Torun

In the country of too many churches and John Paul the Pope, I took a three hour train from Warsaw to Torun to make one pilgrimage only: to the home of Mikolaj Kopernik.  A middle-aged lady was sitting across from me in the train, reading the paper over a cup of tea.  After a while, she took out her laptop and started working on it.  A scene I had not seen very often here.  She was entering some data from the daily paper into her computer.  When I needed a translator to talk with the conductor, she came to my rescue and we started talking after that.  Her English was very well.  I could tell she was highly educated and not an average Polish woman.  I learned that she worked in European Union and her job was to coach and consult entrepreneurs and businesses so that their businesses flourish and succeed.  She showed me a chart in the newspaper that had plotted PKBs of different countries.  "Do you know what it is (PKB)?", she asked.  "No", I responded.  It was the Polish abbreviation for Gross Domestic Product or GDP.  Poland was listed towards the end of that table and U.S. was ranked third.  "We are like a sleeping country", she said.  I nodded.  Maybe that is what the silence was, they were a sleeping country.  "At least you have made it to the list, there are many countries that are not in that table", I commented.  She mentioned that now EU is working hard so that Poland's economy booms because their economic condition affects that of the Europe.  She was being paid 600 zeloty per hour for her coaching classes, that is a little less than $200!  "That is a lot of money in Poland", she told me.  "That is a lot of money in the U.S. too", I responded surprisingly.

"Why Torun?", she asked me.  "Because of Nicholas Copernicus", I said.  "Then we take the taxi together, it is close to my office", she offered and I agreed.*  We had to cross the Vistula river.  The view of Torun from the other side of the river was breathtaking. "It is the most beautiful view in Poland", my new friend claimed. We soon arrived in the downtown area.  She did not let me pay.  We came out and she showed me her office.  It was called "Excellence Counseling".  "I am in the second floor", she said.  She gave me her phone number and asked me to call her if I had any problems.  She regretted that she had to teach a class otherwise she would show Torun to me.  She led the way to take me to my destination.  "I do not want to take your time, thanks for all your help thus far", I told her. "No, no", she laughed.  Literally two doors down the alley, we stopped.  She faced the house and presented to me "this is Copernicus house". 

Wow! I could not believe it, "You are neighbors with Nicholas Copernicus!".  How nice and odd it was to sit in front of her in the train who not only spoke good English but was so kind and was also going exactly to where I wanted to go.  I thanked her and we departed.  I could not wait to enter the Kopernika Dom. Kopernika's Dom was large by today's standards.  He was from a well-off family.  He was not just an astronomer.  He had studied medicine, bought and sold properties, and wrote on economics as well.  He had translated poems from Greek to Latin.  There were hand-written recipes of different dishes written on pages of some of his books.  He was a well-rounded man, living a good life.  There were tools by which he had measured the distance of the moon from earth and its position, tools for determining sun's position, etc.  I did not learn about his personal life.  Did he ever marry and had kids? I have to find out.  Rumor has it that he also was a priest and for this reason he did not marry.  Being a priest did not mean just being religious in ancient Poland, rather belonging to a highly educated class of people and having access to more opportunities.  Some disagree with this claim that he was a priest and say the mistake initiated when Galileo first referred to him as such in a letter.  I did not see anything approving this claim in his Dom, and honestly I find it hard to believe, or rather prefer to think he was not a priest.  There was a letter signed by Chopin framed on a wall.  It was in Polish.  I pleaded to one of the guides to tell me what it was about.  With his broken English he told me it was a letter Chopin had written to his friends about his visit to Torun, about Kopernika, and about the ginger bread that is famous in Torun.  It has a secret recipe that has been passed through generations.

There were thick copies of Kopernika's book there, including his famous De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) that changed our view of the solar system and our position in it.  There was Galileo's dissertation proving Copernicus observations and claims.  There were records of the houses Kopernika had bought and sold.  His admission letter to a university in Krakow.  There was also his doctorate degree, and the surprising part was that it was smaller than any other document there.  Family trees and records, property records, etc were all written on long nice papers with a sense of formality.  The doctorate diploma was on a very small piece of paper that seemed to have been cut from a larger paper. Did it mean ownership of properties and family heritage were considered more significant than having a high degree?   That would not surprise me as there are many who belong to this school of thought even in our era.

Torun was happy and lively, yet calm and peaceful.  Music was being played in down town area around Kopernika's statue, where different groups of school students would come and go to take pictures with.  There were many pigeons being fed by tourists.  Small kids would run after them and play with them.

There was another famous ancient building with nice design in Torun called the Star building.  I knew there was a museum inside it.  I assumed it had to do something with astronomy, Kopernika, or Torun.  I went inside and to my surprise it was an oriental museum with ancient things from China and Mongolia.  I was surprised to see things from that part of the world there.  An old world traveler/dealer had apparently brought them to Torun.  I made a quick round and as I was leaving, the lady who worked there pointed to me that there is also a basement.  Trying to be polite, I went down.  Then, I saw battle tools from Persia, helmets,  axes, and shields were titled with their Persian names "Kolachood", "Tabar", and "Separ".  That was the last thing I expected to see there, who would have thought?  Behind every door a world of mysteries and surprises is hidden, and one won't know about them until s/he opens the doors and step in. 

Finally, I found myself at the bank of the Vistula river with beautiful flowers.  A perfect place to sit and reflect on my journey and to relax.

* Later I was blamed for being so naive and sharing a ride with a stranger, and that I could have been kidnapped by my daring Iranian family.  The fact that it was an official 'Taxi' did not convince them either, it could have all been a set up.  I was quickly shut up before I could start to tell the story of who I met and how nice she was and what she did for a living.  They never heard my story, and probably many more ones.  How easy it is to close our eyes and hearts and miss out on so many things because we let fear take over.  Funny part is I always considered myself too cautious and never bold. Is it that no matter how capable we Iranian women become, our compatriats rather think of us as naive and gullible ones rather than worldy, capable, and sociable ones?

Poland: First Impressions

Poland is a quiet and peaceful country, beautiful too. Even in the most crowded places all you hear is the friction of people's shoes or luggage with the ground.  There is no noise pollution, just natural voices and sounds.  Loud speakers are not loud enough for me. I have to tune in carefully to grasp the train announcements.

There are too many churches in every corner, and they are not just historic or cultural sites.  People are truly religious here.  Every major street of any city is called Al. Jana Pawla II (John Paul Second) after the Polish Pope.  People stop at the churches on their way to home, work, or groceries, kneel down, say a prayer, shed some tear drops at times, and leave.  The silence in the church is usually too heavy, too spiritual, easily capable of breaking one down to tears should you stay there long enough.  Some churches were hospitals during world war II.  Some were ruined during that era and have been rebuilt.  Maybe it is the spirit of all the wounded, killed, painful memories, that contributes to the heavy silence.  I feel like they hear my every breath in the churches, I do not dare to click on my camera for a photo, I walk as slowly as possible not to interrupt their prayers. During communist era, Polish people could not express their religion and pray freely.  So, being religious was a rebel against government.  Being religious was being in opposition, being part of the uprising movement, in contrast to the current situation of Iran's government at surface.  Now Poland proudly celebrates this right and freedom to worship and be religious. Sunday masses, or any day masses for that matter, are crowded and a testimony to this celebration. Songs and prayers are soothing and nice.  They say prayers, knee down, pray some more, at the end greet their neighbors with whom they were sharing the pew by shaking hands.  At the end, some money for the church is also collected. There is a special mass for children, giving them religious education, with the priest asking them questions and encouraging them to go forward and join the discussion by throwing some coins in the air for them to come and collect.

There are reminders of war everywhere.  Statues of unknown soldiers in every corner, and almost all of them are always decorated with fresh flowers.  The war might be over, the communist era might be gone, but there is no way you can forget what this country has gone through if you walk in any street in Poland.

I have not figured out the silence here yet:  is it due to them being peaceful and spiritual, or are they going through a depression and grieving period as a society because of all they have gone through during World War II?  Are they simply happy and content with their lives, or does their silence signals indifference, lack of ambition and goals?  Is it the result of the communist era and them not being used to expressing themselves loudly and clearly, always being cautious?  Or is it simply the fact that cities here are not as densely populated as other large famous cities?  After all, Warsaw's population is 1.7  million people only.  Or have I got too used to the wild wild west?  I do not know.  Maybe all of the above.

I am not complaining about the dominant peace and quiet.  It is very soothing and pleasant.  In fact, I appreciate it very much considering how I always dislike loud TVs, loud radios, and in general too much noise in the U.S.  Their peacefulness and kindness radiates and transfers to me and gives me a calm feeling.  It is just enigmatic.

آب و ماه

 Image courtesy of NASA from here.

ماه به كمال مى رسد

آب به اوج مى رود

ماه نهان مى شود

آب فرو مى رود

تا كه ظهور نو كند

بحر غمين مى شود

ماه ظهور مى كند

آب قيام مى كند

اين قصه تكرار مى شود

هر شب و روز اندكى

هر ماه بيشتركى

آب نمى آموزد

هر روز مى هراسد

هر شب به شوق مى آيد

ماه خبر ندارد

Free like a bird

She could have had her lovebird in a cage,
All to herself,
Singing her love songs everyday.
Or she could have taken shelter in a cage herself,
Staying away from all the storms and blizzards,
Had she played by the rules,
Singing a song or two everyday.

How could she enjoy that though?
When she could feel the bird's desire to fly?
Or when she could see the cage?
What sense would that make?
When she already knew what it is like,
To fly through mountains, thunders, and rains,
Before delivering her song at the perfect time and place?
Or to hear a song, worthy of the hardships of the way?

Lovebirds in cages were not her dream
But those flying back home freely,
Time after time,
For they could not wait,
To sing their latest songs.

Playing his game, his way.

He designed a convoluted chess game, and made all its rules.  He thought he will always be the one making the checkmate call.  He never realized someone else would learn and dare to play along for so long, let alone training machines to be the best world known players of it.  He never wanted to play chess after all.  He wanted to start playing a game whenever he wished, and end it whenever he wished.  Being exhausted of playing the longest game ever, he finally announced to his playmate "I do not want to play anymore".  His wish was granted, but he never looked at his own game the same way any longer.

An Hour with the STS-132 Crew

Last Thursday became a very memorable day, since I attended our center's event for honoring and welcoming the STS-132 , Atlantis's Final mission, crew. Yes, I was in the audience here. It was not the first time I heard a crew talk about their experience soon after they did a spectacular job, but this crew definitely stood out among my previous memories of such events. They were unbelievably funny and joyful. They cracked up the audience. If it were not for their suits and we did not know any better, one could think we were attending a stand up comedy show, a very good and scientific one!

Forget about not being too formal to refer to themselves as captain this or commander that with their last names, they were even beyond the first name basis.  They all had special funny nicknames for each other, most of which I forgot by now. They had made a nice movie of their adventure, from before they launched, till the launch moment, during the mission and spacewalk, and finally of coming back to the Earth.  They had upbeat rock and roll songs for the launch and landing section and had a dramatic change to a slow romantic piano song when they were floating and dancing in the shuttle in space.  They mentioned there are three things that kids get excited about: rock and roll, space exploration, and dinosaurs.   We incorporated the first two in our movie and we brought a dinosaur with ourselves instead.  They were talking about their oldest crew member Dr. Sellers.  He was originally British with a nice accent, but he is more special to us because he had worked at Goddard as a research scientist before becoming an astronaut.  Poor guy was attacked by his teammates for his accent, for being a doctor, and for his age.  They were having more fun than us.  It was then that I realized I pronounce our center's name the British way like him: "God - aaard",  they made fun of him each time he was going to use the word, as opposed to "God- erd", the American way.  Hmm... now I had two, no three things in common with Dr. Sellers: we were both doctors, worked at Goddard, and pronounced the center's name the same way.  Maybe I should fill out that astronaut application.  After all, I am probably around the same age when he started!  At the end of the presentation an audience asked Dr. Sellers "How did you transition from being a research scientist to being an astronaut?", to which one of his crew members immediately responded "very badly!".

They started by asking how many of us have seen a shuttle launch on TV, almost everyone in the room raised their hands.  "How many have seen one from the Cape in Florida", more than half of the room raised their hand, proudly I should say (ahem, ahem).  Surprised and threatened that maybe they are not that unique any more, he continued "How many have ridden one during a launch?"  Yes, they won. Dominic Antonelli, the pilot, wanted to share his feelings during the launch.  "It is an amazing feeling, very hard to describe", he mentioned.  "The closest explanation I have found for it is it is like being on top of a rocket"!  He was commended by his team members for keeping the toilet on the shuttle very clean all the time!

Then, there was astronaut Garrett Reisman, significantly shorter than the rest (well, I am finding more and more common features with astronauts).  So, other tall handsome astronauts made fun of his height.  Apparently earlier that week the crew had visited President Obama in the Oval Office, where the crew made fun of his height in front of the president, yes in the Oval Office!  Apparently president Obama had told them to "knock it off guys"!  The happy Garrett continued by reminding us that ever since then whenever these guys make fun of my height, they are in direct violation of a presidential order.  It was not just his height he was famous for, but his strength and power.  The video of how he installed a huge Satellite dish on the ISS was amazing; yes, we all know things are weightless in space, but fighting that also requires a lot of power.  He mentioned with the shuttle program ending, and now that we have experience installing dishes, we are sending our resumes to the cable and satellite companies.  You can call us 9 to 5 and we come to your house and install your TV satellite dish!  It was not long before he was almost done with his presentation that he pleaded to the audience "can someone please call the White House?"

Then, there was Mission Specialist Michael Good, who was most proud of being the only one among his crew members who served on the last Hubble Servicing Mission (SM4).  He was having the time of his life being at the home of Hubble where SM4 was supported.  It was like being in a pep rally.  Every time he mentioned Hubble, we clapped. Finally, it was time for him to do the honor of awarding the Silver Snoopy Award.  Two employees were awarded for their extraordinary service.   One of them was so special to Mike Good, because it was awarded to Dr. Lisa Mazzuca for her handling all the Integration and Test tasks for SM4, for which she was Snooped very carefully.  As her name was called, I was thrilled.  We have been working on the same proposal with a mutual colleague, and I could not have thought of a better occasion to meet her for the first time.  I wished right there and then that our proposal gets accepted because I cannot wait to start working with her.

It was one of the best one-hours of my life.  I left pumped with joy, optimism, hope, thinking anything is possible and I could move mountains.  It is amazing how much positive energy you can get in one hour.  May the Shuttle Program get extended, or the Constellation Program be resumed.  We shall continue.

Lessons Learned? Really?

"Learn from the mistakes of others- you can never live long enough to make them all yourself."

John Luther

Throughout centuries, we humans have evolved in so many ways: physically, emotionally, socially, technically, etc. We have done so to meet our needs and handle natural disasters. We have managed to travel long distances, supply food to the most remote places, and collaborate for the exchange of services. We have learned a lot to get to this point, about ourselves, our relationships with others, our planet, our universe, and mainly how to preserve and communicate what we have learned before. For example, after Newton discovered gravity and his results were accepted in the scientific community, next generations' physicists, continued working from his premises. It does not mean that they took the results and theories of the past as the whole unquestionable truth. Rather they did not cycle through the same old thought processes that failed over and over. They identified when a theory of the past would fail, or provided proofs in support of them. Physicists after Newton kept finding pitfalls of his theories and tried to find better ones that addressed those shortcomings. Or, Copernicus gave a theory that Sun is the center of our planetary system not the Earth. Later, Galileo was punished for making observations that proved this theory and he had to live in house arrest because he did not agree with the Church's idea on the subject. Physicists today do not start from scratch and prove all the theorems that were proven before or find away to prove the ones that were refuted in the past. Of course having an understanding of the methodology and the thinking process that led them to those results is helpful for making future discoveries, but we simply cannot afford to learn everything from scratch for ourselves.

What puzzles me is that while the fact that we have to benefit from our past generations' knowledge and experiences in physics, math, medicine, etc, is widely practiced and accepted among humans, when it comes to our personal lives, choices we make to lead our day to day activities, we question and experience every different way of having a quality life. For example, it has taken generations to establish and institutionalize service providers for health care in hospitals or education in schools and universities. Now, many parents question all the past experiences and humans progress for developing good educational systems; they home school their kids during the times that we are more than ever connected to other humans across the globe. Similarly, many people go through a lengthy trial and error process to determine what is the best way to earn a living, spend the hours in a day, etc. It is as if one day, they become like Thales, thinking maybe he was right and everything is made of water. The next day, they become Anaximenes thinking everything is made of air, then they make their way through earth and fire, and eventually to atoms, quarks, and the string theory, and later M-theory. They question the concept of exchanging goods and services via a monetary system that was created and practiced since the early civilizations thousands of years ago. They end up having all sorts of revolutionary ideas about how they think would be the best way to live their lives, forgetting that through out the history, people advanced in making things, establishing organizations and institutions, to be at their service, to facilitate satisfying those needs, and thus free up more of our time and resources instead of wasting them on doing the most basic and simple things because we have to learn the lessons by ourselves. Why do we ignore all the lessons that have been passed to us through generations? Do we go back to make a phone call to a central system and ask an operator to dial it for us instead of using our wireless phones? Why do we have to go back thinking we can live without schools, enough money, social interactions, cultural exchanges; without good nutrition, sleep, giving and receiving emotions? So often, people spend so much time, effort, and energy trying to fight or ignore the outcomes of civilizations and humanity, that they forget why they chose to do so to begin with. Years may pass and then they may come to the conclusion that it would have been nice to have a stable shelter or the ability to obtain one, have the ability and freedom to travel, have insurance, etc. Why do we tend to ignore all the past experiences and lessons learned of our ancestors when it comes to conducting our personal ways of life?