Dear Friends ~ In another corner of my life, I teach what I call Baby's First Research Paper classes to middle school students. Recently I guided two dozen tweens through a project creating timelines of the people and events that made possible an invention of their choosing. Their topics ranged from toasters and the Slinky, to water purifiers, baseball mitts, and seat belts. I soaked up pages of interesting factoids over the month (Did you know that astronauts have used Silly Putty to hold instruments down in zero gravity?), watching them morph from mere points on a line, into stories — or "biographies" — of things. I wouldn't categorize them as "Entrepreneur Seizes Business Opportunity" stories as much as "Someone Recognizes Another Person's Need and Devises a Way to Meet the Need" stories.
The idea for the first windshield wiper fits into the latter category. In 1902, Mary Anderson was riding in a streetcar during a winter storm. She was astonished that the driver "had to climb out of the car constantly to scrape off the sleet, snow, and rain," often along the narrow shoulder of a busy street. He also had to travel with his head sticking out the window in freezing temperatures. "When she got home," my student wrote, "she sketched a blade that could move automatically."
"Necessity is the mother of invention," the old saying goes. I'm tempted to take out my editing pen and suggest we rework it to say, "Necessity is an auntie of invention. As is her sister, Kindness."
Our world is a story punctuated by subtle kindnesses; It is also kind for us to remind one another that this is true. And the power to envision new realities — to problem-solve and meet needs — is ours as much as it is anyone's. ~ Joy
In the summer
at day's end
we notice our salted skin
(how it clings and crusts as silt deposits)
touch lightly the tomato-red sheen in that space just below the eyes.
Wearied bodies. Sticking flesh. Warmed and weighted eyes. The smell of ourselves.
We are caked with the soil that draws up seeds to plants
and the dampnesses that quench them.
The water runs off us, coffee rich against the porcelain sink.
Who was it that likened sin to dirt? Who declared purity a vast white void?
Who never noticed the gospel of a body
in the summer
at day's end?
at day's end
we notice our salted skin
(how it clings and crusts as silt deposits)
touch lightly the tomato-red sheen in that space just below the eyes.
Wearied bodies. Sticking flesh. Warmed and weighted eyes. The smell of ourselves.
We are caked with the soil that draws up seeds to plants
and the dampnesses that quench them.
The water runs off us, coffee rich against the porcelain sink.
Who was it that likened sin to dirt? Who declared purity a vast white void?
Who never noticed the gospel of a body
in the summer
at day's end?