It’s the 21st Century, Stupid!

The Kansas City Star has a great feel-good story in today’s paper right on the front page. In Drexel Missouri the Irbys were a fairly typical family. But then Shannon, a stay at home mom was diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of cancer. In the 100 days that she was out of town for treatment the town got together, razed the family’s almost 100 year old 2 bedroom home and built a new one from scratch. I particularly enjoyed the part where a contractor asked to help build a crawlspace for them refused to do so. In his opinion nothing less than a full basement would do and he proceeded to contribute his company’s labor and a concrete company contributed the materials. This wasn’t done for a television show (Though I’m not about to criticize that show given the good they’ve done.) it was just a town doing something amazing for their own. I stand in awe of them.

I think that this is a great idea. A New Mexico observatory complex is being restored and adapted to deliver its services to students via the Internet. Actually my only complaint is that I wish there was more like it. For several years I’ve wondered what the smallest, least expensive telescope we could put into orbit would be that would survive the rigors of space. And then could we build a cluster of them that would work like the complex in New Mexico? This would have the advantage of being able to function 24/7 and be available at hours more convenient for students who might not share the same dusk/dawn schedule of any one location on Earth.

The New York Times’ region section tells a wonderful story about someone who tells stories. To young people it often doesn’t take too many years for something to have moved into ancient history that they feel has no relevance to them. An 81 year old substitute teacher who combines more standard instruction with oral history from his own life seems to be able to bring things to life for some students that I consider to be very fortunate.