American Dreamers/Exploring

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2013 Sharp Stuff

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any

matter, including but not limited to websites and other digital media, without

prior written permission from the publisher.

American Dreamers/Exploring

Edited by: Nick Barham and Jake Dockter.

Design by: Amy Sly and Mark Searcy.

Sharp Stuff

224 NW 13th Ave.

Portland, OR 97209

www.makesharpstuff.com

Portions of this book have appeared previously inAmerican Dreamers

(2012), and on Medium.com, and were reprinted with permission by the

rightsholder.

To explore more American dreams and to learn more about Sharp Stuff, visit

makesharpstuff.com or talk with us on Twitter at @MakeSharpStuff

The views presented within do not necessarily represent the views of Sharp

Stuff or the other contributors. They are the views of the contributor and their

alone. Sharp Stuff takes no responsibility for the opinions of the contributor.

Special Thanks is owed to: Kate Lee at Medium for the support.


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May our children come to their own borders and go beyond.

May they, through their dreams and ours, enter into a world

of infinite possibilities. And may we inspire in them a future

and a hope. Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana.

We started out across a flat word to discover new land

and a new shape to our planet.

We slowly crossed rivers, built wagons and wandered.

We migrated across trails of tears, trails of dust, trails of

discovery, and found new homes.

We built rockets and reached to the edge of our

atmosphere, then to the Moon, and then, even farther.

We are all explorers. Exploring is about never being

satisfied with who or where we are. The drive to know and

see more has been the spark for new technology and new

progress that benefits every one of us. There is no final version

of who we are or what we can be. When we see ourselves as

complete, we are dead.

This book is about that very ethic of striving and that

value of exploration. How can we discover new things about

ourselves, our planet and our universe? Do we need to find a

Promised Land or is the journey itself worth it? Here, Claire

FOREWORD


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L. Evans extols the virtues of rovers on distant planets, while

Rabbi Cahana reminds us to see ourselves as angels, capable

of flight and miracles. Meaghan Brown defines geography

as much more than maps and roads, and Brian Adams

challenges you to see for yourself.

This book is a process of exploration. We posted excerpts

from the larger bookAmerican Dreamers, on Medium.com.

Then, other folks shared their ideas, thoughts and dreams and

we included them in these variety packs. We allowed people

to explore the idea of new and optimistic American dreams

and we listened to theirs.American Dreamers/Exploringisa new way to create books, a new way to include others, and

a new way to examine the ideas of our community.

Start by exploring this book and then explore the

world around you. In a world of pessimism, the first step to

optimism is seeing what is just around the bend.


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CLAIRE L. EVANS

Claire L. Evans is a writer and artist working in Los

Angeles. In addition to performing in the conceptual pop

group YACHT, she works as a science journalist and pens

a blog, Universe, which addresses the synchronies among

art, science, technology, and the cultural world at large.

Her work was recently anthologized in The Best Science

Writing Online 2012.

clairelevans.com

CURIOSITYS SHADOW

This year, we lost Neil Armstrong, an accidental hero, thrust

by fate onto a rock in the sky. Many dreamt of walking on the

Moon before he did, and a few men did after him. He happened

to be the first. Hopefully many more men, and women too, will

echo his iconic footsteps in the future. Perhaps even future

space tourists will huddle around Tranquility Base, laying

nostalgic 1960s filters over their high resolution snapshots of

an upended American flag from a long-ago mission.

In the meantime, we have NASAs Curiosity rover

to take candid pictures of the worlds beyond our reach.


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When Curiosity landed on Mars, those of us who tuned in

vicariously via NASAs live coverage watched the roomful of

tense engineers explode with pent-up excitement, and heard

their disembodied voices whispering through the control

room, Holy shit! We did it! Their headsets fell askew, they

glad-handed one another, falling across their desks, before

being immobilized by a sudden hush as the news spread,

Weve got thumbnails.

Thumbnails. We all watched as a tiny image formed,transmuted across the void of space and into the room. It

was black and white, an indistinguishable gesture of light

in a blur of dark pixels. The engineers cheered and held one

another as they gazed upon this small, inauspicious sight.

One man sobbed at his desk. Then another image came down

the line, this time more resolved. We began to see the grain

of the dust, the pebbles, the outline of the rover itself, 352

million miles and fourteen minutes of delay away, struck

against the Martian soil.

Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech


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And so, as with so many missions before it, the narrative

of discovery began with an acknowledgment of its own

shadow. NASAs older Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity,

were both avid amateur photographers of their own shadows

as well. In fact, such images have been part and parcel of

the visual language of space history since the Soviet Union

developed and launched the Venera probes in the early 1960s;

which, beginning with Venera 9, were the first landers to send

back images of another planet. Those pictures too, takenbefore the cameras were undone by the very atmosphere

they hoped to document, were of light and shadows cast on

rocks. Rocks that looked for all the world like our rocks, light

like our light, and shadows like our shadows, only cast on an

alien world.

These mobile laboratories, the fragile accretions

of countless engineers, so distant from Earth, are not

astronauts. Not quite. Im not necessarily sentimental about

manned missions to space; I know its a messy business,

limiting, and often more trouble than its worth. The human

explorer defecates, sweats, needs sleep, and is afraid. But

exploring the Moon, for example, wasnt just a matter of

rock samples and spectrographs; the real laboratory was

the human mind. Its not without reason that the things we

remember most about the Apollo program are its words

and gestures, the famous first step and the steps which

followed, the proclamations, then, later, the reflections.

The real triumph of the Apollo program was its

unforeseen shift in tone, driven by a desire to objectively

beat the Soviets down to the wire. Most Americans dont

know the unmanned Russian craft Luna 15 was beginning

its descent just as Armstrong and Aldrin were tromping

about the Moons surface. Neil Armstrong said a great many

beautiful things about his experiences. Most astronauts did;


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going to the Moon has a tendency to turn test pilots into

poets. That matter of cortex-shifting is called the Overview

Effect. Neil Armstrong articulated it with his characteristic

clipped decorum:

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and

blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one

eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I

didnt feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

Did you know NASA accidentally erased the original

Moon landing footage during routine magnetic tape re-use in

the 1980s? The footage the world saw on television that July

day in 1969 was actually taken from a slow-scan television

monitor and re-broadcast, picture quality reduced. The

space between the primacy of that moment and its place

in the narrative of the twentieth century is obscured by a

layer of irretrievable analog decay, time, and distance. Now

death, too.

We lose heroes from the space age and the temptation is

to eulogize an era, not a person. Neil Armstrongs death does

not signify the dwindling hopes of a different America. Today

we have a completely new approach to space, from which

well learn a great deal. Maybe not from humans coming

home and struggling their whole lives to convey the gravitas

of their experiences in words, from astronauts whose dreams

at night are forever colored by dusty panoramas and pea-

sized Earths. Rather, from smart machines serving as our

eyes and ears. Instead of famous footprints, we now leave

tread marks.

NASAs Curiosity rover is wonderful and has already

proven a robots capacity to ignite the global imagination,

but it cannot perform the simple acts of grace that can be


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the lasting effects of a mission to space. We should invent

poetry engines, rovers equipped with algorithms that can

turn vaporized soil samples into poignant insights.

For now, unmanned space exploration can tell us

everything, but not how the dust feels under its boots, nor

that giant loping strides and kangaroo jumps are the quickest

way across the surface. It cant, like Buzz Aldrin, privately

take communion before stepping out onto the lunar surface,

or quote Psalms in its final broadcast before splashdown(What is man that Thou art mindful of him?). It has no

thumb to blot out planet Earth, no heart to feel very small,

and it cant retire from the space program to live the rest of its

life on a farm in Ohio, like Neil Armstrong, who was forever

mindful of his position as only an incidental figurehead for an

effort of thousands of people.

The current moment in space exploration is not defined

by loss, however. Rather, its a paradigm shift, one that will be

seamlessly adopted by the generations born long, long after

the ghostly black and-white footage of men on the Moon first

beamed down to Earth. The science fiction writer William

Gibson put it this way: that the moment we began sensing

and recording with technology, our extended communal

nervous system, the absolute limits of the experiential

world were in a very real and literal way... profoundly and

amazingly altered, extended, changed. We no longer relied

on the limited capacities of our individual memories, nor did

we quite fully trust the bounded senses of our apparatus; free

to back ourselves up and reach ourselves further outward,

we extended our reach. We also loosened the definition of

we, allowing our tools to become part of us in subtle ways.

Now, closer and closer to the machine, we share a largely

invisible, all-encompassing embrace.


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We cant cleave these machines from ourselves; they

are our eyes and ears. They are us. I cant go to Mars and

see what it looks like for myself. Nobody canalthough

perhaps the future Neil Armstrong of Mars lives among us

today. I might not live to see that historic step into red dust.

Instead, though, I have seen a robot, a laboratory, a sentry

of extended sense organs for the human race, roll forward. I

find it profoundly moving, not only because with

Curiosity, something technically inconceivable has beenaccomplished, but because wethat room full of high-fiving

tinkerers, and us plebeians toocan look at Curiositys

shadow and understand, without hesitation, that its our own.

NOTE: Portions of this essay previously appeared as, On

Curiosity and its Shadows, and Footprints on the Moon

at Scienceblogs.com/universe (August 6/August 26, 2012).


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AARON S. WILLIAMSFormer director of The Peace Corps.

Aaron S. Williams is the former director of the Peace

Corps, nominated for the position by President Obama.

Mr. Williams served as a Peace Corps volunteer himself in

the Dominican Republic from 1967 to 1970.

We interviewed Mr. Williams in the fall of 2012; the

interview is transcripted here.

BEYOND OUR BORDERS

One of the great advantages of the Peace Corps, is that,

for the last fifty years, we have had the same wishes that

the legendary Sargent Shriver put in place. Those are

to pursue world peace and friendship and they remain

very, very important for obvious reasons. If you ask

anyone in the Peace Corps, they will also say that it is

transformative. It is transformative for the volunteer, thecommunities in which they serve, and for the United States

when the volunteers return home with their experiences.

The Peace Corps provides the chance to be innovative at

the grassroots level in ways we find difficult to do here at

home.


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our volunteers are internet and technologically savvy.

This generation of Peace Corps volunteers come in

with a lot of technology. They enter into service very savvy

and then they go to a developing country. Depending on

where they are located, whatever village or town they are

working in, they will find varying degrees of technological

access. However, most places have some sort of cell phone

connectivity and volunteers are very adept at using cellular

phones to improve and enhance the projects they workon. We have seen a number of different examples of this

around the world. In Namibia, volunteers created a call

center so that young people could have the opportunity

to call in via cell phone and ask questions about personal

health. It became such a powerful tool and so successful

that the Minister of Health of Namibia decided to expand it

nationwide. Many other countries are now developing the

same thing.

Many families around the world still rely on indoor fires

to cook their food. It is bad for the environment and perilous

for the children and women cooking, subject to the smoke.

Volunteers have distributed thousands of clean cookstoves

that improve the quality of life and the environment. This

is another of our major initiatives. Volunteers go into a

community and build a model of the cookstove and show

the people how to use it. Once people see how effective, low

cost, and healthy it is there are a lot of early adopters. Then

we move to another community.

How do we take these lessons, learned andenacted by individuals, and use them on a

national level?

Numbers are important. The more Americans who have

these transformative experiences, the better. Now we have


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four congressman in U.S. Congress who are returned Peace

Corps volunteers. They are extraordinary advocates for

the Peace Corps in their constituencies and in Congress.

We have people in all walks of life. The founder and CEO

of Netflix is a returned volunteer. The former president of

the Chicago Bears is a returned volunteer. The former COO

of Lucas Films is a returned volunteer.

On an international level, the vice president of Ghana

and the president of Tanzania were both taught by PeaceCorps volunteers when they were young. In my travels

through country after country, I hear stories of the impact

a Peace Corps volunteer had on a life. If more Americans

serve then those kinds of stories will multiply. We want to

have hundreds, thousands, and millions of Americans with

this view of the world, across all political parties and all

parts of our society.

The idea of engagement with the nations of the world

is absolutely important. The world is shrinking, we are

connected by technology and people know about things

happening in Mali, Cambodia, South Korea, and Colombia.

At the same time this can be a superficial understanding.

Peace Corps allows an in-depth perspective, understanding

things by walking in another persons shoes. It gives you

a totally unique perspective of the outside world. We need

larger numbers of Americans to have that experience.

When Americans serve all over the world, you have an

impact on the young people in those societies. You provide

a connection that remains in place for the rest of their lives.

As we engage more, and understand more about the complex

societies that makes the world a better place, we will have

a platform for meaningful dialogue. We need that. Just look

at the news today. We see violence and perceived attacks on

Islam. We need to know more about Islam. Countries where


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Muslims are a majority need to know more about America.

Exposure is a way to do it, a road to better understanding.

Does progress come from outside our borders

or from inside them?

Both. One of the great advantages America has is that we

are a welcoming and open country in terms of immigration.

We benefit greatly from the arrival of talented immigrants

and these individuals make great contributions to our

society. There are many new ideas generated outside the

borders of the United States. Having the means and utilities

to engage with people who are innovators and leading

thinkers outside of our borders is very important. No one

has a monopoly on good ideas. We need a strong roadmap

for cross-fertilization of innovative thinkers worldwide so

they can make a difference in the global society.

We need to make this world a better place. America

needs to be a partner. We need to continue to be a strong

and vibrant partner to the developing world. In order to do

that we need to provide more opportunities for Americans

to learn about opportunity in the world. They can become

more informed citizens; change agents making the world

a better place. That is the most important thing about the

American Dream, to give Americans a chance to engage

the outside world. That is how we are going to build a more

prosperous, peaceful, and better world for all citizens.

There is no way around it. I do not think you can

become an effective leader or participant in this globally

interconnected world, which it is (no one can deny that),

unless you know something about the rest of the world.

That is a very simple and straightforward idea. It is a very

powerful concept.


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FRANKLIN CHOU

Franklin Chou is currently attending Seton Hall

University, School of Law. He is a programming

enthusiast, tech-junkie, and open nerdy. On most days he

has a strong drive to be amazing.

BEST BEFORE . . .

Before I expire I am going to do the following things:

1. Rekindle a lost love. Regret is part of the nature

of men and women. Dont shy away from it and

dont act like it doesnt exist. Perfect yourself and

take up an offer to start things new. And start new

things.

2. Spend a month waking up at dusk and turning

sunsets into my first sight. Learn to sleep with the

sun out. Learn to live when the world is asleep.

3. Kiss someone you think is out of your league.

Kiss someone you think is sexy and attractive and

forget about the consequences.

4. Do something outrageous and slightly illegal that

might get you some television time. If not for the


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thrill, then at least so you have a story to tell that

cute girl at the bar.

5. Climb something. Im talking cliff-faces,

mountains, or giant boulders in Arizona. Life is

precious and full of triumphs. Take them.

6. Unplug. Take your friends and loved ones but

leave the tablets, computers, cellphones, and video

cameras at home. See the world through your own

eyes. You cant fit the world in a picture. Learn to

love that lapse when no ones talking; it is just the

natural arc of conversation.

7. Speak out about something. Tell your co-worker

to back off. Tell your town to stop leaving the

stadium lights on when no ones out there. Tell

your neighbor to suck it up and recycle.


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DR. ROBERT ZUBRIN

Dr. Zubrin is an aerospace engineer and advocate for Mars

exploration. He founded Mars Society in 1998 and has

since been leading simulations on Earth. Dr. Zubrin is the

author of many books including, How to Live on Mars.

marssociety.org

TO MARS!

There are three reasons to go to Mars. One is for the science.

The second is for the challenge. The third is for the future.

As far as the science is concerned, Mars is the Rosetta

Stone for letting us know the truth about the potential

prevalence and diversity of life in the Universe. Mars is a

planet whose early history mirrors that of Earth. It was warm

and wet. If the theory is correct that life originates wherever

you have appropriate physical and chemical conditions, life

should have appeared on Mars. We now know that most stars

have planets and every star has a habitable zone depending

upon the brightness of the star and where you have the right

temperatures for liquid water. If life can originate wherever

it has a decent planet, mans life is everywhere.


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Finally, there is the future. Ask any American, What

happened in 1492? They will say, Well, Columbus sailed

in 1492. That is true, of course, but a lot of other things

happened in 1492: England and France signed a peace

treaty in 1492, the Borgias took over the Papacy, Lorenzo de

Medici died in 1492. No one today cares about any of that

stuff. Very few people even know about it. What matters is

Columbus. He made our world possible. Five hundred years

from now, nobody is going to care who came out on top inIraq or Afghanistan. No one will care who won the election

or whether there was a 4 percent tax cut or increase. What

we did to make their life possible, those billions of people

living on thousands of planets in this region of the galaxy,

will matter. This is what matters for the future. If you can do

something that matters, you should.

What are the goals beyond Mars? What are

the longer-term goals for distant planets?

Mars is not the final destination, it is the direction. Mars

is the closest planet that has all the resources needed for

settlement. Other places are more difficult. As the European

colonists settled the East Coast of the United States they

developed the skills that made tackling more difficult

frontiers possible. If we become a space-faring species and

we master the technologies that allow us to settle Mars and

transport ourselves back and forth to Mars increasingly and

effectively and we make use of resources that are found on

Mars, than we become capable of settling the asteroids and

the moons and the outer planets. Columbus sailed the Atlantic

in ships that fifty years later, no one would have dreamed of

sailing. In his day there was no trans-Atlantic traffic, no ships

designed for that. By transforming European civilization

to a trans-Atlantic civilization they brought into being the


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three-masted caravels and the clipper ships. Then came the

steamship and the ocean liner and the Boeing 747. The first

people to go to Mars will go with chemical propulsion. It will

take six months to get there in tight and cramped quarters.

They will have stories to tell their grandkids that will be

difficult to believe because the grandkids wont be doing it

that way. They will be in spacious accommodations with

every luxury. They will do the trip in four weeks and fusion

power. Those new technologies that make it routine to crossinterplanetary space to Mars will make travel to the outer

solar system practical and travel to the stars marginally

possible for the truly daring.

Fifty years ago, having a man on the moon

was a giant step. Having a rover on Mars

was a giant step. What is the timeframe for

humans on Mars and how do we make it a

reality instead of a science fiction dream?

First, we have to decide to do it! Fifty years ago Kennedy

gave his famous speech, We choose to go to the moon in this

decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but

because they are hard. We were there seven years later. They

got to the moon because they were serious about getting to

the moon. The technical obstacles of getting to Mars today

are significantly less than they were getting to the Moon

when Kennedy started the Moon program. If we had serious

political leadership we could have humans on Mars by the

end of the decade. Do we have serious political leadership

on this? At the moment, no. They are cutting the Mars

exploration budget. They are wrecking the program and this

is not how we are going to get to Mars. We will get there by

deciding we want to and then doing it.


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will be mechanics and field geology. One person may have

both these skills or you might have two people on the crew

that specialize in one or the other. These are really the two

most important skill sets. Someone good at fixing things and

a real field geologist who can pick up a rock and tell you that

water was flowing from north to south three billion years ago.

They need to sniff out where fossils are likely to be. Apollo

astronauts were fighter pilots or test pilots and those are not

primary skills on a Mars exploration. We dont need peoplegood at shooting down MiGs, we need people good at fixing

plumbing, circuits or this and that. That may include a really

good hacker, a fix-it type or two. InStar Trekterminology, I

would like two Scotties and two Spocks.

On our current Earth missions, we have had quite a

variety of people. We have had over seven hundred people

as crew members in our desert station. We have had one

hundred and twenty crews of six people each. They vary

in quality but some are quite first rate. We have had terrific

geologists and terrific fix-it types. We have also had people

who dont have the required skills or character set. That is

one of the things we are finding out. You put people out there

and find out what the skills are that really come in handy.

What are the character types that really come in handy?

The best character type is somebody with a sense of

humor because if you lose your sense of humor on the way to

Mars you are finished. You need to have people who can take

innumerable small difficulties and and just laugh at them.

You dont want people who are too uptight.

When humanity becomes truly interstellar,

what will become of Earth? Will our problems

follow us or will they seem small?

One of the real problems we have had on Earth in the past one


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hundred years is not overpopulation but people who thought

there were too many people and tried to do something about

it. This idea of limited resources, that there is only so much to

go around, encourages us to fight over them. It is ultimately

the cause of war. Germany did not need living space in 1939.

Germany is smaller today than it was in 1939 and has a much

higher standard of living in spite of, and perhaps because of,

a larger population. This idea, that there is only so much to

go around, is what turns the world into war of all against all.If we can show that wealth does not come from ownership of

resources but comes from creativity that can open up endless

new frontiers, then we can have peace. Then you have a world

where nations are not enemies but are friends. You have a

world where it is not a problem for America that the sons

and daughters of Chinese peasants are going to college,

becoming engineers, buying cars, and using oil (which

we want for ourselves). No, it is a great thing because they

will start inventing in proportion to their numbers. We will

massively increase the rate of global technological progress

and prosperity. Similarly, it wont be a problem for China that

America is here and using oil that they want for themselves

because we will be making our share of inventions.

By showing that the future is open and resources are

as infinite as human creativity we can defeat this ideology

which sets people against each other.

Will our future explorations, Mars and

beyond, be projects of NASA and America

or will they be international projects, madepossible by collaboration?

It is unclear. Mars will go to those who go there. WIll it be

America acting alone? Will it be a group of nations including

America? Will it be a group of nations not including America?


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That is for the future to decide. I would like to see many

nations and cultures moving out into space. I do not prefer it

to be collapsed into one cooperative international program

because that is a formula for stagnation. I would rather have

an Olympics style competition to see who can do the most to

advance the human frontier.

And will the successful mission be a project

of governments and nations or will the firstpeople to Mars be private enterprise?

That is hard to say but now, given the mismanagement of

NASA it is hard to see how NASA is going to go. That could

be corrected. If it is not corrected perhaps it will be a private

venture, whether that is SpaceX or someone else. We are

going to go. We will find a way to go.

Humans have this drive to want to go where they have

never gone before, to see what has never been seen before,

and to do what has never been done before. Whether we

do that through government formations or corporations or

things people havent thought of yet we are going to find a

way to make it happen.

What can we as everyday citizens do to

engage and support exploration?

The space program that we have a voice in is the government

space program. We can insist that we want a space program

that really goes somewhere and we have a right to it. They

should not be cutting the Mars exploration budget, that

is absurd. It is one of their most successful programs. To

celebrate the Curiosity landing by ripping out the program

funds is outrageous. People should contact their congressmen

and say, Turn that around. We need to say, Look, we want

a space program that goes somewhere! We dont want to do


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it to send astronauts up and down to make observations of

how their bodies react to zero gravity! We dont want guinea

pigs we want explorers. We are willing to accept risks. The

astronauts themselves are quite willing to accept risks. That

is why they become astronauts. So lets get the show on the

road!

How do we respond to detractors who complain that the

money could be better spent on homelessness, hunger and

issues here on Earth?Since 2008, U.S. government spending has increased

but NASA spending has not increased at all. There may be

a budget blowing out but it is not NASA that is responsible.

If you want to impose budget discipline you should not hit

the agency that has been fiscally responsible but those that

have not! Otherwise, you are in fact accelerating the fiscal

blowout. The government is here to do things that the private

sector finds difficult or impossible to do. With the opening up

of Mars to human settlement, at this point, it is not obvious

how the business plan for that closes. That is the the kind of

thing that government should be doing.

Before I became an engineer, I was a teacher. I taught

in a variety of good schools, bad schools, and in-between

schools. There is one thing I learned. Anybody can teach kids

who want to learn and nobody can teach kids who dont want

to learn, period. if you want to improve American education,

dont spend money on LCD projectors for schools, more

teachers, or this or that. What you want to do is something

that says to the kids, Science is the great adventure. Intellect

is the great adventure.

If we had a Humans to Mars program we would get

tens of millions of kids excited about science. They would

be teachable and teach themselves. They would run off to

the library, dig into every book they can, and build model


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rockets. They would build terrariums and watch plants make

oxygen for the fish and animals. You dont improve education

by drilling kids to pass standardized tests; that only creates

a system that cares about passing that test. You improve

education by showing that intellect is the great adventure.

The Humans to Mars program would be an invitation to

adventure that would revolutionize education in this country.

We doubled the number of scientists in this country out of

Apollo, doubled it! The number of science graduates doubled.We are still benefitting from that intellectual capital today.

Who were the old technological entrepreneurs who built

Silicon Valley in the 1990s? They were the twelve year old

child scientists making rocket fuel in the basements during

the 1960s.

This is how we grow. If you want to benefit society, dont

spend your money keeping state police employed so they can

harass motorists. Spend the money on something that will

mobilize intellect passion, industry, and inventiveness of

America. That is what a Mars program will do.

There is a lot and lot of potential for surprises out there.

We have to know that all the answers are not in the back

of our current textbooks. There is a lot that remains to be

discovered. That is why we need to go and look in new places.

We are trying to open the future, full of endless possibilities.


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ROSS BORDEN

Ross Borden is the founder and CEO of Matador Network.

He has traveled to over 60 countries and lived in Spain,

Kenya, and Argentina. He currently splits time between

New York City and his native San Francisco.

matadornetwork.com

GET OUT THERE

Americans dont travel much. Only 33 percent of us even own

a passport, a figure thats been inflated since immigration

began requiring more than a drivers license to visit Cancun.

With this being the number one destination Americans make

it to abroad, we can safely assume the percentage of us who

visit countries in addition to Mexico is much lower.

I was lucky enough to travel when I was younger and

caught the bug at an early age. After going on to study abroad

in Spain, work in Kenya, and spend time in between jobs

in Argentina, I can look back and point to travel as the most

significant source of education in my life. Along the way, Ive

observed the numerous benefits that travel offers people who

make it a priority. And Ive witnessed firsthand how friendly,


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open-minded American travelers, simply by making the

effort to travel to faraway places, can tear down stereotypes

and spread a message of peace.

You could argue that the other 67 percent of Americans

dont have enough money to travel. To which I could call,

Bullshit! and highlight the fact that most countries are far

less expensive than the U.S. Instead, I attribute the trend to

fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of disease, fear of crimeor

for some, fear of a violent death at the hands of terrorists.Indeed, were led to believe the world is a very dangerous

place. If you asked most Americans what they thought of

a trip to Colombia, theyd probably warn you of rampant

kidnappings. If you said you were headed to hitchhike

through Rwanda, most would recoil as they imagined getting

caught up in political violence. If you announced you were

leaving for Iran, theyd assume youd be destined for a secret

government prison.

The fact is, all three of these counties are perfectly safe

for the average independent American traveler. Unfortunately,

a combination of our media, Hollywood storytelling, and the

ulterior motives of our government has the average American

Jedi mind-tricked into thinking overseas travel is a risk not

worth taking.

Heres why theyre wrong, and why thats a problem for

everyone. More travel = more peace.

Perhaps the most important reason Americans should

travel abroad more is the collective benefit we realize from

meeting people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

In turn, they benefit from getting to know us. Due mostly to

our decades of aggressive foreign policy, and the size and

ubiquity of the U.S. military, there are millions of people in the

world who dont like America. Ive been challenged dozens of

times while traveling abroad by people who think of America


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as a juggernaut that strides around the world doing whatever

it pleases, leaving war and poverty in its wake. Regardless of

how accurate you find these assertions, Americas military

presence abroad lends plenty of fodder to those trying to

rally sentiment against the U.S.

Less than a year after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, I was

hitchhiking through Kenya, stopping in places like Lamu,

Kilifi, and Mombasatowns with many predominantly

Muslim neighborhoods. Since I was traveling alone, I spenta lot of time chatting up anyone who would talk to me,

a practice that one afternoon landed me in a Mombasa

restaurant full of working-class Muslim men. A TV in the

corner blared an English newscast featuring a particularly

hawkish speech being delivered by George W. Bush. Everyone

there knew I was American. To say it was tense would be an

understatement. As the speech went on, I started receiving

verbal attacks from the others in the restaurant: Your

country has declared war on Islam! Why? Instead of getting

up and leaving, I held my ground and chose my words very

carefully. I explained that the views of our President were not

shared by every American. I explained that the Americans I

knew had absolutely nothing against Muslims, and that we

understood the fact that Muslim extremists and terrorists

account for a miniscule percentage of the total Islamic faith.

I also shared my opinion that there is absolutely no excuse

for extremism rooted in violence that kills innocent people,

Muslim or American.

The group of men, who moments ago had been

passionately berating me, now sat and listened to what I

had to say. A full hour of sensible political discussion later,

Id gained a new perspective on how East African Muslims

see America, and the men at the restaurant had learned

that not all Americans hate Islam. One of them invited me


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to dinner with his family that evening. I accepted and met

him at his house nearby. We sat at a low table on the rug

and ate a dinner of spiced fish and rice with his wife and

three children. We spoke about travel and what had brought

me to Kenya, and I answered dozens of questions about

everything from my family to what it felt like to fly in an

airplane. A chance encounter abroad had resulted in an

unlikely friendship and changed the way an entire group of

people thought about my countrymen.In The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington

argues that because our respective views of the world are so

different, Islam and the West will always be at war with each

other. Watching the news today, it would be easy to support

the conclusion that were destined for endless violent conflict.

Im not in favor of giving up so easily.

Global understanding between Islam and the West will

not come via a top-down process. It will be based in real

experiences with ordinary people. On the other hand, the

clash of civilizations will most certainly transpire if we

leave it up to heads of state and purveyors of radical rhetoric

on both sides. The fact is, most Americans are ignorant of

the complex history and regional variations of Islam, and Im

sure most non-North American Muslims are ignorant of daily

life in the U.S. The only way this will change on a large scale

is if Muslims and Westerners meet face to face and find that

they have more in common than they thought.

Mark Twain said it best:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-

mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on

these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views

of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating

in one little corner of the Earth all ones lifetime.


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We have a powerful and important opportunity as

Americans to be our own ambassadors when we travel

proving to people in all the worlds countries that we are

respectful, hard-working, open-minded, and peaceful,

regardless of what our government does or says. And stepping

into the role of being one of these ambassadors should start

when people are still young.

Travel is essential for Americas young people. In 2010,

only 1 percent of college students from the United Stateselected to study abroad. Although that number is increasing,

progress is slower than it should be, and America as a whole

would enjoy massive advantages if the figure were closer to

60 percent.

In the 1960s, the United Kingdom developed something

they called gap year. Still widely practiced there, and in

other parts of Europe and the world, gap year encourages

students to take up to a year off between their secondary and

higher education and travel abroad to pursue internships,

volunteer opportunities, or shoestring-budget backpacking.

Many American teens graduating from high school and

moving on to college (though they may have performed

successfully on the SAT and taken the advisor-recommended

number of AP courses) are far from intellectual maturity.

Many lack a realistic understanding of the world, as well as

the basic notion of just how lucky they are to have been born

in the United States.

Widely adopting a gap year in the U.S. would better

prepare our young people to participate in the globalized

world were already living in. Adapting to a new culture during

a semester or year abroad and learning how other people

livethrough language, food, music, custombecomes

a transformative experience. It eliminates misguided

preconceptions about the differences between us and


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them. At the same time, young people (and Americans in

general) can benefit simply from removing themselves from

the United States for a significant period of time, regardless

of where they travel. Mainstream American culture, and

its obsession with material gain and celebrity worship, can

make us lose sight of whats universally important: strong

families, meaningful relationships, and overall happiness in

our day-to-day lives. Equally worthwhile is an escape from

mainstream American news media, whose content when itcomes to foreign affairs is primarily rooted in fear-mongering

and sensationalism, with the only things that seem to qualify

as news being death, tragedy, war, and violence.

Freed from these insidious elements of modern

American life, young people are better able to figure out who

they are and what inspires them. During an extended travel

experience, they begin to emerge as open-minded adults. The

students who return home are more worldly, knowledgeable,

and compassionatesome in larger measures than others,

of coursethan when they left. Many will also be on a faster

track to finding something theyre genuinely passionate

aboutjust in time to apply themselves in college.

As the founder of an independent travel community, I

have read hundreds of stories and seen firsthand through

interpersonal connections how travel acts as a force in uniting

good people. A passion for travel is something millions of us

have in common already, and people who are curious about

the world also tend to share a sense of optimism about it.

When you travel, you often find yourself in need of

assistance from strangers. You might be lost and needing

directions; you may even be looking for a meal and place to

stay the night. Throughout my travels, Ive been continually

shocked by the warmth and generosity of the complete

strangers Ive encountered.


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It is so healthy for humanity as a whole to know that

most people are good, and that in 99 percent of situations, we

can count on and trust one another. The only things holding

us back from unlocking this optimism and a better world are

fear and excuses. Put them aside and we will all have a more

enlightened America.


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BRIAN ADAMS

Brian Adams is an embedded journalist and spokesman

helping nonprofits and businesses tell their stories. A

former print reporter and news junkie, his words have

appeared in articles written by others in The New York

Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal,The Boston

Globe, and theAssociated Presswhile his face has been on

numerous televised news channels including CNN. Brian

resides in San Francisco with his wife, two cats (Eko and

Scout), and dog (Milo).

SEE FOR YOURSELF

When my friend Howard told me he was going to Haiti, I

wasnt surprised. We are both nonprofit geeks so I wondered

what charity signed him up. I was a bit awestruck when he

said that he was booking a two week return ticket, just

to see what Haiti was like. His curiosity was piqued after

speaking with Haitian friends who had told him that the

real Haiti was not being portrayed in media reports.

What took me aback the most was when my friends told

me about the people, he said. They described a population

with true fight, pride, perseverance, and ingenuity. They


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didnt sound like the type of people who needed to be

rescued.

So, he packed his camera and with an open mind,

visited several villages. We spoke via Google Chat for much

of his trip; his daily dispatches and photos made me further

question the reporting that I had read over the past eleven

months. Then again, I was a reporter, so I question media

reports anyway.

When he returned he shared countless photos withme and I helped him with minor edits to his website. I was

stunned by the images he had captured and the stories he

had brought back. This was proof of a maxim that I think

more of us could live by: Go and see for yourself.

Photo courtesy of Howard Kang

Its true that we are a world connected, now more than

ever, by technology. We have each become a clearinghouse


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for news shot from one side of the globe to the small corner

we inhabit. By collecting these bits of information we feel

informed, wiser, and generally in-the-know. But for all its

promise, media (social or otherwise), can never replace

actually being there or seeing it for yourself. We have five

senses. As children, we explored the world with each of

these abilities. We inspected the world around us, putting

things in our mouths, under our noses, rolled around in our

fingers, held up to the light for a closer look, and put a closeear to the ground to see what we could learn.

When did we start being satisfied by stories related

through text or video? At what age did we stop reaching

out to touch the world around us? Had we been burned

too many times by the stove that we kept our hands in our

pockets? Was it because there was too much to see and we

wanted to take it all in?

There is always room for learning and growth. I have

seen my fair share of the world, studying and traveling

abroad, but I have room in my soul for a million times those

experiences. We all do. When it comes to exploration, we

are never finished. Even those leading in their particular

fields continue to probe because they get it. The world is a

big place, made larger by virtual realities that allow us to

share our experiences. But does this sharing keep the tactile

world just out of our reach? Have we become comfortable

consuming the experiences of others because we want to

see it all rather than explore a few areas in depth?

For some of us, the answer is yes, of course. Too many

people are satisfied to let the information drip in, pooling

around their senses until it dulls the world. If done right

however, these stories encourage people to get up, get out,

and grab the world by the balls. Its not a pretty phrase but

when was the last time you connected to your community


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by leaving the comfort of its edges?

Todays technology has opened up a world previously

known to far too few members of the population. There

have been amazing strides and it is certainly a better world

for many applications that allow us to share ideas and learn

from each other. Just dont get too comfortable. Its in all of

us to be in the world, holding on for dear life, and refusing to

let go. After all, thats where the content comes from.

Photo courtesy of Howard Kang

Visit Portraits of the Other Side: Haiti to view more of

Howards visit and the people he met.


43/55

MEAGHEN BROWN

Meaghen Brown is an assistant editor at Outside

Magazine, amateur ultrarunner and perpetual geography

nerd. Her work has appeared in Outside Magazine, The

New Yorker Online, Medium, Sawmill, and The Santa Fe

Reporter. When not at her desk, youll likely find Meaghen

getting lost on the trails around Santa Fe, New Mexico

where she is currently based.

GEO/GRAPHY: THE STORY OF PLACE.

What exactly is geography?

Im sure you probably studied some version of it in

primary school; memorized names on a map, and maybe, if

you were lucky, learned how a compass works.

Some of you might have even thought I was asking about

geology, but no. Thats rocks. Im talking aboutgeography,

which Websters, somewhat ambiguously, defines as, a

science that deals with the description, distribution, and

interaction of the diverse physical, biological, and cultural

features of the earths surface. But geography isnt really a

science, or an art, or even quite a subject, so much as a way

of telling the story of a place.


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Michael Ondaatje once wrote that, We die, containing

the richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed,

bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of

wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears

we have hidden in as if caves. He goes on, wishing for these

things to be marked on his body when he is gone. Believing

in such cartography- marked by nature, not just labeled on

a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings,

but as communal histories and communal books. Notowned or monogamous in our taste and experience.

This definition understands geography as a discipline of

questions and answers and meditations and nostalgia. It

seeks to explain why we fight, and fall in love, and look for

oil in the grasslands of the Midwest, and why we build cities

next to oceans.

This geography knows why spiders were the first

species to return to Krakatau, why the smell of baking bread

reminds us of home, and why some people will never leave

New York. John Steinbeck knew this. Steinbeck spoke of

Montereys Cannery Row as a poem, stink, a grating noise,

a quality of light... So did John McPhee, when he wrote in

Annals of a Former World,

When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags

on the highest mountain, they set them in snow

over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in

the warm clear ocean that India, moving north,

blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand

feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had

turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in

itself on the movements of the surface of the earth.


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If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to

one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The

summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

AndHere is New York, that timeless ode to the streets

of Manhattan by the perspicacious E.B. White? It carries

on its lapel the unexpungeable odor of the long past, so no

matter where you sit in New York, you feel the vibrations

of great times and tall deeds, of queer people and eventsand undertakings. That too, is geography. There are

geographies of emotion, and geographies of people, and

geographies of time. But in the end, everything comes back

to a point on a map. Because thats what it means, after all.

Geography- writing the earth. The story of place.


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RABBI MICHAEL Z.

CAHANA

Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana has been Senior Rabbi of

Congregation Beth Israel in Portland since 2006. He

has served congregations in New Rochelle, New York;

Providence, Rhode Island and Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Rabbi Cahana has published on such diverse topics as

Physician Assisted Suicide in Jewish law, and the role

of religion in the TV show Battlestar Galactica. In 1999,

Rabbi Cahana was featured, along with his family, in the

Academy Award winning documentary The Last Days.

He and his his wife, Cantor Ida Rae Cahana have four

children and live in Portland, Oregon.

RABBI SPUTNIK AND THE DREAMS OF

A GENERATION

One of my favorite experiences of the year is taking our

synagogues confirmation class to Washington, D.C. I love

to show these tenth grade students the powerful seat of

our national government and to help them discover the


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saw the first human leave the relative safety of a spacecraft

to float free in the eternal void. I show them the lunar module

sitting on the mock-up of the moons surface: the craft that

ultimately fulfilled President Kennedys daring challenge

in May of 1961. I believe he said, that this nation should

commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is

out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely

to the earth. I take our teens there, I tell them this story,

because I want them to dream.A few years ago, after giving this breathless tour, the

teens gave me a moniker which has stuck in my mind and

fills me with some pride. They called me Rabbi Sputnik.

That works for me. I was brought up in the age of Sputnik.

Actually, the tiny Russian satellite which orbited the globe

with its single robotic message, I am here, predates me

by a few years. But the Space Age it ushered in lingered on

throughout my youth. I grew up dreaming of the stars. I

grew up knowing that there was no limit to the possibilities

of human accomplishment. It was not just a dream. Before I

was ten years old, the first man had set his footprints on the

moon. Some of you remember that time, the intense thrill as

the whole world held its breath, watching grainy - but live -

black and white video, as a man in a bulky white space suit

descended a ladder and spoke those immortal words from

the surface of another world: Thats one small step for (a)

man, one giant leap for mankind.

My tenth grade teens dont remember it. If theyve seen

that video, which is seared into my memory, it was probably

on YouTube. Forty-three years later more than two and

a half times their lifespan the Apollo program is ancient

history to them. Standing there, at the base of those rockets

in the Smithsonian, Rabbi Sputnik tries to inspire in them

a sense of awe and wonder. The same sense my nine-year-


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to earth like grasshoppers. Why shouldnt our dreams be

as limitless as the angels? Why must we accept a world of

poverty, inequality, and wars fought for ever diminishing

resources? When did we give up and say, this is just the

way things are? Cant we imagine more? Cant we do better?

All this came to mind to me recently with the

convergence of two events: the death of former astronaut

Neil Armstrong and the landing of the Curiosity rover on

Mars.Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on a

heavenly body. He was a symbol of accomplishment not

just his own, for there was great courage and commitment

shown by he and his peers but accomplishment built of a

dedicated team and a nation which devoted the resources

to achieve that goal. His one small step was not that of

a simple human being in an awkward space suit, it was a

giant leap for a species which had proven its ability to

venture out of the safe realm of its watery home into the

perils of the unknown. While Armstrong himself eschewed

the title of hero, he knew that his image had become a

symbol and he embraced it. After his death, Armstrongs

family released this statement:

While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we

also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that

it serves as an example to young people around

the world to work hard to make their dreams

come true, to be willing to explore and push the

limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than

themselves.

Less than a month before Neil Armstrongs death,

NASAs Curiosity rover made a heart-stopping and daring


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landing on the planet Mars. It is a remarkable craft; hugely

complex and sophisticated with many cool and futuristic

gadgets. Tt has a laser that can vaporize rock and a

plutonium power plant which can keep it running steadily

for two years. It is an amazing device and represents a huge

accomplishment for which we should be justifiably proud.

And it makes me very sad.

Forty-three years and one month after the first human

set foot on the moon, we have sent a robot to our nearestplanet. Many of us imagined lunar colonies, with hundreds

of people mining and processing resources, sending them

to waiting builders of interplanetary craft in Earth orbit.

We are now reduced to watching an SUV with a laser rolling

around a Martian crater, driven by teams of computer

operators in Pasadena. Great dreams writ small. While

there are plans for an international human mission to Mars

over the next twenty or more years, there is nothing in

NASAs Authorization Act which requires it. Budget cuts,

which began as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were

making their historic first walk on the moon, continue to

this day. In the Apollo era, the rush to beat the Soviets to

the moon led NASA to be allocated fully 5 percent of the

Federal budget. Today, it is less than half of 1 percent. A tiny

sum of money to keep humanitys dreams aloft.

Yes, fiscal realities sometimes determine the extent

that dreams can be put into reality. And this is a very

difficult economic time with high unemployment and a deep

recession from which we are told we are beginning a slow

recovery. Perhaps now is the time to live in reality and not

in dreams of the future. As Curiosity landed on August 6,

2012, Armstrong died on August 25th.


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The president said:

The first and basic task confronting this nation

this year was to turn recession into recovery. An

affirmative anti-recession program, initiated

with your cooperation, supported the natural

forces in the private sector; and our economy is

now enjoying renewed confidence and energy. The

recession has been halted. Recovery is underway.

That President was John F. Kennedy and given in the

very same speech he proposed the goal of sending human

beings to the moon.

Imagine the world of the 1960s: war in Vietnam, a

global superpower enemy with the ability to rain nuclear

destruction upon us, race riots which threatened to tear our

nation apart. This is the world I grew up in, and yet, it was

the words of a president spoken when I was too young to

be aware, backed up by actions, which lifted my vision, and

the vision of my generation to the stars. I want my children

and the children I teach and all of us to have that vision

once again.

Every four years in our country we have an opportunity

for a national conversation about how we see our future.

Far more than the selection of our Chief Executive, the

presidential election should be an opportunity to sharpen

our values and let our leaders know the course we select

for our country. Democracy this wonderful institution

of our nation gives us the ability to choose our nations

destiny. Listening to the current political conversation, I am

disappointed. I am not hearing great dreams for the future.

I am not hearing bold visions. I am not seeing images of

a grand and hopeful new world. I am hearing incremental,


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slightly better small dreams at a time when we need big

ones. I want to know about angels, not grasshoppers.

It does not need to be about space travel. That was the

dream of my generation, but what is the dream that will

inspire a new generation? What is the vision that will inspire

them to dedicate themselves to building a future far greater

than our own? When they look at this world of brokenness,

poverty, war, educational and economic inequalities I want

them to see not what is but what can be. I want that dreamfor them. I want that dream for us. They can build it but

first, we have to dream it.

While I was writing this, I accidently discovered a

sermon written by my father, Rabbi Moshe Cahana (zl),

delivered on the occasion of a Bat Mitzvah in May of

1969, two months before Neil Armstrongs historic walk.

My father, of blessed memory, did not often write out his

sermons and so this one must have been important to him.

It was called Bridging the Gap. Speaking of the Generation

Gap, he wrote:

There have always been differences between one

generation and another. If the young did not

pioneer there would be no progress. Today the

separation between generations is wider and

deeper. The young speak a language that sounds

strange to the older generation. Their values differ

from ours, and we do not understand one another.

I wonder if he was talking about me. But, he continued,

Thank G-d for this big, big difference. This

wide gap exists because we, of this generation,

have been eminently successful in realizing the


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dream of mankind since the very beginning to

have abundance of material possessions, live in

comfort and have untold security. . . We offer all

this to our children and they are not excited about

it. Abundance and comfort does not pose a goal and

the young need a goal they need to be challenged.

This rebellious generation is looking for a goal

and they have found it. THEIR GOAL IS TO

MAKE LIFE MEANINGFUL. They are much moreidealistic than we ever were. They dont want to

just live they want to live with justice, honesty

and fairness. They want a life that makes sense.

My father, a rabbi born in the Jazz Age of Louis

Armstrong, saw the vision of a new generation dedicated to

a changing the world. I, a rabbi born in the Space Age of Neil

Armstrong, want a similar vision for our new generation, a

generation living in a world that is struggling but that can

be great. We can see ourselves as soaring above the angels.

We can solve our problems of injustice and inequality. We

can ensure that every human has the physical resources

to thrive and the spiritual resources to dream. We can

reach beyond the pettiness of blame and strive together to

bridge our political gaps and work together for a world of

peace and prosperity and we can dream of worlds beyond:

unimagined opportunity and infinite possibility. If we help

them, a new generation of dreamers can soar far beyond our

accomplishments.

Rosh Hashana is the beginning of a new year. What

will the new year bring? More of the same dreams of tiny,

incremental steps? Maybe this year wont be as bad as last

year. Or will it be a year of expansive dreaming? Will we

take the first step towards a greater tomorrow? Long before


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I was Rabbi Sputnik, I was a child dreaming of the stars. I

will not give up on those dreams, we must not give up on

those dreams, though they tarry. We must demand that our

leaders not give up on those dreams either. The prophet

Jeremiah ever the expansive dreamer said in Jeremiah

31:16, And there is hope for your future, says the Lord, that

your children shall come again to their own border. May

our children come to their own borders and go beyond. May

they, through their dreams and ours, enter into a world ofinfinite possibilities. And may we inspire in them a future

and a hope.

Amen.

Documents

American Dreamers/Exploring