Today is the 49th anniversary of Star Trek, the Original Series. How many of our lives changed on September 8th, 1966? I wrote a speech about the changes that Star Trek brought to the world, and to me, which I presented at two Star Trek Conventions about eight years ago. You’ll find one of them on my Portfolio page. (Click on VIDEOS and scroll down to find it.)
I can’t even imagine my life without the influence of Star Trek on it–and I’m not even (technically) a “Trekkie” or a “Trekker”! I enjoyed the show, yes–but I also enjoyed Bonanza, Leave It to Beaver, Roy Rogers, and a lot of other shows.
What attracted me to the original Star Trek was the niggling back-and-forth of two of its principal characters–Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy. I always wanted Spock to “figure it out” and embrace his human half as something more than an inconvenient “birth defect”. (Sarek’s attitude–“so human”–must have had something to do with Spock’s self-image. There’s no way Sarek couldn’t have communicated this demeaning sense to his son as he grew, even if he wanted to be more gracious.)
But it must have been hard because, in Starfleet, Spock was surrounded and vastly outnumbered by hundreds of perfectly imperfect humans! It was hard enough being (and becoming) a “good Vulcan” without the “unfortunate” gene pool hiccup! But without it, he wouldn’t have arrived at all.
So there you have it. Might as well embrace it and move on! McCoy was always ‘encouraging’ (perhaps the wrong word!) Spock to lighten up and acknowledge his humanity.
Eventually it all worked out just fine. McCoy always knew it would. (That aspect of McCoy was pure Kelley, by the way.)
Trek’s 49th anniversary also reminds me that I have to see if my friend has been able to figure out how to format the enhanced version of my book about DeForest Kelley. If not, I will need to audiotape it (again!) with the added stories in and lots of the end-days stuff out so it can be issued as an audio book but also so I can use an existing software program to re-type the audio version into a new Word document so it will format properly as an on demand e-book and tree-book.
It’ll be time-consuming (12 to 14 hours minimum) to have to audiotape it again–and may cost several hundred dollars if I can’t find a kindred spirit/Trek soul to allow me to use their recording studio here in Tacoma for a percentage of the eventual profits–but I want to do it anyway. If I do an audio version (which, again, may be mandatory unless someone can get the manuscript to format properly) the result will feel like a fan and me sitting in a room while I share the story of my association with De…and that would be very, very cool. That’s the way I wrote it–totally relational and one-to-one. (This gal never, ever writes to “the masses”. I write to “one other person” who I know is rabidly interested in the topic I’m writing about. That’s the only way to make a real connection, in my opinion.)
Last night I had a dream that there was a huge earthquake while I was in something like the Space Needle. The quake knocked the place I was in off its perch and, as I hurtled toward the earth, I started thanking God for my wonderful, amazing, beautiful life (it’s amazing how quickly the hard, awful, pathetic parts of life fell away as I was hurtling toward my death!) and half-expecting the prayer to end in mid-sentence as I hit the ground–which, needless to say, I kept anticipating– “any millisecond now…”!
I’ve had a similar dream several times before. I’m always praying and praising God at the end…and then I wake up before I hit the ground!
Maybe that’s the way it’ll be when I die–praising and praying when I “hit the ground” and find a soft landing and an outstretched hand welcoming me home. That would be awesome! No guarantees, of course–it’s something I accept on faith. I also expect a lot of non-Christians to be there, too–something else I accept on faith–’cause I don’t cater to the theory that any real God would be as freakin’ picky as to send a swath of my fellow sojourners to hell or oblivion because their theology was amiss. I expect that everybody’s theology is amiss in ways big and small. No limited human mind can conceive the limitless divine mind. Everybody’s guessing and writing books about it. None of them are accurate ’cause nobody’s perfect: each of us is a product of our limited and limiting culture. If God exists (and I do believe in Intelligent Design–and Evolution!), He/She/It is waaaaayyyy beyond our anemic abilities to comprehend, encompass or embody Him/Her/It. We can all try like mad, but it just ain’t possible! Ya can’t put a fence around God and say, “There ya go! No more, no less! That, right there, is the full meal deal!”
It’s laughable.
On another note…
My goats are about ready to call the SPCA. They’ve been without hay (which is NOT to say without grain and forage) for two and a half days and they think they’re being deprived. Their bellies and flanks tell another story. I guess you might say they’re a little spoiled.
OK. They’re a lot spoiled. Don’t have pets if you’re not going to spoil them. That’s my mantra.
Two volunteers (Lisa and Ben) are coming over at five today to help unload the twenty, 125-pound bales. Matt (who’s delivering the hay) says he has extra hay hooks, so that’s good. We’ll probably be done in thirty minutes with help like this! I’m all for that because, after yesterday’s shed muck-out, my Dupuytren’s Contracture hand is still a little sore. The rest of me is fine, though. I was stiff and sore yesterday until I took four baby aspirin, but that took care of it. Today you’d never know I was digging out for three hours (labor-intensive)…
