boys stopped. “Go gather some sticks for the woodstove,” he demanded.

When the boys returned Will said, “I want each of you to take a stick and break it over you knew. First you Henry.” Henry easily broke a stick. Then Michel, Nils and Jahn each broke a stick  each one slightly bigger stick but even John’s stick broke easily. Then Will gave them a piece of hemp rope. “Tie four sticks together tightly.” When they had done that  he had them each try to break the bundle. No matter how they tried, none of the brothers could break the bundle. “What does this mean?” asked Will.

“We’re stronger together,” said Michel and all the boys nodded as Will smiled.

As the boys neared their twenties the boys began to talk. “The farm won’t support us all,” said Henry. They began to dream of travelling the road in search of riches. They grew lackadaisical about farmwork at a time when Will was feeling his age and shouldn’t have worked as hard. One spring day loading the wagon with hemp, Will fell. He twisted his knee and cried out in pain and the horse startled and lurched forward pulling the wagon over Will’s crumpled body.

Michel found Will and called Henry.  With Nils they moved Will to his bed and sent Jahn, the fastest runner, to find the healer. When the healer came she said Will had punctured his lung and might have some other internal damage.

For the next few days the boys took turns tending their father. They fed him broth and placed the healer’s honey poultice on his wounds. Will seemed to improve, but then he developed a cough that brought up dark blood. Will called the boys to his bedside.

Farewell

“Your mother would be proud of you boys. You have grown into men who others will respect, because you respect yourselves, your brothers and all others. I know you talk of how the farm won’t  support you all and the families you hope to have. I know you think of seeking riches from the road. It is your choice, but I want you to know that your mother and I have thought about you. I have told you how we each saved; it was the foundation of our marriage?”

“Yes Papa” The boys said in unison.

“Well, we saved you a great fortune, which will support you and your families on this land should you choose to live here. I buried this fortune among the vines on the hill. You have only to dig it up, but you must promise me something.”

“What, Papa.”

“First, you must take this surance from around my neck,” and held up the gold coin wrapped in hemp and flax twine that he had worn since he met Marne, “And you must give it to the orphanage the way we did with your mother’s so many years ago. Then you must take the first gold coins you find among the vines and each make a surance for yourself to hang around your neck. Then continue digging until you find the rest of the fortune and always remember the lesson ‘stronger together.’”

The boys promised. Will smiled and was still smiling when they checked on him later and found he had passed to the beyond.

Stronger Together

The next morning the boys took his surrance to the orphanage and returned home to dig for the fortune.

Henry found the first gold coin in the first row of vines. Then Michel found one soon followed by Nils and Jahn. “Maybe the fortune is all buried in this row,” said Jahn. And so the dug deep all around the first row, continually turning over the earth. They moved on to the second row and then the third row and then retired for the night.

The boys dug every day often wondering out loud why their father had buried the fortune. There were ten rows of vines and the clay soil was baked hard because the mountainside faced south.

“This would be a lot easier going if it was wet. Do you think it will rain?” Nils wondered.

“You know what the summers are like,” said Michel. “Rain is unpredictable.”

“We could divert some of the stream onto the clay in each row. That would soften it up,” said Jahn.

They worked all summer digging deeper and deeper, turning the earth over and over. In September the boys were exhausted and hadn’t found even another gold coin. They were starting to grumble. It was still hot.

“Well will you look at this,” exclaimed Michel, “There’s a lot of grapes on these old vines.” He ate one. “And sweet too.” They all started to eat, but Henry stopped them. “No, we have to harvest these and take them either to the market or Swann the vintner, who’ll ever give us the best price.”

They loaded up baskets and put them in the wagon. Swann gave them forty gold pieces for the load. The boys were overjoyed. They saved most of the money, but they did go out to the tavern for dinner and to celebrate ordered a bottle of Swann wine.

“Three gold pieces?1” exclaimed Nils.

“Swann charges me two and a half,” said the tavern owner. “I have to make some money.”

Henry smacked his forehead with the heal of his hand. “Why that crafty old man!” he shouted.

“Swann?” asked  Michel

“No. Papa,” said Henry “This is the Fortune!”`

The boys bought adjoining property, expanded the vineyard, and learned the wine trade. Ultimately each married and had a large family all supported by the Wehn Family Winery. They supported the orphanage and were respected in the community because they always showed respect to others. Their motto: “Stronger Together!” was on every bottle.

And every member of the family wore a surance around his neck for his whole life and gave it to the orphanage when he passes to the beyond.

 

* This tale is spun from a combination of three Aesop Fables, “The She Wolf and her Cubs,” “Father and Sons,” and “The Farmer and His Sons.” Aesop may or may not have ever existed. Aristotle places his birth in Mesembria in Thrace around 650 BCE. Herodotus places him in Samos. Plutarch and other Roman writers called him a Phrygian slave in the court of King Croesus of Lydia (modern day Turkey).  Real or not, his fables, including the “Fox and the Sour Grapes” and “The Tortoise and the Hare” have taught us lessons for centuries.

 

 

The first math problem.

My parents were married for sixty-seven years. They got married in the depths of the Great Depression, which I always thought was the heights of optimism.

They were very different people. Dad was an extravert; my mother described him as “terminally gregarious – not that he’ll die from it – I might, but he won’t” She was quiet, reserved. I now know that she was an introvert and needed alone time to recharge after gatherings.

She was a math-whiz who could do thirty-year compound interest in her head; she became a computer programmer in 1956. He was a printer, a salesman, with a bass voice that earned him soloist parts in Handel Hayden Choral Society and someone who today would be called an addictive personality.

They bickered, as I’ve come to learn most couples do. I commented on their bickering once in my teenaged know-it-all years suggesting that maybe they should get a divorce. They were shocked. My mother said, “I don’t understand divorce. I understand murder – but not divorce.” I think she saw horror on my literally minded teenage face and quickly continued, “Oh sometimes we snap at each other, sure, but sometimes we just laugh and laugh.”

There were a couple of humdinger fights, when they didn’t speak to each other. I always assumed that these were my father’s fault because he was a jokester,  a teaser, a “needler” who frequently missed signals that it was time to quit.

I remember one fight where they had obviously gone to bed mad or maybe just my mother was angry, my father seemed to have no clue why. He scrawled a question mark in crayon on a piece of paper and taped it to the refrigerator.

My mother quickly taped her answer in crayon underneath. It occurs to me that by itself these are words of wisdom.

The second math problem

The fight went on. Clearly my father still didn’t get it. He taped another question mark below.

My mother grabbed the blue crayon from the kitchen counter and started to scrawl. The crayon broke. I wasn’t happy; these were my crayons. She got a green one from my box and finished her response. Once again just standing on its own these math notations seem wise.

 

The third math problem

I think my father took meaning from these notations. He wrote his own equations with what seemed like a conciliatory question mark at the end. Again it stands alone, maybe even as the answer to complex international negotiations.

 

 

 

 

 

The fourth math problem

Now it was my mother’s turn to be confused.  I remember her looking at my father’s lst note and starting to respond and walking away as he watched from the hall. Finally she picked up the crayon and wrote a big question mark.

My father picked up the crayon almost as soon as she put it down and wrote his response while she watched. Again these words have a wider meaning, but apparently they did the trick. My parents hugged by the refrigerator for long enough that I grew impatient to get my crayons back.

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow is the twenty-second anniversary of my marriage to Billie. It’s a second marriage for us both, but we have now been married longer than either of us have been married before. We bicker some and have had some go-to-bed angry battles, but “sometimes we just laugh and laugh.”

Celt-crazy after all these years

I’m not sure when I became fascinated by the Celts, the Bronze and Iron Age people, who fought Julius Caesar as the Gauls. I know I was young, teen or preteen. I grew up in a Boston suburb and suddenly Celtic didn’t just describe the hometown basketball team, or the Irish of South Boston,  but an ancient people.

I do remember the phrase that captured my imagination. It was in a magazine or newspaper article. I’m not sure what the piece was about, maybe conflict between the Northern Irish or a biography of Dylan Thomas? I dunno.

I remember the paragraph that resonated so much that I have read whatever I could about this people for the last sixty-five years, studied Celtic art, visited Iron Age village reproductions and read all the novels of Morgan Llewelyn. I can still see the words on the page:

“For the Englishman, the law is the law. All of English society is based upon the long tradition of common law. It is inviolable, the law is the law. For the Celt, the law is the law? Of course it is . . . but . . . Well, there are some exceptions, aren’t there.”

This world that isn’t really black and white, but nuanced with various shades of gray appealed to my rebellious-kid self, and yes, I admit it still does.

Who were the Celts?

The Celts were an ancient people. The earliest known settlements were in Hallstatt, near Salzburg Austria around 700 B.C,E. Archeologists have uncovered chieftains graves and both bronze and iron tools and weapons there. The community uncovered in La Tène, on the northern shore of Lake Neuchâtel showed a curvilinear style of decoration that has been copied for centuries, notably by craftsmen of the Art Nouveau (Louis Comfort Tiffany and Lalique) and  Pre-Raphaelite and Celtic Revival painters (Dante Gabriel Rosetti, John Duncan) the at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Celts lived in extended family groups, in whatever architecture made sense for the terrain, some in hillforts, some in crannogs, a cluster of roundhouse on stilts in a marsh with elevated wooden paths. Celtic communities were agricultural and pastoral, farming in some places and in others keeping herds of sheep or cattle.

They traded with everyone; graves include luxury items from Phoenicia in Mesopotemia, whalebone carvings from north of the arctic circle, as well as items from northern Africa.

Much of what we know of the Celts come from Greek and Roman writers who considered them less “civilized.” The name we call this people by was invented by the Greeks, Keltoi.

Some passed down the  chieftain title to children, but often through the matrilineal line. Some chiefs were chosen by the tribe, either an elders council or “elected.” Women held property, could be chosen as chieftains.

Ancient writers described the Celtic warrior as “his hair slaked with lime so is was white blond and tied back at the neck. wearing a long and drooping mustache and no beard. The nineteenth century statue of Ambiorix of the Belgae, who fought Ceasar is a heroic vision of such a warrior.

Artists have often portrayed Celtic warriors romantically. One of my favorite statues is a Roman marble copy of a long lost Greek bronze. It’s called The Dying Gaul  and it’s it the Capitoline Museum in Rome and is pictured at right.

There were classes of a sort, chiefs were often warriors, but not always. There was a wide “priest” class called Druids or Fiddich in some places. Some writers differentiate more saying that the Druids were part of the Fiddich, which included, mages and diviners, judges, healers, and bards (not just harp playing poets and singers, but those who kept the oral tradition and history of the tribe.)

The Greeks were reasonably sanguine toward the Celts. Some philosophers said they learned from the druids, that knowledge of the stars and their medicine, was more advanced than the Greeks in many ways. Greek writers still called them barbarians, of course, but not the worst kind.

The Celts had no written language; all knowledge was memorized and recited, a completely oral tradition. However much that we know about them comes from linguists tracing the languages that have survived. There are two strains P-Celtic, or Brythonic languages, are spoken in Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and Q-Celtic or Goidelic languages are Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx. These are all Indo-European languages and show a migration from the North of India somewhere in prehistory. From 1000 B.C.E. to the Roman destruction of the Gauls and conquest of Britain The Celts dominated Europe from Galatia on the Greek peninsula to Spain and Britain Bounded by Germanic and Norse tribes to the North, and Etruscan and other Southern European tribes.

Let’s be clear the Celts were a primitive people. Ancient writers tell us how they burned people in great wicker baskets as human sacrifice to their Gods. Some writers say these were criminals, but still burning people alive isn’t nice. These same writers say that Celts revered the human head and that warriors and  chieftains head decapitated enemy heads on their person and in their houses as decorations, Eeewue!

They worshiped their gods in nature, according to cycles of the sun, equinoxes and solstices, and some halfway points that have turned into holidays, in early February (Groundhog day), Early May (May Day), August, and late October (Halloween). They were big on bonfire celebrations, some evidently burning more than logs. They worshiped in sacred groves of trees, usually Oaks. Chartres cathedral is built on the site of the great Grove of the Carnutes, which Julius Caesar burned when he defeated the Gaulish tribe and took there chief Vercingetorix back to Rome in chains.

Not popular with everyone

Caesar really hated the Druids; he felt they commanded too much power by virtue of superstition and could encourage Gauls to rise up again at any time. So destroyed the Druid school in Aix and Suetonius Paulinus attacked Mona the druid college on Anglesey in today’s Wales.

Celts were lousy at fighting the Romans. They would work themselves into a frenzy and charge as a collection of individuals, often naked, into a Roman phalanx formation of shields and spears -like a big porcupine. The Romans would just roll over them.

The Roman Church didn’t much like Druids either. St. Patrick converted the High King and the kings of the four kingdoms at Tara undermining the power of the Druids, driving the “snakes from Ireland.” One of the first declared heretics, was Pelagius, of the Celtic church who preached not “original sin,” but  “original blessing,” God gave to man the blessing of nature, and the love of each other, Our place in the afterlife was guaranteed if we but cared for the Earth and each other. The worst of the Pelagian heresy was that people could maintain a direct relationship with God by this duty of care and reverence, not needing anyone to intercede for them. Pelagius was banished to Alexandria where he died in 418 C.E.

The stereotype-traits about the people of the six remaining Celtic “nations” Scotland, Ireland, Wales Cornwall, The Isle of Man, are a love of story, music, poetry, and laughter, but also dark, brooding tendencies. There are jokes about a propensity to drink, “The Good Lord made whiskey, so Ireland wouldn’t rule the world.” “Wherever you find four Scotsmen, you’ll find a fifth.”

Celts and me, again

So why do I have this fascination, obsession, with the Celts. Could be it’s in my blood. My mother’s family were Clearance Scots kicked off their sharecropping farms in the mid-eighteenth century so the laird could raise sheep to sell wool to the Birmingham mills. They went from the Highlands and Orkney to Northern Ireland to America chasing their land of their own. My father always maintained his family was English, even if his mother was of Scots heritage, Before England though, the Cullers may have come from that slice of Europe that includes Alsace -Loraine, the West bank of the Rhine and Northwest Switzerland. According to family lore they were Huguenots, French Protestants, followers of John Calvin, who fled persecution. Dunno. Haven’t tracked back that far, but my DNA shows markers for that area as well as Scotland..

I doodled the triple spiral, pictured above, for a very long time. My mother saved a fourth grade math test with triple spirals in the margins in the margins and an admonition from the teacher, “Messy! If you finish early put your pencil down.” The triple spiral is a much older symbol. It is found on the curbstone of the Megalithic people tomb at New Grange, north of Dublin (3200 B.C.E.), but it found its way into Celtic decoration. It’s the design on my wedding ring, also pictured above with Celtic artifacts. (My wife and I connect around things Celtic.)

What I’ve learned from the Celts is a reverence for nature, for springs and glades and groves. I love of trees and wood. I respect the path of the sun and the seasons of the year, I love music and everyone knows how I love a story.

And yes, I believe that the law is the law . . . but . . .  there are exceptions every now and again.

Ancient History

“Oh Wow!”

Human beings have gotten cricks in our necks staring at the night sky for a long time. The Lascaux caves in France, dating from 30,000 years ago have a graphical representation of the Pleiades; a carved mammoth ivory tusk carbon dated to 32,500 years ago has what may be the oldest existing star chart.

Astronomers often date the beginnings of their field to the Babylonians in 1000 BCE who produced the first systematic observation records of star and planet movements.  This ignores whatever observation and calculations that allowed the megalithic people to build New Grange, the barrow tomb north of Dublin where a single beam of sunlight comes through a window to an altar on the Winter Solstice or Stonehenge oriented to the Summer Solstice. How’d they do that?

Hans Lippershey invented the telescope in the Netherlands in 1608. Galileo  appropriated and improved this invention and discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter. Humans kept improving telescopes beyond two lenses and a tube. We made them with ever-larger curved mirrors; we put them on mountain tops. We figured out how to use radio waves and microwaves, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma rays to see farther and farther out into the Universe.

In the 1920s Edward Hubble noticed that the Universe was expanding and the Big Bang origin story came into being (George Lemaître 1927).

Bang – Heat – Light – gravity forms stars – gravity sucks stars into galaxies – stars die implode (black holes) -stars suck-in-spin-off planets (like us) -and the Universe keeps expanding and expanding.

“Oh Wow!”

(Then there’s all that quantum level stuff that physicists and astronomers don’t understand – so what hope is there for me? Don’t get me started on the multiverse. Sheesh!)

Telescopes in Space

In 1990 NASA put the Hubble Space Telescope into low Earth orbit designed to avoid atmospheric distortion and all that light pollution from Earth. It was to be maintained by astronauts.  Hubble did not disappoint. We got wonderful pictures – Jupiter and Saturn as never before seen, Crab Nebula, Lagoon Nebula, star bursts, spiral galaxies – spectacular on screen and no crick in the neck.

“Oh Wow!”

Before the Hubble was even on the launch pad scientists started asking, “Hey what could we do next?”

“Bigger. We could do bigger?”

“Yeah, and farther out. Maybe three times as far. Maybe orbit the sun instead of Earth?”

“Nah, it’d get burnt by the sun.”

“Maybe stick it behind the Earth in the Legrange L2 point, like Herschel, but with a bigger wave length.”

“Whoa, dude, you are a genius, We’re gonna need some help maybe Europe and Canada.?”

“You are cooking with gas!”

Big projects take some time and the James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency was launched from a site in Africa on Christmas 2021.

In July 2022, the first pictures came back. Scientists did what scientists do. They analyzed, did calculations, tested hypotheses, compared with previous data.

“Hey wait a minute. We can see the Bang and the whole heat before light thing, but it looks like there are galaxies forming before stars? That can’t be right, can it?”

“Wait, What? And what’s that thing over there? It looks like a big question mark in the sky.?

“Oh, Wow!”

Question Mark in the Sky

It is true that the findings from the images sent to Earth from the Webb Space Telescope has caused astronomers to question certain elements of the Big Bang theory about the formation of the Universe. And they haven’t hypothesized a reason why just yet. The are working on it and I’m sure that philosophers and theologians are waiting on pins and needles.

It is also true that one of the pictures showed a big yellow question mark in the sky.

“Wait, what? Dude you can’t just put that picture out there, man.”

“Whoa.. .  Right.”

Scientists did what scientists do. They analyzed, did calculations, tested hypotheses, compared with previous data.

They came up with an explanation that sounded like what I said to my father when he observed from the passenger seat that I was going eighty miles per hour.

“Ah . . . no Dad,. . . that’s like the ‘parallax effect.’ It only looks like the speedometer is at eighty because of the angle you’re looking from. I’m really doing sixty-five.” (It didn’t work.)

“It looks like a group or a chance alignment of 2 or 3 galaxies,” Kai Noeske, ESA communication program officer, said over email. “The upper part of the question mark looks like a distorted spiral galaxy, maybe merging with a second galaxy.” Parallax effect.

“Oh, Wow! . . .Right”

An Alternate Explanation

“They are not getting it.”

“Really? Maybe we should just give it some time.”

“I am telling you, they are not getting it.”

This is the overheard thought conversation resonating between gamma rays various wave length radio waves picked up on a big-stick AM radio station in Kearney, Nebraska. It is unclear who the “speakers” are – deities, living beings of some kind, faces of a single deity,  or some other personages?

“But that is their mark of existential inquiry”

“Here is what they are saying:

“chance alignment of 2 or 3 galaxies, . . distorted spiral galaxy, maybe merging with a second galaxy… parallax effect “

“Well , , , technically that is true. That is what it is and how we are doing it and frankly it takes a lot of work. Aren’t they asking why?

“No. . . and that’s not surprising. . . that’s the pattern we’ve observed for centuries. Lots of focus on the what and how and very little on the why.”

“But we’ve never done anything this overt before.”

“They are not getting it.”

“Parallax effect? Wow! These are supposed to be the smart ones.”

“Look there’s a big question mark in the sky seen by that billion  dollar thingee they shot up. A question mark and they don’t ask why?”

“Look, they are killing each other daily, destroying the only place they have to live. Some are starving, Some are without a roof over there heads, while others have more then they could use in seven lifetimes and they don’t ask why. Why should this be any different?”

“Could we send someone down?”

“Like that has worked so well in the past.”

“Perhaps we should recognize that this experiment isn’t working? Maybe we should start over.”

“It is clear that it isn’t working. That’s why we did the question mark.”

“Maybe the question mark isn’t as clear a message as we think it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well. . . I know it’s a lot of work. . . but we could pull in a couple of other galaxies, an imploded star, and a black hole. . . ‘

“A Black Hole? You know how unstable those things are!”

“Yeah I know, but work with me here. Look I sketched it out. We pull these two galaxies here, crush this star in on itself, pull that nebula on its side with this star that’s about to expand. It’ll all come together just here so and their telethingee sees this:

“Do you think they’ll get that?”

“I dunno, but it’s worth a try.”

“We could try dinosaurs again.”

“Probably not. Platypuses would be good for a laugh”

“Roaches?”

“At least they know how to survive.”.

“OK, let try your three-letter idea.”

“One more time.”

 

“ WTF? ”

Acme Grand Opening

It was a sunny spring Saturday and I was on a roll. When I worked, Saturdays were all about errands and it was only ten-fifteen and, man, I was checking things off the old index card to-do list to beat the band. I’d dropped and picked up shirts and taken shoes off to be soled and then headed to Upper Montclair pick up some flipchart markers and stop at that CVS with parking to buy ibuprofen and, while I was there, scored some great birthday cards for my kids upcoming birthdays. I bought wine at the wine shop and some brie at the cheese shop next door, and I was “cookin’ with gas.” I was being so productive I decided to skip the obligatory coffee at Starbuck’s.

I swung the car the car right out of the lot and headed for home when I was shocked. There was a new sign on our closed-down grocery store. “ACME,” it said, GRAND OPENING.”

Weeks before, we had been so disappointed when the old A&P closed. It wasn’t all that close to home, but way cheaper than King’s or certainly either Whole Foods close to us. Now there was a new grocery store, ACME. Even though my only association with the name ACME was the company where Wiley Coyote bought his anvils and bombs to kill the Road Runner, I tuned into the half-full parking lot. We were getting low on some staples; I couldn’t believe my luck.

I jumped out of the car. And picked a cart from the full rack outside and walked through the propped-open double doors. I was “cruising.” Down the cereal aisle I got some Grape nuts and Quaker Oatmeal squares, then over to condiments for Grey Poupon and  on to the next aisle for eight cans of Green Giant canned green beans (no salt) to mix with Pip’s food. I swung to the dairy cases swerving around some guys on a ladder fixing a florescent light (“Shouldn’t they have done that yesterday?’) I got some of the little Dannon Stay-Fit yoghurts that Billie likes. (“Wow they have all the flavors. This store’s stocking is great.”)

Then I went to the meat case, oops no thick sliced bacon, (“Damn. Oh wait there’s a manager.”)

I saw a fortyish man in gray chinos and a white shirt and tie talking to a couple of men in jeans.

“Excuse me. Do you have any thick-sliced bacon? Preferably Oscar Meyer or Smithfield but whatever?”

“Ah no it’s not out yet. . Wait. . .Are you SHOPPING?”

‘Well, ye-ah.”

“We’re not  OPEN yet. Didn’t you see the sign GRAND OPENING SUNDAY?! And you picked up all that stuff?”

“Ah. . . yeah.”

“We’re not open yet!

“Ah. . .OK. But do you think you could check me out?”

“NOOOOO! WE’RE NOT OPEN YET! The cash registers aren’t even hooked up.”

I looked around. What I’d taken for other customers were contractors, electricians, painters and other workmen. There really were no cash registers or scanners at the front; they were all stacked at the side of the store. The manager was talking to a work crew who were installing a refrigerated chest next to the one where I was looking for thick-sliced bacon. The guys were all smiling. One was shaking his head.

“Oh. . .  sorry.”

“Now put all that stuff back and come back tomorrow.”

As I left I noticed that the front doors were propped open with saw-horses. The half-full parking lot was all workmen’s trucks and the sign, fully six feet high, said GRAND OPENING …SUNDAY!

I drove home.

My wife still thinks this is the funniest story she has ever heard. She often has me tell it at dinner parties. She thinks it is the perfect example of how completely oblivious I can get when I’m “on a roll,” focused, “zoned out.”

Guilty. An elementary school teacher once described me “Alan is either really doing something, or he isn’t.” That has carried into adulthood and, yes, into my seniority.

I see this same behavior in my grandson, who at four can get so into what he is doing that he has to be reminded to stop to go to the bathroom. I sometimes catch myself doing that, too.

Flow

 A lot has been written about “flow,” the mythical state of intense focus where time floats away, stretches out, when everything you do is easy, natural. In is sometimes referred to as “being in the zone.”

I have personally experienced flow several times in my life. There was a bluebird powder day skiing where my often tentative intermediate skiing was somehow in tune with the mountain, my turns just happened naturally and I floated down the hill. Also once or twice when I was running in my forties the road literally rose to meet me for miles. In woodcarving, I saw the object in the wood and the extraneous material fell rapidly away beneath my chisel for a while. And yes working, there was a great training design session with Ric and Reina, and a well facilitated leadership offsite and more. Even in my new “career,” writing ,sometimes the words just waterfall effortlessly through my fingers and keyboard to screen.

Some, um, time, er, it no happen too like that kind of thing, y’know..

Flow, being “in the zone,” is different from being “zoned out,” obsessively focused to the point of obliviousness. My experience of flow contains a sense of being tapped into something beyond my personal capacity, being in-tune with the Universe.

For me, flow happens after lots of practice and often after many failures, staring at a piece of wood, cutting it badly, with tools that weren’t sharp enough, When I was in the theatre there was a superstition, “disastrous dress rehearsal, spectacular opening night.” Actors often felt so strongly about this that directors used to mess up something at dress rehearsal to put us on our toes for the opening.

Flow and Mindfulness

My occasional obsessive concentration lacks intentional awareness, mindfulness.

In fact, people can speak to me when I am zoned out and I don’t hear them. The ACME GRAND OPENING EXTRAVAGAZA described above came from my errand completion euphoria and my expectation that the Universe was helping with my to-do check marks, but I was just oblivious, I wasn’t in flow.

On my bluebird powder day I was hyper-aware of the out-of-control teenaged snowboarder crossing my path and pulled up long enough to be sure he got up unhurt after his splendiferous crash. My work flow experiences always included interactions and collaborations with others.

My writing flow experiences may include single-minded focus, but they usually follow periods of thought and planning what I am writing about. I am also a new enough writer that I may not have many true flow experiences yet.

Hemingway said “Write without holding back. The next day when you are feeling fresh add a little perfection with your editing.”

I definitely have no flow experiences self-editing.

What is flow and how to get more of it?

“That is the question,” said Hamlet as he weighed suicide vs action in the best example of over-thinking and equivocation ever written. The whole play is an immersion in Hamlet’s lack of flow.

I’m not a psychology researcher*, but here are my beginner-mind ruminations on the subject:

• Flow means you are doing something, i.e., you are using your agency, taking action (unlike Hamlet) and acting by choice, doing something you love.
• Focus and concentration are necessary, but not sufficient for flow.
• The foundation of flow is enough practice, perhaps even failure that is learned from, that when the flow arrives and you “do without thinking,” you are doing something right.
• There is focus, but also awareness. Mindfulness is required. Flow is the antithesis of obliviousness.
• We can have more flow experiences, by doing what we love, practicing in a disciplined way focused on improvement, and being mindful of our surroundings.

Most of all, read the whole sign: GRAND OPENING . . . SUNDAY.

 

* For more true research on flow read the works of the late Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi