Beauty of Science Narration

Throughout high school I had a teacher named Mr. Bara. He was my Botany, Chemistry, Physics, Algebra II and Geometry teacher (Sophomore, junior and senior years). He always had interesting stories to tell the class and would share them on certain days more so than others. Some of stories would begin so radically off topic that it makes you wonder how it relates to class at all, but there was always a point to his stories. He never just told them at random. And they were some of the most humorous stories I have ever heard from a teacher.

I remember in one story he recounted his experience in Chicago many years ago. He was a pizza delivery guy and while he was driving on the back roads of Chicago delivering pizza, he ran over a bump with his job’s vehicle. After he felt that bump, he pulled over the side of the road and found a little kid crying over a completely flattened bird that was attached to a string that the boy was holding. Mr. Bara ran over a little boy’s pet bird. The kid’s father was standing on the hill and apparently witnessed the whole thing. He called Mr. Bara in an aggressive/angry tone to go up there and talk with him. My former teacher thought he was in deep trouble. When they were out of the boy’s earshot, the man’s facial features relaxed and said something like “Thank God! I hated that bird!” and eventually told Mr. Bara that they had to make it look like he was in trouble to make his son feel better. My former teacher ended up getting lectured until he got back in his vehicle to continue delivering the pizza to his customer.

(Hmm.. I’m not sure how that related to the class topic, but I think it did somewhere.)

I thought about Mr. Bara when I read Dillard’s piece. Her language usage was so beautiful and captivating. I felt like I was reading a novel – a novel about a man’s deep intellectual thoughts about nature (at least I think the character in the story was male – correct me if I’m wrong). (I also loved where she talked about the “loop.” It made me realize that we’ll never know the definite answers to things, but that’s what makes thinking fun in my opinion. I think it’s fun to play with truth relative to society). The tone of the piece was so warm and nostalgic. So much so that it allowed me to let me think/explore my own recollections surrounding nature/science. (Side note, I wonder if this overall tone/feeling/structure is what our features could feel like too)

Here are some other memories I had:

My senior year of high school I was a teacher’s aide for a different science teacher – Mr. Jones. That semester I was his TA I also had him for Ichthyology/Entomology, but we just called it “Fish and Bugs.” During one of my TA moments, he had me go behind the school and collect branches on the ground and bring them back to the classroom to put into a medium-ish plastic container. At first I wasn’t sure why, but then later in Fish and Bugs I learned it was because that container was where some newborn praying mantises were to live. My class was going to raise them and hopefully get them to molt/grow. I had two mantises -- I named them Lucky and Sam. One was named Lucky because he was limping everywhere and I thought maybe he’d die more easily. (Actually, he outlived Sam – my healthy one -- by two or three days and so I guess he really was lucky (but not too lucky).) Every day we had fruit flies reproduce in test tubes (I think – I can’t remember exactly) and then we fed them to our mantises by opening the tiny baby food containers where our mantises lived and then placed them in there. Mr. Jones didn’t have a high hope for the creatures' survival rate because none of them were molting or really eating the fruit flies. I suppose he was right – No one’s survived. It was the Hunger Games: Week by week there were less and less students taking care of their mantises. Oh well – Lucky and Sam: Rest in peace.   

Last summer I walked up the hill behind my parents' place to a local cemetery. I had no particular reason for being there other than to explore the woods around that location. I had never done so before and so I thought it would be a fun adventure. On my way back home through the cemetery, I remember wondering about life and death, and what death is like. I’m not unhappy with my life, but I’ve recently come to terms that I’d like to experience death one day. I’d like to know what happens to my state of being in the afterlife. I used to be afraid of death, but I don’t think it’d be so bad because, after all, because life and death is apart of us and all other living creatures (including the sun that helps support our lives).

Because all things live and die (making death natural), I’ve wondered about how we find “beauty” in nature. I find mountains filled with ponderosa pine, Douglas fir and larch trees to be beautiful. I also think sunsets and sunrises are beautiful with every delicate hue that they bring forth to the surrounding world and I believe that fields filled with butterflies would be beautiful. When we look at nature and feel inspired by the “science” within it in addition to its awe inducing ways, is it possible that we feel that way because nature is apart of us and we are a part of it? We are all living things – We are all made of cells. Plants and humans have cells and tissues, just different types. Plants live and thrive in nature and it has been suggested that we came from nature somehow, either by a creator or through evolution. Perhaps because we’re made of similar elements/properties as those in the wild that that is the reason why we find nature beautiful.

(View from the hill behind my parents' place)


                  (Forest by the cemetery)  

P.S. there are Douglas fir, larch, ponderosa pines, etc in these pictures :).