dennis – Page 4 – Dennis C Merritt

Generational Differences

As I talk with my grandkids, I note the key disconnect between generations. Not just ours, but probably all since time began.

I’ve been 20, and I’ve had kids who were, and now grandkids. And I’ve read some history. From that point of view it’s easy to see the general pattern of 20 year olds reacting to the world they find themselves in.

It’s a perspective the 20 year old can’t possibly have, and it leads us, the elders to a sort of smug condescending sort of attitude.

But the world this crop of 20 year olds is entering isn’t at all like that of their parents, or grandparents. This is true for every generation, but in our particular case we, the elders, know nothing about the social norms of today, the problems with dating, the difficulty with getting an education, the dismal job prospects, the anger over the environment, etc. etc.

In other words, from the 20 year old’s perspective, we simply don’t get it. They’re right, and our blindness to the current world pisses them off.

So there’s the basis of the conflict. The elders see the larger patterns that the youth can’t see, and the youth see the realities of the day that the elders can’t see.

We, the elders, understand well the pattern of angry young men. But we haven’t a clue as to what it is that makes them angry today.

Millennials and Boomers

Being one of the first Boomers, born in February of 1946, I do tend to bristle a bit at the critiques of my generation. Like how we don’t get white privilege, we’ve let climate change destroy the planet, we’re complicit in huge economic disparity, etc. etc.

Well, OK, that’s all true. But look at the world we came of age in–nobody had to explain white privilege, blacks were getting lynched, couldn’t ride on buses, had to pee in the one filthy ‘colored’ rest room at the back of the gas station, women couldn’t hold a fraction of the jobs they can now, and when they did at a fraction of the salary, you couldn’t breath the air around cities, you couldn’t swim in the rivers or drink the water, and American imperialism was at its worst.

The Boomers ended the Viet Nam war (which was started by a Democrat, by the way), started Earth Day and the EPA (put in during a Republican administration — these issues have nothing to do with the two-party system), got Civil Rights legislation passed, integrated our society, and started the Feminist movement.

(On a personal note, I used to bike to work in Boston, and when I started doing that I could hardly breath when I got there. Just a few years after the EPA, the air was clear on my commute.)

But, was it the Boomers? I don’t think so. It was young people. We were in our 20s, we saw the world our complacent and clueless parent’s generation was trying to tell us was just fine. And it wasn’t. And they didn’t get it. So we rose up and became the change we wanted.

Our rallying cry: “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”

But wait, our parent’s generation? Weren’t they “The Greatest Generation?” How could this be? They were the ones who saw a world under threat of dictatorial fascism, coming at us from both our East and our West. They were the ones who survived the Great Depression brought on them by Capitalism run amok. Them? The problem?

It wasn’t actually the generation label that was key. It was their age. They were 20 year olds. 20 years olds who saw the world was in trouble, who lied about their age to get into the War, who if not fighting made rivets to support the War, who risked their lives so no one had to submit to the tyrannical rulers literally trying to take over the world.

And then they came home, and enjoyed the economic benefits, and got complacent in their life styles, and turned blind eyes to the injustices around them. And had kids who, well, that goes back to the beginning of this essay.

I look at the world today, and so much is wrong with it. But I’m OK, I’ve got my house, my retirement, health insurance (Medicare)… yes, complacent. Yet I see and hear the Millennials, and how angry they are, how they can’t own a house, can’t get a job, can’t get health insurance, to say nothing of watching the environment go to hell and politicians continue to support the 1%.

I say go for it. The world desperately needs a dose of fired up young people. They’ve changed the world before and I believe they’re going to do it again. I for one am kind of excited.

The times, they are a-changing. (our music was better)(Dylan was 23 when he wrote that song)

General note on generational differences.

Showdown over Star Occultation

A story of a workplace bully

I was a programmer working at what was then called the M.I.T. Instrumentation Lab. It serviced various engineering contracts, mostly large D.O.D. ones, but other, smaller ones, as well.

My group was working on a contract involving atmospheric study from space. One small part of that small project was Star Occultation.

Looking at a star from space, as it sets behind the earth, the light changes as it starts to get obscured by the atmosphere. Given equations for how various atmospheric components affect the light, it’s possible to work backward from the dimming star light to deduce the make up of the atmosphere it settled behind.

This project had only two people. Myself, the programmer, and Terry, the lead scientist, a PhD student at M.I.T. Terry was to provide the equations, I was to write the program implementing them.

Terry was, well a bit arrogant. I remember him showing up at our offices one day complaining about how unjust the world was, that, for example, a plumber could go out and get a job that would pay more than he might make, he, that is, an extremely intelligent person with a PhD from M.I.T. How could it possibly be a mere plumber might be worth more than him?

You might guess where he thought a programmer should fit on the hierarchy of worth, compared to a PhD. It showed.

Well Terry gave me the equations to program up and we had some test data (from the X15, the space rocket that preceded satellites).

So I did, but when I ran the program the results all came up zero. I showed it to Terry. Controlling his irritation he patiently explained I’d clearly programmed it wrong and I should check my code.

I did. The next day (those were the days it took a full day to get the results of running a program punched into a deck of cards) the results were still zero.

I heard him go into my boss’s office and vent for all around to hear about how incompetent I was, how could it be we didn’t have a programmer who could code up a simple set of equations, and how I should be fired and replaced by someone who could handle the job.

That was Friday.

As a scrawny, quiet, geeky sort of kid, I’d run into bullies in school. I’d learned (different stories) that bullies don’t like it when you fight back.

So that weekend I went home with his equations and looked at them from a pure mathematical perspective. And on Monday morning asked if my boss would call Terry over.

The three of us sat in his office and I went to the white board. Oh yes, I was all wired up. I then proceeded to prove, mathematically, that the equations Terry gave us would always generate a zero result.

You should have seen Terry. He didn’t say a word, stood up, shoved his chair out of the way, and stormed out slamming the door as he left the room. (We never saw him again.)

My boss and I sat in the quiet left behind for a moment. He then looked at me and said, well I guess you’re now lead scientist on Star Occultation.

Covid-19 and Anger

Various healers through the ages have looked at the links between underlying emotions, or maybe Karma, or maybe God, and the trials people suffer.

It’s in the Old Testament, Eastern religions, 1800s authors (See the Scarlet Letter or Moby Dick) etc. I don’t want to make a case for or against the idea here, but rather, just for a moment, look at what seems a Twilight Zone moment happening right now.

One aspect of the idea is that symptoms of a disease express the emotions underlying the disease. I’ve heard of a number of these links but the one that rattles around in my head is this:

Anger manifests itself as a cough.

And here is Covid-19 spreading through the world, and all the news for the years leading up to that have been about how angry and divided people are. In this country, but in the world as well.

Populist leaders rising to power riding the anger of people who feel they have been ignored and betrayed by those traditionally in power.

And then a backlash of anger from those who hate the populist, often authoritarian, leaders.

Judging by my FaceBook feed, there are a lot of people just boiling over with anger at Trump. Who continues to be popular amongst all those who are furious at the liberals ruining our country with their hypocritical self-serving policies.

Maybe Anger is the Pandemic, and Covid-19 the symptom. Maybe, yes we need to wash our hands, but also, maybe start to try to figure out how to dial back the divisive anger pervading our country and the world as well.

2020 Winter Images

Two Bridges Trail

Tales of a Dance Monarch

The issue of complaints among dancers is a difficult one. Having been involved in running a number of dances for a number of years, I’ve decided to document some of the cases I’ve dealt with in an attempt to illustrate the complexity of the issue.

A was a, maybe 30ish, dancer who could best be described as extremely arrogant. He had a way about him that put a lot of people off, and a strong lead that some women didn’t like. He also had friends in the dance community who did like him. Nobody thought him a sexual predator, but some women would not dance in a line with him.

This was a dance where we had decided to have three people talk to a problem dancer. We did. He simply got defensive, said nobody complained to him. He continued to dance the way he did and eventually stopped coming because I think we pissed him off.

I was invited to join the board in part because I was sympathetic to some of the issues of the young lady dancers and the problems they were encountering with unwelcome advances from older men. This led to a period in the dance where announcements were made targetting creepy old guys, with statements like “if she’s young enough to be your daughter, treat her like your daughter.”

The net result of this was the announcements, instead of painting a picture of a welcoming fun event, painted a picture of a viper’s nest of sexual predators. Not sure that’s what we wanted to do.

There were announcements made to counter the then ethic of always accepting dance invitations. You didn’t have to say yes to someone who creeped you out.

This era was more complex than it might seem. Were there more creepy old men then? Well there certainly were some who loved to dance with young girls and maybe closer than they should. But I would say the majority of men simply liked to dance with dancers of all ages and enjoyed the cross-generational contact that is often so missing from our culture.

I spent a fair amount of time talking to various young women at the dance to get a sense of their feelings on the issue. Again, yes there were some bad apples, but mostly these young dancers wanted to dance with just their young friends and didn’t like it when people of their parent’s generation would ask them to dance.

One young lady told me the biggest problem she had with the dance was that there were so many people who thought they could dance in “their” line. She didn’t even want to encounter people not in their clique as neighbors, let alone men from a different generation.

I had the sense that maybe the dance powers of that era were played into villifying older (and I mean over 30) men to allow a very active and dynamic young clique to stayed closed to outsiders.

It’s still more complicated — that young clique got a lot of criticism from the elders, but everything we said dance should be, a community, a place of mutal support, a welcoming place, etc. etc. was true in spades for these young dancers. That community they had, within the larger community, did everything one would want a dance community to do. Some said they didn’t think they would have survived those turbulent early years of life without the support of that young community.

The school we danced at received a lot of complaints from freshmen who attended the introductory dance. The school had a committee of people designated and trained to handle these sorts of issues. We had a meeting. (I was the only man in attendence.)

There were five catgories of complaints registered against the dancers at our dance. Four of those complaints could have occurred at any event where men and women were together. Unwelcome compliments, attempts to get someone to leave the dance with them, and in general all those situations where a man might hit on a woman and the clueless ones don’t pick up on the cues that his overtures are unwelcome.

These things could happen at work or a church social. It’s about men and women trying to balance the normal activities of life with underlying hormonal urges.

One of the five categories was dance specific. Men holding the women closer than they felt comfortable with. This could be something we could address. But again, it’s complicated, this was also an era where grinding was common at the dance and lots of couples enjoyed close physical touch during the swings.

We spent a lot of time teaching women how to assert their space by holding a dance frame at the distance they want. Left hand placed on shoulder in a way that it can push out. This lets the woman be in charge of the distance. I taught that when I was teaching.

Then I had a very educational experience — I sometimes enjoyed what was then called the lady’s role. There was a guy, bigger and stronger than me, who I wound up having to swing with mulitple times in a dance with a shadow swing. He went all faux gay on me, saying how glad he was to have this chance and pulling me close, stroked my back, and, well he was joking, but I didn’t enjoy it, and even seeing it coming, wasn’t able to use a dance frame to keep him away. (He was a dancer women complained about as well.)

It was embarrassing to me and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Hmmm, this is way more difficult than it seems.

I had another man try to pull me close after that, but I saw it coming and used a dance frame that was almost a straight arm to hold him away. He got really mad at me and said that’s how he dances with everyone and how dare I push him away. That’s how I should expect to be swung. (He was a dancer women complained about as well.)

About the meetings with the school, well they were very frustrating. I kept asking the experienced people at the school what steps they recommended we should take, and they were always cut off by our board members who instead wanted to describe the steps we were already taking. It was more as if the board members were trying to defend how they did things rather than learn how to more effectively deal with these issues.

The two men I mentioned above were both considered problematic for many women as well. Neither was really a sexual predator, although one was single and, like many people at the dance, enjoyed it as a place to connect with members of the opposite sex. But he was respectful and straight forward, just, well, an asshole.

There are a number of people at the dance who are socially awkward. There was one in particular who did tremendous good work for the dance but who simply rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He probably had something wired the wrong way. He made the famous comment that everyone at the dance is socially awkward, and that’s what’s so wonderful about the contra community. You don’t have to be cool to be welcome in it.

E was an individual who definitely did have some mental problems. There were difficulties with dancing with him, there were behaviors that were difficult, but everyone in the community knew him and accepted him. Most of the women were happy to give him a dance in an evening.

On bad nights, people would just shake their heads and say E is off his meds tonight. So, maybe a wonderful story about and open and accepting dance community, but not such a good experience for a new comer at the dance.

I used to drive E home after dances. He told me about his meds, he said people want him on the meds, and, well he does it, but he doesn’t like it. He can feel the real him inside and he hates that the meds repress who he really is. If people can’t deal with the real him, well that’s their problem.

He wound up getting in an altercation with another of the problem dancers mentioned above, and we never saw him again. I tried to find him and see how he was, but was never able to.

F was a guy who showed up and waited for the new young dancers. He would hold them close, telling them that’s how a swing is done. I was surprised a number of times to run into him and his current new young partner in line, and have the woman (really girl) sink into my arms as if she thought that’s how you’re supposed to do it. I wound up trying to show them the dance frame.

There weren’t many complaints about F, because most ladies didn’t want to dance with him. He always found the newcomers. Many didn’t come back.

This seemed a problem so I talked to him. The problem persisted. I talked to him again. He explained that the women liked dancing with him that way.

He’s one of two people I asked not to come back to the dance anymore. (I was the monarch at that dance.) He didn’t have many friends in the dance community, there was no sense of loss.

G was a guy that was only occasionally at our dances, but someone who danced a lot in the larger dance community, weekends, etc. married to another, really nice, active dancing lady. They had kids and would sometimes trade who went to the dance and who stayed home.

He was a strong dancer and liked to dip whoever he was swinging. He did it in a forceful way, and, while maybe 30 or so, he liked dancing in the “young” line and dipping the young ladies.

A number of the older women in the dance community were offended by his behavior and made a very strong case that he should be banned from the dance. He seemed a nice enough guy, so I decided to watch him dance.

Indeed, he was in the “young” line, and indeed he dipped almost every neighbor lady. But they all came up smiling, they all seemed to really enjoy his dance moves.

I explained this to the women who thought he should be banned, the ones who didn’t like him. I asked them to tell me of a dancer who had a problem with him. They found one lady. I talked to her. Yes, he had dipped her when she didn’t want to be dipped. I asked if she said anything. She said yes, she asked him not to do that. I asked what happened then. She said he never dipped her again.

Despite a lot of pressure, I didn’t ban him.

H was maybe the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. But he was physically awkward and was a strong, not always in time, lead. Some women complained that he hurt them while trying to lead them where he thought they should go.

We’re not talking holding close or anything, just putting pressure on hands and arms that was uncomfortable.

I got complaints about him.

I talked to him, and said women say you are hurting them. Well here’s what happens almost all the time. He got very defensive and said nobody ever mentioned it to him. Right away we were in an antagonistic configuration.

Well time passed, and the issue persisted. One difference, I had learned a little bit about non-violent communication (NVC) which is maybe a misleading name. It might better be called non-judgemental communication. It’s based on 4 steps:

1- non judgemental observation

2- expression of how that makes you feel

3- express a personal need

4- make a request

Armed with this I approached H another time.

H, I said, (1) a number of women have come to me saying they feel you’ve hurt them while dancing. (Not the accusatory, you hurt them.) (2) this makes me feel bad since I don’t like it when people aren’t enjoying the dance. (3) I need to run a dance where the dancers feel comfortable. (4) Can you please work on using a lighter touch when you dance so I don’t get these complaints?

The effect was amazing. He thanked me for pointing it out and changed his behavior.

J was, at least for me, one of the most interesting cases. He was old, very intelligent, and with a personal history of great ups and downs. Many people, including myself, who knew him really liked him.

But he did like to get close to the ladies. And here’s how various women reacted to him. Either evil or as a harmless old man.

A young woman, a sensitive gentle woman, new to our community and staying at our house was watching some dance videos I had. She was suddenly visibly upset seeing J in the video, saying that’s the man who ruined her early dance experiences. She was clearly very damaged by whatever interaction she had had with him. Yes, a bad dance experience can have lasting effect.

Wow. So I asked a lot of other women about him. One was another young dancer, a vivacious sort of lady and I asked if J bothered her with his hands, his grabbing. She just threw it off, saying “nah, that’s just J.”

Amazing, two different young ladies with completely different reactions.

What about the older (again I mean over 30 but also into their 60s) women? One was my partner in a dance. She went over to some neighbor interaction with J, and came back shaking her head and laughing, “J always figures out some way to cop a sneak feel.”

Another said she enjoyed grinding with him, but hated some other strange gesture he had and asked him to not do that. He stopped that and they continued to happily grind away.

I didn’t really have many direct complaints about J. As with E, it was as if he was a likable old guy with some strange behaviors that didn’t stop a lot of the women from giving him a dance in an evening.

But, like with F, he would sometimes go after the new young ladies. I watched him hold this young girl close, squeezing her breasts tightly against him. I asked the girl afterwards if she was comfortable with that. Well I’m like her grandfather, and so is J, and she couldn’t have been more than 20, and well what do you say? She didn’t know, she thought that’s maybe how you’re supposed to do it. She was clearly uncomfortable both with J’s dancing and my asking her how she felt about J’s dancing.

She didn’t come back.

I told J he couldn’t come back either. (Although I’m told he’s reformed and dancing again.)

Having left the dance community, I’ve heard of two dancers who have been asked to leave the dances. Both were long time members of the dance community. Both have personalities that some people like and others don’t.

Both feel as if they’ve been thrown out with no good cause and no good explanation and no good process.

Ironically, Y was one of the people who enforced the ban on X, and who, according to X, didn’t offer due process or explanation just as Y complains now.

I am in no position to judge what happened, but things are so complex and I noticed two really interesting examples where supposedly factual incidents were flipped from what they first appeared.

In one Y complained that there was no process or procedure used for “alleged” complaints in one dance. Well it turns out, there were, and he ignored them.

In another, someone complained about Y hurting them. Well it turns out, maybe, who knows really, that she was hurting him and wouldn’t stop.

This stuff just isn’t that easy.

Well, I know nothing of these two cases, but do have a fear that people might get banned because they’re assholes, or rub people the wrong way. As that one time dancer said, what’s wonderful about contra is you don’t have to be cool to be welcomed.

What if they’re sexual predators driving young dancers away? Well probably should be banned then.

What if they’re personalities that simply piss people off? (Two dancers back in the day famously almost got into a fist fight arguing about how a dance should be run.) Well maybe that should just be people working things out without the need of a higher dance organization stepping in.

There is no Z, but there will be. I tend to think this is not a problem that dance organizers can easily address.

Today I see the dance more like an arena, a place where men and women come together to enjoy an activity which has wonderful music, great dancing, and a constant interaction between all the men and women in the hall. It’s not like you can just dance with your favorite partner all night, or a few select friends.

It’s a learning experience for all of us, learning how to deal with all the dancers coming down the line at you. And there will be mistakes, and people not as good at it as others. And people that really like each other and wind up being couples for life, and people who become good friends and meet and socialize outside of the dance, and people who just piss each other off. Except those people also have friends, and maybe lovers in the community as well.

How much control should the organizers try to exert over the behavior of the men and women acting like men and women at the dance?

I think a lot of it just has to be left up to the dancers. And the truth be known, the dance won’t be for everyone. Some will thrive in the community, others won’t. People will learn who they feel safe dancing with, and also which lines to avoid. Like the one with your ex in it, or that asshole you can’t stand.

But the predators waiting for the new young dancers…. Well that’s where I would draw the line.

Hire the Astrologically Handicapped

I always thought that would be a good bumper sticker, as I feel the pain of my own astrological handicap.

I’m a Pisces, the last of the signs, the sign that sees everything as shades of grey, the signs that always see the other side, and, as one joke horoscope said, the only sign that believes this BS.

I live in a world, a country rather, where it’s all about advocacy, taking a stand. And I keep making posts about seeing the other side, and keep getting hammered.

Sigh.

Japan might be better for me. When I learned a little Japanese I learned there is a construct in their language that they use all the time, that doesn’t have a simple translation. You’ll often hear a Japanese person use the closest English: “on the other hand…”

And they tend to prefer mediators over lawyers.

Bicycle Racing with John Allis

I started racing bicycles in the mid 1970s, a time when the sport was really small and most of the racers were runners with bad knees. I like to brag that I was a category I rider, which I was, except that back then, that was the only category. You simply paid your dues and you were a licensed bike racer.

I was extremely lucky to have lived in the Boston area when John Allis was one of the top riders in the country. He was on our Olympic teams and national champion a few times. And a super nice guy. And an evangelist for the sport.

He trained twice a day on a forty mile loop through the hills West of Boston. Anyone who wanted to ride with him could, so there were usually about 2o of us just tagging on. He’d ride hard up the hills, but then easy on the down sides so people could catch up before the next hill.

One year the state championship was 11o mile race on a 10 mile loop with a big climb on it. After a couple of laps I just thought it was going too slow. So I went off the front.

[The way bike racing works is there is a lot of drafting. The peloton/pack stays together, because it’s easy to ride as a group. Going off the front, you lose that.]

Nobody respected me, by that I mean, no-one came with me to try to make a break away of a small group of riders.

Except after not too long, John Allis did. He broke away from the peloton, caught up to me and as he passed me said “Let’s go.”

What a thrill, me and John Allis off the front. Well that scared a lot of people and some other riders caught up to us and it was a fast and strong break. It lost me after about 70 miles. But still, I finished around 10th and what a thrill to have created the winning break with John Allis.

In New England at the time, there were a number of races that drew the best riders from around the country with their prizes. Somerville NJ, Fitchburg MA, and Allentown PA. Riders today are impressed that I rode those races, which are now just for the elite riders, but, as I said, back then, anyone could play.

The current national champion was a Californian named John Howard. He came to race in Fitchburg and I was there. I marked him, I waited for his move, I wanted to be there when he went.

Boom! He exploded from the peloton and I was right on his wheel. It was me and John Howard off the front. He led out and then moved over to see who was with him and let them take the lead. I charged past ready to work with him.

He looked at me, sat up in his saddle, and with a look of complete distain stopped peddling. He let the pack catch up and waited until he could get someone better to ride with him.

What a blow. He did go off again, and got some other better known riders, and won the race. I finished 10th or so and won a tire. Still, what an asshole.

Then there was the big 170 mile race in Canada. Everyone who was anyone from Boston went up there, along with all the big names from across the country. John Howard was there. John Allis was there.

Now John Howard had the better sprint of the two. And was more arrogant. John Allis was all about riding hard over the distance, but if anyone was with him at the end, he often lost the sprint to the finish.

Anyway, it was, as I said, 170 mile race. 20 miles into the race John Allis went off the front. By himself. Everyone else was pacing themselves, knew that a lone rider couldn’t out pace the peloton for 150 miles.

So they let him go. And the miles passed. And they didn’t see him.

Somewhere around the 120 mile mark, John Howard got worried and decided to go after him. He chased and chased, but never caught him.

John Allis drove home in the Volkswagon Micro Bus which was first prize.

Me? I had stayed home and it was a strange lesson. Everyone better than me had gone to that race, meaning I was the best rider left in Boston. At the weekly race, I went off the front, and one guy went with me.

We lapped the pack. I went off the front again, by myself this time.

I won easily. It was really boring.

Well the sport started to grow. I raced for three years getting stronger and faster each year, finishing further and further back. It was kind of discouraging, so I quit as the sport left me behind. But what fun to have been there for those years.

Keeping Score

I’m thinking keeping score takes the fun out of most games and sports.

Take golf. It’s fun to walk around the course, it’s really neat that you can make the ball go so far, sometimes it lands where you want, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s simply a fun activity.

Until you keep score. You might have a streak of good holes, and then you get a bad one, and your score is ruined and your day is ruined.

I like doing crosswords. They have them online. And when you do them online, they time you. It becomes a race. The whole fun of crosswords is the word play, sussing out what the creator was thinking. But with the clock ticking? And then being told at the end how long it took?

The score doesn’t measure the enjoyment of the activity, yet it becomes how the activity is rated. How’d you do at golf today? What was your score, like that tells it all. And for some, it does.

Did you enjoy that crossword online? Well judging by your time, apparently not. But if it took longer it would have been more challenging, more fun. But if you’re timing them, you want them easy so you can get a low time.

I’m discouraged by the reports about the women’s soccer team. They are “winners.” It’s all about winning. It’s all about having a score higher than the other teams. And if it’s not higher? Well then it’s a disaster, the joy is taken out of it.

The competition, the play means nothing. Just the final score.

Winning is everything? I used to race bicycles in the Boston area back in the mid 1970s when the sport was really small. We had a weekly race I really enjoyed. I consistently finished in the top five, but never won.

What a pleasure to race against the better riders in the area.

One weekend there was a big race in Canada and all the good riders, as it turned out, all the riders better than me, went. I didn’t, so in the local race, I was the best rider. I went off the front by myself. I won easily. It was boring.

In the Olympics, did you get a medal? Was it gold? If not, what was the point?

So You Think You Can Dance. Is it about the joy of movement? No, it’s about what the judges think. If they like you, it was a great experience, if not, well a disaster. Yet the dance, the moves are the same in either case.

And I guess this is the complaint about standardized testing is school. Did the kids learning anything? Did they enjoy the experience of learning? Doesn’t matter, what was the score?

I’m really hoping I get a lot of likes on this one…

Apollo 11 Memory

1969 — The country was split between conservatives and liberals, maybe even more so than it is today. The Vietnam war was huge in our lives, and many college kids were actively protesting against it. M.I.T. was no exception.

Doc Draper — Doc Draper was a legend at M.I.T., he drove a little sports car and always parked it facing out. The story goes that was a habit he got when he was running bootleg liquor to fund his M.I.T. education. He made a major contribution to WWII with his invention of an inertial gun platform that provided a stable base for gunners on warships.

The story goes that when they first tried them he was on the ship, and when some Japanese Zeroes attacked the ships, the gunners fled for safety. Draper ran out to take their place and the horrified admiral had to hold him back. The platforms made a huge difference in our ability to defend against those suicide planes.

M.I.T. Instrumentation Lab — Doc Draper started the Lab based on his inertial guidance technology, which was then used in guidance systems for missiles. (It’s basically a gyroscope attached to something that detects motion.) The Lab was funded with government defense contracts and provided work for M.I.T. students and faculty.

Apollo — The Lab got the contract for the guidance system work for Apollo.

The Protests — Students protested the Lab, said there was no way a peaceful university should be funded with military contracts. Lots of bad PR for the Lab and M.I.T.

The Suits — As Draper had gotten older, the running of the Lab wound up in the hands of more serious business types, wearing suits among the engineering techies. They were very much aware of the bad PR of the military contracts and spent money publicizing the Lab’s work on Apollo and a few other minor peaceful projects. They worked hard at downplaying the military contracts.

Me — I worked at the Lab, my M.I.T. friends got me a job there, working on the backup Apollo navigation system, an optical sextant.

Which brings me to the day Apollo 11 came back to Earth.

It was probably Draper’s idea to have a large truck full of champagne show up. We started drinking and celebrating and drinking and celebrating. The news cameras showed up in a large room with tables.

The suits were there.

We were there.

The news was there, the cameras were rolling.

And Draper was there.

Draper, drunk, climbed up on a table, the cameras were rolling, the suits were afraid…

“When I started this lab we built war machines, and we still build war machines, and I’m damn proud of it!”

Epilog — The M.I.T. Instrumentation Lab divested itself from M.I.T. and changed its name to Draper Lab. The divestment agreement was long and complex and basically said that all of the connections between M.I.T. and the Lab would still be there, except at the very top it would be a separate entity. So it could pursue military contracts without giving the school a bad name.