Page 28 - Voices-2021-05

GLEANINGS FROM THE GROVE

Paul Fanning, DTM

As many of you know, I love a good story. Stories some of the outlandish ideas of fantasy from
are a way of expressing the mundane and making the 1940’s and 1950’s that we take for granted

them vibrant, alive, and influential on our daily today as “normal.”
lives. There are, of course, many views as well A movie series that I liked and admired for its
as ways to tell a story. Let me tell you one of my blend of comedy, history, and reality is “Back to
favorites. the Future” and the two sequels. The two main

I love a good science fiction story that often characters are “Doc” Brown and Marty McFly.
makes the impossible plausible, the fantasy a They travel “back in time” or “to the future” in
reality, and the bizarre a modicum of normalcy. I each movie, often with humorous goings on as
grew up (some think not!) in an era of rocket ships well as a dose of morality thrown in for good

that barely left the earth’s atmosphere, computers measure. The franchise is special to me as I lived
the size of buildings, and a communication where many of the train scenes and the housing
device called a “telephone” that was attached to development in part two were filmed. One of my
a wire screwed into the wall. I read sci fi books Sunday School kids found a portion of the script

and magazines, dreamed about interstellar travel, left behind when the film crew finished at one
a computer so small it could fit in your watch, of the sites. The movie explored the concept of
and “mobile” devices without wires. Between time travel and how one must be careful not to
“Twilight Zone” and some new television show change the simplest thing without consequence

(gasp! It was in color even!) called “Star Trek,” that we now call the “butterfly effect.”
more and more of these dreams, these concepts Is time travel plausible? Einstein thought so!
of communication, travel, and exploration Thus, I believe in my simple understanding of
became common place. We now can laugh at what that entails. We can indeed travel in time.

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