Blow Up Your TV
Last night I was watching television and came across a program on the science channel. Boring? Sometimes, but what caught my eye was Craig Venter. The of mapping the human genome was something I followed as it happened (Boring? Absolutely.) and he was one of the more visible figures.
Now here he was on a boat in the Galapagos Islands mapping the ocean and its many microbes. The idea of the expedition was to find a micro-biotic solution for the worlds energy dilemma. A better way to power the planet. One image really stuck with me though. Fifty feet underwater there were a number of springs rising up from the ocean floor. Venter was capturing the bubbles from one of them into a tube. Up from depths of the earth came hope, in the form of a bubble, captured in a bottle and brought to the surface. Hope surely springs eternal.
John Prine is one of my favorite songwriters and Spanish Pipedream is one of the reasons. There is a call to action in the chorus. Blow up your TV, throw away your papers, move to the county, build you a home. He also says to eat a lot of peaches but I already do.
The media is full of reasons to despair, global warming, recession, war and the list goes on. Happiness doesn't sell, struggle does. I have almost taken Johns advice many times. Then I see something that reminds me of the people out there trying to make the world better. (Yes I know Venter stands to make a lot of money as well.) So if you can't bring your self to blow up your TV, maybe try to watch something that inspires you. My sister sent me this youtube clip a few weeks ago. I normally find news stories about hope trite, a strange predicament I know. However this one got me, watch it until the end and I bet it makes you smile. If not well then, blow up your TV.
