New Direction Contemplation: To Boldly Go...

I am thinking about a  new series for my blog, writing my own thoughts on Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) , going episode by episode and finding out what I can and writing what I remember, think and feel about it. While I grew up with Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS)--with the Balok puppet scaring my 4 year old mind and scarring my psyche for years, TNG was the Trek I came of age with.

It's going to be unique if I go forward with it. I mean, I am about as mellow as I've ever been in my life but I still feel passionately about things. Fewer things, but things that are at the core of me. For example, I am very strongly pro-life and I don't think that's ever going to change. I'm also very passionate about my faith, now more than ever. God is everything to me. I cannot be me without my love for Jesus the Messiah. Likewise, I'm a husband and a father and I can't be who I am without my desire to secure the future for my children. My life has been changed by all these things, my heart and my perception of everything is shaped by these life experiences, and strangely it has also been influenced by Star Trek, a show I simply followed for entertainment, a respite from the world.

I say strangely because Star Trek as a whole until 1991 was created by a humanistic atheist, Gene Roddenberry. He wrote TOS as "Wagon Train to the stars," a western where a ship replaced the wagons and planets replaced the arid western scenery. He wanted to articulate a future where humanity had survived and not wiped itself out with nuclear wars. Yet, with TNG, Roddenberry was convinced it would be his magnum opus, and he wanted to push it further to the ultimate direction, where humanity was no longer the 3 year-old child fighting over toys and chits. He wanted to paint his version of humanity having arrived at it's humanistic ideal, a utopian dream, nothing else and nothing less. Humans were still flawed, but the flaws were not born of selfish need and petty desires.

Why is that a problem for me? Well, as a parent, I know that there is something within every child that comes forward with needs and wants that will not be ignored. Needs, like food, warmth, attention, and dry diapers, and wants like toys, snacks, and activities that entertain, will drive that child to verbalize, point, crawl, grasp, but also drive them to scream, shove, and take without regard to others. We may teach them how to work with those desires and to keep their actions civil and kind, but that takes time and each child has their own response to the education, which is borne out over the course of that person's lifetime. The best turn out to be "good people." The worst are usually sitting in a prison for years or decades by the time they're done. My faith tells me that sin has corrupted mankind and the world around him. No one ever has ever perfectly adapted to those needs and lived a life free of defects. No one, that is, except Jesus Christ, Whose divinity and humanity were fully real, but completely under His control. The rest of us, we fall short, and that's the best definition of sin.

Gene wants us to, via the suspension of disbelief that is given to a show or theater production, accept that the childish needs that drive us all our lives, the ones that made Gene himself act so "worldly" as to have a 15 year affair with a mistress even while he had children with his second wife, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. He was a man deeply flawed in some ways but in others knowing the truth of his own standards, grappling with his sins, and refusing to believe that his hunger for Eden was a lie. His caricature of God, never reflected better than when he wrote the character of Q in the pilot of TNG, was exactly what an atheist believes God to be, unsympathetic judge and petty rogue with nothing more than a chip on his shoulder to prove mankind is a "savage child race."

I find myself at once rooting for Roddenberry's vision and at the same time sadly SMH at the things he got fabulously wrong. Writers, which were used like tissues and toilet paper in the first two years of TNG, were constantly at odds with the idea that people in the 24th century didn't have the conflicts that they do today. If people didn't have conflicts over money, sex, and power, that eliminates nearly all the dramatic fodder for the writers contemporary with TNG. For someone who had enough drama in my life at the time, the ideas of Trek and TNG in particular sounded appealing. It was a way to see life as it could be if people merely lived up to the ideals they aspired to. For someone who didn't get "people" in general, it was really the ideal escape when all the other shows out there were just more of the same old stuff.

TNG was the final articulation of Roddenberry, a man who is on his own pedestal, having been granted his own sainthood in the minds of so many fans out there. The Great Bird of the Galaxy, as Gene had accepted the nickname, came home to roost. Was he going to lay an egg? What would emerge out of TNG? Like every birth and every creative process, the beginnings were awkward, messy and troubling at times, especially the first two seasons, but Trekkies kept the series alive long enough for the show to find its feet. It's survival gave us something unique and its legacy is one that kept the Trek franchise surviving into the 21st century and perhaps beyond. It's for that reason alone I should consider writing about it.

Also, a wise writer recently told me that before 40, a writer should write for others and that after 40, they should only write for themselves. While I have my doubts about that specific an age bracket, I do know that I need to articulate some of my world, because more and more of it is being swallowed up by the new one that I don't quite recognize. So we'll see how far I get. I hope to make a serious go of it. Who knows how far I can get?

Thankful For a Dad Whose Love Broke Through Barriers

Oklahoma City 1939 was as segregated as it could be
as this Russell Lee photograph clearly illustrates

Sometimes racism is blatant, like the "separate but equal" facilities in the south that were carved out like a cancer in the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 60s. But it was a quiet separate-but-equal in Colorado, the kind you didn't see in signs, but it was there, nonetheless. I was just as shocked as anyone was when I found out that my own father was not a part of perpetuating it, but ending it.

The 1960s in Colorado was very different from how you and I now experience it. Leaded gas flowed through carburetors into low octane engines, filling the air with a fine brown exhaust that hung about a simple interstate system. This system, when it at last intersected northwest of the city, it was so convoluted and kinked with curves, one traffic reporter called it a mousetrap, probably because there was no way you were getting out of there with all your whiskers intact!

If you wanted to call someone, much like everywhere else in the country, you had to figure out if they'd be home. In the summer, this was a real bother because the only place that actually had air conditioning was a movie theater or maybe the stores on 16th Street downtown. Even brand new Westland Mall at Colfax and Pierce in Lakewood had open breezeways instead of an actual enclosed commons like Colorado Mills. So to cool off, you might have gone to a pool, or a movie, but staying cooped up in a house some warm summer evening wasn't much fun. But if you were lucky, and they were unlucky, you could call them.

But don't stay on too long. They might need to take another call for someone else living at the same address. What's worse, the other caller might get frustrated from re-dialing their rotary phone so many times and constantly getting what was called a "busy signal." Or worse, you could be interrupting their favorite TV show re-run which they'd missed the first time because they didn't have a DVR. They didn't have VCRs back in the 60's either. And most stations still broadcast in black and white anyway. And with 2 to 5 channels to pick from locally, you were pretty much stuck with whatever the local stations could arrange. There were no long-distance cable networks. Forget video games. Forget chat. If you wanted to communicate with your friends out-of-state, It was stamped and hand delivered mail, or you could call them. It would cost up to $3 a minute and if you called and got a busy signal, you had to wait for them to finish and then try again!

If you likewise wanted to get an appointment, you had to call the doctor or the dentist and if they were busy, well just too bad. You'd have to call back in a few minutes. No redial either. Some folks actually got jobs by how fast they could dial a phone using a rotary dial, or how fast they could write shorthand (an early, handwritten form of txtspk bt w/o teh phone or typos. And typos, oh, cardinal sins, those typos! Not everyone typed. In fact, they had what were called "typing pools" where your secretary's shorthand would get translated to actual e-n-g-l-i-s-h by mostly women who did nothing but type and file all day. And if they had over the number of allowable misteaks mistakes, usually 2, they would hve have to start over. Not 2 mistakes per word, not per line, but per page! White out was still a decade away, so it was essential to get a perfect typist or appear like you couldn't afford good employees.

Speaking of white out. That happened in the mornings. Oh, no one told you about that? Well, if you were white, you would go out in the morning to the store, the tailor or dry cleaners, or if you had a checkup at the dentist, you would go and see him in the morning. Then, after 1 or 2 p.m., that's when the other folks, the blacks or mexicans, would have their turn. It could be a real problem if your dentist had some garlic-loaded 3 cheese lasagna for lunch or worse, knocked back a few martinis with his sandwich at the men's club. He might not be as attentive as he would have been in the morning when he was sober.

If you did want a morning appointment for one reason or another and your race stood in the way, you had to find a dentist or doctor who didn't know you and you had to sound "white" over the phone when making your appointment. Otherwise, the receptionist might steer you to an afternoon slot. And then, if you showed up, they might make you wait outside the office or more likely, flatly refuse you your appointment and give you a nasty time for "wasting" theirs by trying to cheat the system.

It was like that in the 40s and 50s. It was like that in a lot of cities in the 60s, including Denver. But it wasn't like that at my father's new practice. Fresh out of dental school, my dad still remembered the kind and loving care he'd received from his grandparents' hired maid, an elderly black woman. She had taught him to feed himself as a child. His experiences reinforced the idea that racism, in any form, is not acceptable. He became one of the first dentists in Denver who had an integrated waiting room. If you needed an appointment, whatever time was convenient to you and the dentist or hygenist was when you were seen. Isn't that so much simpler? But if a person were a bigot, well, they probably didn't choose to hang out too long in the waiting room with someone who didn't have the same shade of melanin. That was too bad for them, because my dad, up to retirement, was the best dentist in all of Colorado. I might be a little biassed on that, but trust was absolute and his grandkids will all remember seeing their grandpa for dental work.

In every aspect, my dad is also someone whose compassion and love was very moving. As a medically-trained individual, he did not hesitate to jump into the action if someone was in distress. Whether that was on some roadside when he rolled up on an accident somewhere, or if it was someone needing help with a fractured tooth. This meant loss for him and his family when he would treat anyone regardless of their ability to pay. From someone who collapsed while swimming to crawling inside a car wreck to assist a mother who lay dying after fleeing with her children from her abusive husband, watching my father's heart leap in has led me more than once into my own harrowing experiences of love hurdling barriers to help a friend, a stranger, a lost soul, or a victim. I have carried this love onward as a living testament of a father whose impulse of love would propel him to action no matter the consequences to his heart. He is the bravest man I've ever known.

One of the best examples of this was a photograph that made the Denver papers in the same days of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., showing my dad, at work as a dentist, showing two young boys how to brush their teeth using an adult-sized pair of chompers. It was my dad, being the man I've grown up loving and proud to be his son.

View image | gettyimages.com

Exploring With the Colorado Pass Book

The Colorado Pass Book: A Guide to Colorado's Backroad Mountain Passes by Don Koch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Whether you're a native who grew up traveling the back roads of Colorado or a new tenderfoot looking to better acquaint yourself with your new home state, the Colorado Pass Book is an excellent all-in-one book for exploring, jeeping, and camping in the Centennial State! You don't need anything more than a stocked and well cared-for passenger car for some of the roads, and each of the routes are scenic trips in their own right.

I have had this book in two different editions and the most recent is best for the updated information as well as for the more compact travel size. Both editions are stuffed jammed tight with notes by me and my father, having driven each road in the book! Koch's estimates of the difficulty and equipment requirements for each route are spot on accurate. If there is one thing I could change about the book, it's that Koch seems to tone down his reviews and restrain his writing to understate certain aspects, and we have highlighted and underlined cautionary statements, because his warnings should be heeded at all costs!

Any guide book should be complimented by another and, while there isn't a direct road-for-road comparison that I know of, the best I've seen is Guide to Colorado Backroads & 4-Wheel Drive Trails in its various editions by Charles A. Wells. Both of these books are worth their weight in gold, especially if one takes into account the cost savings of car repairs!


View all my reviews