The Sacred in the Ordinary: Tuesday: A Three Bus Morning

Katelyn goes to school late this week, so GraMary is escorting her by bus so Mom and Dad can put in a full day's work. Walk to the 33. Hop on! Then off and across the street. Wow! The 31 is coming around the corner! Into Fremont. Hop off. And just a short wait for the 62 to take us the rest of the way to Katelyn's school.

We looked at some of the fun stuff on the bulletin boards, and then Katelyn hippity-hopped away.

And I made the return trip with far less luck on good bus connections. But after a little work at home, I headed out again.

This time to the MoPOP, Museum of Pop Culture.

The big draw for me was the Star Trek exhibit, though everything else was great too.

They had many of the original uniforms and costumes worn by characters in many of the series.

Nichelle Nichols, Lieutenant Uhura, has aged beautifully. I loved seeing a woman in a position of authority and decision making back in 1966 even if it was in space and in the future.

What a cool picture!

They even had a mock-up of the bridge. To see the control panel up close...It was so hokey! Lots of clear plastic, non-functioning buttons with multicolored lights shining through them from below...blinking, of course, because there was always some emergency on the bridge!

Captain Kirk's chair.

They even had a Jefferies tube to crawl through. These were the inner conduits of the ship where much of the mechanics of the ship were accessed...and many of the exciting escapes and phaser fights took place. How fun!

I have loved all the different Star Trek series because the intent of the creator, Gene Roddenbury, was to expose our society to issues of diversity, racial and gender equality, and social justice. When topics are too volatile or tender for society to look at them head on, setting the stage in space and a future time with beings that are not necessarily human allows for an examination from a distance, and often an "Ah-ha!" moment. It also helped get a lot of issues past the censors of the time: the first inter-racial kiss on TV (1968), torture and imprisonment for differing ideas, discrimination for being oneself in a culture that expects social conformity, the folly of war, same sex love, gender blurring, xenophobia, to name just a few.

There was also a Rube Goldberg exhibit. He actually didn't build many of the contraptions we think of when we hear his name, but he dreamt them up and drew them and was also a satirical cartoonist, among other things. This was from many years ago, but speaks to today as well.