black holes

A black hole is a super dense gravitational field from which light cannot escape. The super density of matter creates a gravitational field so strong that matter the size of the earth is condensed to the size of a thimble. And like a giant vacuum cleaner everything that is within its reach is sucked into a black hole. Matter is deconstructed into the smallest of galactic elements.

Physicists call the perimeter of the black hole the event horizon. This is point at which information cannot be retrieved and beyond which all is lost.

Every family has an event horizon, a point at which all information stops. The stopping point is nearer for some and further for others. There must be some comfort in being Jewish, for their family history is traced all the way back to Abraham. And even when cultures don't know for certain, they invent histories that explain our origins. The Greeks had Helen of Troy and before that Pandora. The Romans had Romulus and Remus along with Aeneas. But, the phenomenon is not limited to Western Civilization. It is universal. The ancient Aztec civilization of Mexico relate the story of its founder Tenoch bring his people on an odyssey to a lake in Mexico where an eagle was perched on a cactus. There on a swampy island they found their promised land and created a great civilization.

These stories of origin are often part fact and part fiction. They become our badge of cultural identification so that we know who we are and where we came from. This is important for if we don't know where we have been as a people, how do we know where we are going to?

History is one of the original seven muses. History is the oldest story of mankind; a story that continues to be written. Even though many of the pages are lost forever, torn from the book of who we are by war, famine, neglect, and time, still it is comforting to know that others have before us have lived, loved, and worked to get us to this point in the story of our families.

The black hole into which we cannot see is frustrating. There must be many stories of our families which are amusing even heroic, but at the same time we must acknowledge that sometime history can reveal stories that are difficult to deal with. Events in the history of mankind are both good and bad. That is the nature of humanity.

Time Traveler

You can go from here to there in seconds.

Here is the computer where you sit and there is Graffigny-Chemin, where Marguerite Chevallier was raised and where she met First Lieutenant James Madison Pearson.

Google Earth takes you to the church (in the center of the picture) across the street from where she lived. Observe the carriage house, and gardens of her house which comprise the bottom right hand corner of the picture. In my Google Earth view, the number 52150 appears on top of the house. A path to the left of the image leads to the hill where I took the view of the village. (See wikipedia entry on Graffigny-Chemin.) The path leading out of the village to the top of the picture goes to Bourmont where during World War I, the Second Infantry Division was originally headquartered. The path leading to the right is the ancient Roman Way from Langres to Toul near the birthplace of Joan of Arc.

Time travels. The past is the compression of all that has happened, waiting to be revealed.

TheLittle Red Hen

The Sky is Falling, the misadventures of Chicken Little and Henny Penny is the more well-known story, but my favorite is the story of Who Will Help?

The story begins as the Little Red Hen finds a grain of wheat and asks which of the other animals in the barnyard will help her plant it. Nobody will help. "Very well, then," she replies, "I will do it myself." No one helps her with harvesting, threshing, taking the wheat to the mill or baking bread. But she has her revenge: The fruit of her labors, fresh homemade bread, is shared with her chicks while the hungry animals look on in shame.

It is not right, as every child knows, but still, it is the way it is - one does the work and everyone else enjoys the fruits of the labor. Growing up as a child, I always had a sense that my mother worked much too hard; a little help now and then from me or the other five children would have gone a long way towards easing her burden. I can now admit that I did not help enough. And, "God bless her," I only remember once my mother getting upset at my brother and I for not pitching in and helping out. Today, I still harbor the guilt of not helping my mother more. All I can do is watch my own two children and wonder why they too don't help out a little more at home.

Thank goodness for George. He found the kernel of wheat and planted it and how it has sprouted. Now like the Little Red Hen, George and I wonder who will help.