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angela_n_hunt) wrote2011-07-17 01:29 pm
angela_n_hunt) wrote2011-07-17 01:29 pm
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The Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter - The Paleontology Department
It's my father's birthday today. He would have been 68 today. This is the first year that in some ways I am glad he hasn't had to physically see some things. The last flight of the space shuttle would have really pissed him off. He had strong opinions about space flight and exploration.
But it wasn't all about Out There. Sometimes, it was about the literal ground under our feet. So, in honor of his birthday, here is another excerpt from the memoir, The Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter:
Berkeley in the early '70s was a magical place in and of itself. Only a few years after the famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) Summer of Love, it still had the Hippy thing going for it, but there was something else too, and not just the Nag Champa and pot smoke flowing through the air.
On the weekends that we went to visit Pop, there was a definite routine. We would go have breakfast at the Egg Shop & Apple Press (is it even there anymore?), have omelettes and hot apple cider, and then wander on to campus. One visit, my father decided that we should go by the Paleontology Department.
To say I loved the Paleontology Department is an understatement.
They had a dinosaur skeleton. A real one. And a seismograph. A big one. And bones. And things. And fossils. And rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. And I loved rocks. I still love rocks. Rocks are awesome. Don't believe me? Go find one. Right now. I'll wait.
Got one?
Good.
Now take a really good long look at it. It may be concrete. More likely it's a form of granite or sandstone or one of the other common igneous or sedimentary rock types.
You know what else it is?
It's literally a bone. Rocks are the bones of the earth. Granite was the lead in to a proto lecture of my father's that would eventually become Lecture Number Seven - States of Matter, Sub Heading: Plasma. In the Paleontology Department, my father taught me that stone is not as solid as I thought. That matter was made of molecules, made of atoms, all vibrating, held together by subatomic bonds, in between it all...emptiness. That solids vibrated at a slower frequency then fluids, that even the air I breathed was in reality a type of fluid. That the Earth itself was not as stable as I thought, that the ground we stood on in reality was a plate, floating on a pool of molten stone, under constant pressure and that when plates ground against each other...
Well, all Californians know what happens when tectonic plates grind and shift. We stand in doorways and wait for the effect to be over. Calling them earthquakes seems both accurate and not enough, speaking as someone who lived through the 7.1 Loma Prieta Quake.
After that, I made (ha, made, I'm sure he jumped at every chance) my parents take me to the Paleontology
Department after breakfast, every time we were there. Stared at the seismograph in absolute awe and wonder that what seemed like solid stable matter was moving at the very moment I was standing on it. The Earth is in constant motion, not just through Space and Time, spinning on its axis, but its skin moves and shudders under the weight of gravity and us and trees and everything. That every single bit of it, every molecule, every atom, every electron, all of it, constantly dancing.
As a toddler, I got it all the way to the core of me, that the Earth was a living being, just like me.
The realization has never left me. It's something that can either make you feel very small or very large. Standing next to my father, looking up at him as he would gesture in big motions with his hands, describing plates, and gravity and tectonic pressure, it made me feel like my heart was cracking open. Is it any wonder at all that I was convinced that he knew everything?
* * *
Happy birthday, Poppa Bear. Don't worry. I still dance. And so do my girls, your grand-daughters.
But it wasn't all about Out There. Sometimes, it was about the literal ground under our feet. So, in honor of his birthday, here is another excerpt from the memoir, The Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter:
Berkeley in the early '70s was a magical place in and of itself. Only a few years after the famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) Summer of Love, it still had the Hippy thing going for it, but there was something else too, and not just the Nag Champa and pot smoke flowing through the air.
On the weekends that we went to visit Pop, there was a definite routine. We would go have breakfast at the Egg Shop & Apple Press (is it even there anymore?), have omelettes and hot apple cider, and then wander on to campus. One visit, my father decided that we should go by the Paleontology Department.
To say I loved the Paleontology Department is an understatement.
They had a dinosaur skeleton. A real one. And a seismograph. A big one. And bones. And things. And fossils. And rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. And I loved rocks. I still love rocks. Rocks are awesome. Don't believe me? Go find one. Right now. I'll wait.
Got one?
Good.
Now take a really good long look at it. It may be concrete. More likely it's a form of granite or sandstone or one of the other common igneous or sedimentary rock types.
You know what else it is?
It's literally a bone. Rocks are the bones of the earth. Granite was the lead in to a proto lecture of my father's that would eventually become Lecture Number Seven - States of Matter, Sub Heading: Plasma. In the Paleontology Department, my father taught me that stone is not as solid as I thought. That matter was made of molecules, made of atoms, all vibrating, held together by subatomic bonds, in between it all...emptiness. That solids vibrated at a slower frequency then fluids, that even the air I breathed was in reality a type of fluid. That the Earth itself was not as stable as I thought, that the ground we stood on in reality was a plate, floating on a pool of molten stone, under constant pressure and that when plates ground against each other...
Well, all Californians know what happens when tectonic plates grind and shift. We stand in doorways and wait for the effect to be over. Calling them earthquakes seems both accurate and not enough, speaking as someone who lived through the 7.1 Loma Prieta Quake.
After that, I made (ha, made, I'm sure he jumped at every chance) my parents take me to the Paleontology
Department after breakfast, every time we were there. Stared at the seismograph in absolute awe and wonder that what seemed like solid stable matter was moving at the very moment I was standing on it. The Earth is in constant motion, not just through Space and Time, spinning on its axis, but its skin moves and shudders under the weight of gravity and us and trees and everything. That every single bit of it, every molecule, every atom, every electron, all of it, constantly dancing.
As a toddler, I got it all the way to the core of me, that the Earth was a living being, just like me.
The realization has never left me. It's something that can either make you feel very small or very large. Standing next to my father, looking up at him as he would gesture in big motions with his hands, describing plates, and gravity and tectonic pressure, it made me feel like my heart was cracking open. Is it any wonder at all that I was convinced that he knew everything?
* * *
Happy birthday, Poppa Bear. Don't worry. I still dance. And so do my girls, your grand-daughters.