"Beam me up!" Scotty

I picked this picture of a "double rainbow" that I framed out of my front window on a beautifully stormy day a few months ago as my first attempt to illustrate my blogs. I cropped it to show just the skyline and street light next to my actual street sign. It was phenomenally breath-taking at the time. The major "bow" came right down to my house. The clouds, that day, obscured the usually snow-capped Mt. San Gorgonio...gorgeous!

Is there life after gravity? Could there, someday, be an "existence" above and beyond these clouds and rainbows? Is there a place where the effects/affects of gravity don't matter? Well, I'd like to imagine so.

Almost 40 years ago a journeyman actor took a role on a show about space travel. Why is it that we all still remember the role played by James Doohan, aka "Star Trek's Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, who just passed away at the age of 85? It's not just because "Beam me up, Scotty" became a legendary pop-culture catch-phrase. Maybe it's because we would like to identify with this exuberant chief engineer that Doohan and the creator, Gene Roddenbury, invented. He was the "over-worked guy in engineering, the sweaty, busy guy in charge of keeping the darn thing running. Scotty represented the the cunning intelligence of the "behind-the-scenes" worker. He did the impossible time and again and always tweaked things just a little bit so that he'd come out looking good. But he wasn't devious or shiftless. The Enterprise was his first priority and his only love. Scotty was just the guy who, like us, had to figure out on the fly how to manage the expectations of the "bosses".

"But Captain, she can't take it!" he'd yell in that Scottish burr of his, as Captain Kirk tried yet another crazy maneuver with Scotty's beloved ship. But she could and did take it, because Scotty was there to fix the "warp plasma manifolds" or whatever and make it all run smoothly again.

It's the Scottys of this world who keep it running. That's why we loved him...because he was one of us. Godspeed, Mr. Doohan. Thanks for doing that Scottish accent so well. Most of all, thanks for giving us "working stiffs" someone to root for and "a hope" maybe even "a belief" that "beaming up" might be our future. Bob