Six Impossible Things

Some weeks feel like a gauntlet teaching high school. There are demands on teachers' time, our energy, our minds, our moods, our health, our strengths, our minds, and our hearts. We run the race with the best of intentions, but it easy for me to get caught up in the what did not work moments of my week. Instead of doing that, this evening's slice is a quick draft of six of my favorite impossibilities from everyday life. I live among miracles.  Sometimes I need to slow down and remember just that.

Early morning trip to the well to check the problem. Loved how the tree lit up.

Water

We expect it. We take it for granted. We believe it is pure, clear, clean and safe to drink. We fill our tubs with it and soak in it. We don't walk for it or haul it. One morning, recently, I woke up. Stumbled into the kitchen. Put a glass under the faucet for some water. Turned the white ceramic handle and nothing. The pump on our well had gone bad. Even then, the contractor did a same-day fix while I was at work. We didn't even have to be here to witness the miracle. Water was restored by the time we got home from school and track practice.

Second Day Air

Shipping is mysterious. I understand the concept and some of the distribution or transportation channels involved, but really it's amorphous. The idea that a package or an envelope can travel across the country or across the world in two days by plane is one I can image but not quite practically explain. We recently received a second day air mailing label so that we could send our passports in to get visas to travel. Of course it worked. The passports got where they needed to be. Then they flew fleetly back to us and we are sticker ready for four a.m. Friday travel. 

Photocopying

Photocopiers continue to fascinate me. I need to invest in this wondering, but I love thinking about it, so I don't read too deeply into opposites attracking, photo-electric charges or the elementals involved in printing the image from the rotating semi-conductor-coated drum. I love photocopiers. I love thinking about how they work. Perhaps the fascination stems from my early days teaching. I started during the in-between age. Between the photocopier and the end of the  Purple-Ink Age, the age when making copies meant cranking a handle. Both were available to me in the mail room at Winter Park High School. Somedays standing at the copier, I can imagine the wuft, wuft of the copy machine while smelling the ink from the drum and seeing Rosalie Gwinn standing at the counter, turning the handle.

Portable Document Format

PDF documents: oh so crisp, so clean, so sharp. I remember saving documents in PDF format from Adobe PageMaker. I loved the early read-only format. Documents on a screen, rendered at high resolutions are nearly as old world charming as Adobe Garamond. Now there are all sorts of ways to capture and alter PDFs. Readable, shareable, downloadable, change-able. beautiful, the PDF sure is gorgeous at a resolution of 300 dpi.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/electric-image

Domestic Electrification

Sure, we have had domestic electrification several relative life times, but it has enable many of my favorite every day appliances: the programmable coffee machine, the washer and dryer, the refrigerator and who would I be to forget the electric light. The lighting cords currently charging personal devices on the kitchen counter and the USB AC/DC plug adapter. I do not even have the vocabulary to describe such technological marvels. All though, seem to have been parented by domesticated electricity (Thank you, Edison and Tesla). 

Love

Love wins. Love endures. Love conquers. Love strengthens and supports. Love shows me everyday what is possible even in the face of seeming impossibilities. So many of these marvels are the result of love and a passion to invest love in learning, in doing, in creating, in helping, in solving and in making the world the place of wonders we know it is.

Six impossible things, that don't quite tell a slice of life story as I've written them, but that I'm happily thinking about as the last day before spring break approaches.