Science, Architecture and Politics
A pioneering female nuclear scientist, a gifted architect with a love for movies and theater, and a former prime minister of Great Britain head up today’s ODD listings. If you have ever had a bone scan
– say, for a fracture in your foot due to a rugby injury
– you have Katherine Lathrop to thank for this injection of technology and high concentrations of isotopes into your blood stream. Just think of it as augmenting the ’stardust’
concentrations in your body. But as the saying goes from the new U2 album, ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’
– ‘from the brightest star comes the blackest hole.’ Lathrop also was a participating researcher on the Manhattan Project
– seems like we all have a little creation and destruction in all of us, with or without extra radioactive isotopes. Speaking of creation and destruction, Henry G. Greene created some of the more memorable theater houses across the United States during the ’60s and ’70s, only to have his artistry usurped by
24-screen movie theaters of our current super-size era with reclining chairs, 15 minute advertisements (once only reserved for television) and five dollar bags of popcorn . Let’s hope that venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheater
, naturally formed and humanly augmented, however close to the now-defunct Rocky Flats Atomic Energy Plant
, remain out of the path of human destruction. As Bono said during U2’s famous concert at Red Rocks
back in 1983, ‘Hey, this is Red Rocks!’ before climbing the stage scaffolding to get to the top of one of the rock walls that forms part of the natural amphitheater. During this concert, U2 was touring their newly released album ‘War,’
a guitar-driven journey into the nature of world war, Thatcherism, nuclear holocaust, religious politics, and America-as-Pop-Icon. Considering the history (and the last name), of our last ODD-ity for today James Callaghan, we wonder what he made of this album and these rebel rockers from Ireland.
Whether you believe in réincarnation
, Resurrection
, or your stardust
merging with the universe, thanks for reminding us that life isn’t necessarily a Dead End
.
