Some time after having and falling in love with my kids, I also fell in love with David Macauley's "How Things Work" books. There is something enticing and mind-bending about cross sections of buildings and cars and human bodies.
Actually, I have always had a fascination with the functional details of things, even though I consider myself a generalist (which is just code for "now I don't have to try very hard because I only desire to know some things about lots of things, and nothing very deeply"). Show me the star-studded nub of a Cottonwood twig, tease me with the science behind Pop Rocks, and tempt me with unshakeable tales of solid-state electronics and I am a happy, if not slightly dazed, woman.
Maybe that's why I haven't quite "gotten" the two-man bobsled event this year. From my perspective, it just looks like two men crouching inside a small device and flinging themselves aimlessly down an icy hill. Yet, last night, in an interview, one of the U.S. bobsledders was dissecting the intricacies of his 90-second trail-side job and how difficult it is. That's when I found myself wishing that they'd make see-through bobsleds so the rest of us could be rightly impressed. In his honor, I stuck around for a few more races, trying hard to appreciate the unseen manipulations of ropes and pulleys that kept the athletes on the right path.
This desire to see through things, to wish things to be more transparent and revealing, is probably why I both love and loathe such shows as "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black." These gritty, well-written dramas offer an insider's glance into worlds I am otherwise not privy to. Not that I want to be privy to them. Truly, I cannot take my eyes from them, so compelling and unbelievable are their worlds, spattered and laid bare across my 32-inch screen.
One former Lincolnite, who recently wrapped up employment in the White House, told a friend that the way people in "House of Cards" behave is also, pretty much, the way the people in the House--and the Senate and, I suppose all of political Washington--behave. Good lord, I thought, suddenly hungering for greater opacity.
And, really, isn't that the fine line we find ourselves drawing and redrawing every single day of our lives--figuring out what to reveal and what to hold back, what needs to be known now and what can be tucked away for a rainy day? Where it becomes difficult is in those arenas in which someone else makes those decisions for the rest of us, usually without consultation. This is, I suppose, one reason that the legislature recently debated about the transparency or secrecy of building a college-president pool of candidates.
I have never been a big fan of the back door, but I would be lying if I said that I always like what walks in through the front door, especially when that something reveals a hardness or a truth that is difficult to swallow. Better, it seems, for me to experience some of that transparency in colorful, graphic-filled books and on-demand t.v shows, rather than in the harsh light of a February afternoon.
Still, I'd like to be the one to make that decision.
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