The Right Stuff

All this talk today about Chuck Yeager, which of course drilled into a discussion about the difference between Yeager and Armstrong and subsequently John Glenn..which degenerated into a discussion about Jim Lovell and not remembering of Ken Mattingly's name until I hit up the IMDB.com... The result has been - I want to go visit Kennedy Space Center. A friend of mine is a teacher and I believe can get us in for free or nearly free. The weather this week has been especially fine and I just love being outdoors when the weather is this nice so I'm hoping to get this organised for this weekend if I can. I have to go to Houston soon so that puts things into some jeopardy but Houston also brings about IKEA!!!!!!

Ahem, so, I've picked up a couple new books. Both are nonfic which surprised my sister - she didn't think I got into that. But anyone, the first one is a Doris Kearns Goodwin historical biography on Abraham Lincoln's cabinet - it's called Team of Rivals. The other is Terry Jones' "Medieval Lives" which is basically a correction of the myths about life in the middle ages.

Which brings me to my next tangent - if you ask most people who their favourite Python is, they are likely to respond with John Cleese or Eric Idle. But in my mind, Terry Jones was by far the funniest of the troupe. I might be slightly partial, of course, because I met him in Chicago once and he was inclined to chat with me awhile (probably because I was the only female there..). I read a bit about him on Wikipedia that said,

"George Perry has commented that should you 'speak to him on subjects as diverse as fossil fuels, or Rupert Bear, or mercenaries in the Middle Ages or Modern China and in a moment you will find yourself hopelessly out of your depth, floored by his knowledge.' However Jones is by no means a show off, he merely has a good natured enthusiasm."

I found that slight bit of information extremely motivating - can you imagine flooring people by the depth of your knowledge? I'm one of those people who knows a little something about everything but not a lot about anything. So to imagine being someone who has not only the ability to have a sprinkling of knowledge in a variety of areas but also be an actual authority is an amazing feat. Not to mention being a writer, a comedian, actor, director, documentarian of BBC mini-series, Oxford graduate and an author. Good grief, I want to be Terry Jones!

"Oh. Mrs. Niggerbaiter's exploded! She was my best friend!"
"Oh don't be so sentimental, Mother. People explode every day."

I actually don't remember if it was Terry Jones who was in that, but it's still a hilarious sketch.

Um, back to my point..and I have one. The point is, somewhere along the way (and I'm guessing Day 2 of Kindergarten..) I gave up on education. I think - as much as I abhor the concept - I would have done very well in Montessori school. I just cannot stand structure and have always succeeded where there was very little. I will push myself so much harder than anyone would dream of pushing me but I completely dissolve when forced into a structure. I remember a class I took in High School - it was allegedly a college prep course whereby you "practiced" reading at a college level. About a couple weeks or so into it, the instructor realized I was bored out of my skull and put me on an independent study programme. I read more in that class than any other I had ever taken. I read Steinbeck, Richard Wright, Saint Exupery, Albert Camus (and thank goodness, because half of Woody Allen's essays would have flown right over my head), Thomas Hardy.. Anyway, the point is, I wish I understood how to self-motivate at the time because maybe I would have pushed harder in my education than I did.

So now I'm merely an armchair graduate, reading sensational historians like Doris Goodwin and Terry Jones but hey. It's better than Glamour, right?