Transformation

 A few weeks ago I mentioned the novel This Is Happiness in which the author pictured life in an Irish village before and after the arrival of electricity. At first many of the old-timers resisted change, but eventually its benefits won them over. I find value in a good book like this because it creates an urge to remember other milepost events. It so happened that a long list popped into my mind’s eye.

The year was 1957, if I remember correctly, when Russia’s Sputnik successfully orbited the earth. The memory is clear as day when we sophomores sat in Mr. Slatta’s civics class discussing the event in wow-factor terms. We were ignorant of its consequences.  Russian success told us one thing: they were ahead of us in space exploration. Our scientific community awoke, federal legislation poured massive amounts of money into the effort, and NASA got us onto the moon first to plant the U.S. flag on its surface. Now, sixty-seven years later, I don’t know who can lay claim to space leadership, but maybe it matters little. Several countries work in the area, and some sharing takes place.

In a jumble of memories I see an older event shining in the distance. The date was December 17, 1903, and the Wright Brothers took the first powered flight in their handcrafted airplane. They needed a place of strong, steady winds and chose a place called Kill Devils Hill near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina for their experiment. With Orville at the helm their home-built 12 horsepower engine spun two propellers that lifted their heavier-than-air machine to fly for 12 seconds and 120 feet. Anemic as the results were, it became a first step in transforming travel over long distances at great speeds. A modern jet flying nonstop coast to coast might take less than five hours. Compare that to traveling at the speed of oxen while pulling a covered wagon.

Here in our agricultural setting, farmers need power to pull their field equipment. That power is supplied by behemoths having horsepower measured in the hundreds. It hasn’t always been that way. I grew up on a half section farm driving an “H” International and a “B” John Deere and we got the work done. Even those tractors, roughly equivalent to some of today’s garden tractors, were a marked improvement over horses working in a field. Gasoline engines made it possible. Feed them gas instead of oats.

We must emphasize one development in recent history where the door for massive change opened. Computers! Does anyone use pencils anymore? Centuries of calculations, planning, researching, even letter writing have been transformed by keyboards talking to screens. I haven’t used this term yet, but let’s say “in the old days” when home appliances or farm equipment needed fixing we could take them to some handyman for repair and expect further service from them.

We recently experienced a case in our kitchen where the less than a year old microwave oven stopped working. Still under manufacturer’s warranty BestBuy would not exchange it but said we needed to go to manufacturer direct for satisfaction. We did that and will admit we were treated well by them. Our contact set up a service employee from Rigel’s Appliance Store to come to our place. First off I told him the appliance kept tripping its breaker switch. His training told him when a breaker keeps tripping it weakens the switch and should be replaced. Back to the microwave he said since its still under warranty he would order a new computer panel. We waited two weeks and it arrived. In the meantime I contacted an electrician to install a new breaker switch. There went $250. The new microwave part arrived, was installed, and now everything works well again. This cost was on the manufacturer. To cap this story, a couple years ago a different serviceman called to look our washing machine told me he works on everything except microwaves. They cost more to fix than buying a new one.

The subject of stargazing telescopes can be included here. Remember the Three Wise Men  “following yonder star.” They did not have had the luxury of studying it through a scope. Their eyesight sufficed. The origin of the telescope took place in Netherlands in 1608. Hearing of it, Galileo set about building one the following year. Through the centuries it went through a metamorphosis like a butterfly -  egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Now in its adult form the James Webb Space Telescope is the latest leap forward in our quest to understand the Universe and our origins. Launched on Christmas Day, 2021, Webb, says NASA, is examining every phase of cosmic history: from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang to the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets to the evolution of our own solar system.  Further developments? We don’t know yet, but probably.

In today’s world is it even possible to live like an “old-timer?” I know of one successful writer/horse farmer/philosopher who does. Wendell Berry writes in the daylight hours because he doesn’t want to turn on a light bulb nor does he own a television set or a cell phone. He once wrote an essay called “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.” He argued that when somebody has used a computer to write work that is better than Dante’s Divine Comedy he would consider it. A picture of him at work with a pencil and pad in hand shows a wind-up clock on the windowsill. He’s written over eighty books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and received many awards including the National Humanities Medal awarded by President Obama in the White House. We must admit that he is a rare example of success.