Friday, August 10, 2012

MARS: NASA, the apemen, Galilio, and sexual harrassment

I loved watching that room full of people watching the Mars landing. Here is what happened in my mind:  Per usual I tried to see their primate features (ears and eyes), thinking how little time ago it was we resembled apes, and how they too would embrace with joy some great communal happening--especially the men.I thought how strange it would be to the earliest members of our species to know that people (like them) could actually go to that light in the sky, the red one.  I thought about (skipping forward a few thousand  years) how ecstatic Galilio would be, knowing what they had done--such a short time ago. Then I watched the man with the long hair burst into tears, and thought how when you're a great engineer or mathematician or scientist it's okay to have hair like a rock star and to weep among colleagues. I thought about how all the men (not all) immediately embraced, but how it took them much longer to embrace the women, how even in the great emotion running through everyone, people still have to keep a part of their mind on the barriers imposed by harrassment parameters--how ironic and odd that term seems under the guidelines politically imposed across all professions and even non-professions now. I thought about how lucky I am--having been descended from four separate cases of sexual harassment among ancestors in the academic realm-- to be here at all.  I don't like that superficial imposition of legal oversight which presumes to know better than the individuals involved what nature might command--it's far too intrusive on sacred ground, and roughshod. I noticed some, a few, who avoided embracing, or were avoided--hard to tell, and yet who still were thrilled on their own with what had happened. So much to see and feel in that scene--memorable!