A Bigger Picture
By far the most engaging session I sat in on today was by Jerry Linenger. A former NASA astronaut, he spent five months 250 miles above the Earth’s surface in the Russian space station Mir. Deeply affected by his talk, I mean to track down a copy of his 1999 book, “Off the Planet.”:http://www.known.com/orderofftheplanet.lasso To get a sense of the Big Picture, he said, you really have to step back – and it helps enormously to step right off the planet. He wishes that everyone in the world could be lofted into space for five minutes, an experience he thinks would transform them, just as it did him.
He used the microcosm of the space station – in which any misdeeds, including missteps with urination, ended up “in your face” – as a metaphor for the macrocosm of Earth. And he’s now actively engaged in a new initiative dedicated to tackling the global freshwater crisis. Emerged from the session determined to do whatever I can to help.
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