Taking a Risk on Terrible Lizards

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 5 Comments

From “When Was the First Dinosaur Discovered?”

Way back in 1676, Robert Plot, the curator of an English museum, described and drew a thigh bone that he believed belonged to a giant man. Although that fossil disappeared without a trace, the surviving illustration suggests that it may well have been part of a “Megalosaurus.”  Later, in 1822, large teeth discovered in England by Mary Ann Mantell and her husband, Gideon, were thought to be the remains of a huge and extinct iguana. It wasn’t until 1841 that British scientist Richard Owen came to realize that such fossils were distinct from the teeth or bones of any living creature. The ancient animals were so different, in fact, that they deserved their own name. So Owen dubbed the group “Dinosauria,”which means “terrible lizards.”

My friend Sara hooked me up with this TED video that explores issues of schools and creativity – more specifically, does our educational system and prevailing philosophy create such a fear of failure that children are dis-incentivized to take the very risks of failure that lead to break through discoveries?  It’s a really good watch and listen, but my favorite part was this simple concept:

If you are afraid to make a mistake, you will never create anything original.

My child is deeply in love with dinosaurs right now.  As we were playing the other day and I explained the first dinosaur discoveries, how they were made, what people first thought, etc.,  I was overcome with how absolutely insane the first people to publicize theories about their paleontology must have appeared.  Talk about risk!

OK, we found these bones.  They are really big.  No, bigger.  A bit bigger.  Right.  That’s what I said, yes.  No, more like reptiles.  Not really sure yet.  Uh huh.  No, pretty sure they were in the air and water too.  Looks like just about all over the world.  How long ago?  OK………are you sitting down?

Creativity is not just about art.  Creativity is, as Sir Ken Robinson explains in the video, at its core about the willingness to be wrong; maybe more than a little bit wrong.  It’s that risk that leads to new discovery, to shifts in our understanding of what is real and possible that have the potential to change everything we think we can do.

This year, let’s support more students in their willingness to take risk, and to be wrong.  We may say that’s not what we expected, is it?   Way to go trying to figure it out on your own.

I’m proud of you for taking that risk.

Image credit: Land Use History of the Colorado Plateau

Of Temples and Chickens

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 4 Comments

I plan to spend a decent amount of time in the coming weeks exploring concepts of health, the body, perceptions of morality and spirituality, and why it seems so many health behaviors are interpreted as having moral relevance.  One of my jumping off places will be re-reading Flannery O’Connor’s short story, A Temple of the Holy Ghost.

In the process of hunkering down, I found this marvelous story about Ms. O’Connor as a child:

O’Connor described herself as a “pigeon-toed child with a receding chin and a you-leave-me-alone-or-I’ll-bite-you complex.”  When O’Connor was six, she taught a chicken to walk backwards, and this led to her first experience of being a celebrity. The Pathé News people filmed “Little Mary O’Connor” with her trained chicken, and showed the film around the country. She said, “When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax.”

I am now entirely distracted from my original purpose, and ready to read and re-read everything this woman ever wrote!  I am missing The South today, and thinking of the way it has birthed and continues to nurture great writers — human beings with a sense of place and a connection to either the grotesque or realism, depending on your point of view.  As O’Connor said, “anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”

I didn’t have the life experience to grasp Flannery O 20 years ago.  I think I’m ready.

She could hear the freak saying, “God made me thisaway and I don’t dispute it,” and the people saying,
“Amen. Amen.”
“God done this to me and I praise Him.”
“Amen. Amen.”
“He could strike you thisaway.”
“Amen. Amen.”
“But He has not.”
“Amen.”
“Raise yourself up. A temple of the Holy Ghost. You! You are God’s temple, don’t you know? Don’t you know? God’s Spirit has a dwelling in you, don’t you know?”
“Amen. Amen.”
“If anybody desecrates the temple of God, God will bring him to ruin and if you laugh, He may strike you thisaway. A temple of God is a holy thing. Amen. Amen.”
“I am a temple of the Holy Ghost.”
“Amen.”

— from A Temple of the Holy Ghost by Flannery O’Connor

Image credit: Amazon (this was the cover on my college textbook); An enormous shout-out to Miscellaneous Accumulation for finding and posting the Pathe News clip of O’Connor and her chicken!