Lessons for Wise Living

This summer I have been travelling, and on one of my trips, I ended up in Iowa, USA. This is one of the five main farming states in the USA: California, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, and Minnesota. The farmland stretches for mile after mile; as far as the eye can see! We stayed on a farm, and in one of my jobs (apart from my initial reason for being there, which was to give a series of talks on the Bible), I helped ferry vehicles from the main farm site to the corn fields they were spraying. On another occasion, I sat in a 'Semi' (we would call it a forty-footer or an articulated lorry) on several trips from the corn bins to the depot where the corn was weighed, checked and then offloaded, waiting transport by freight train to various locations to be processed as either renewable fuel (ethanol) or animal feed. It was, for me, a good reminder that it takes hard work, the right weather and a lot of planning and logistics to earn money and make a living. The guys I talked to were very aware that a good year versus a bad one was often out of their hands. They were dependent on rainfall levels, how hot the growing season was, and many other factors. Mostly, it is out of their control. It's significant that people who work the land or are in high-risk occupations (mining, fishing, etc.) are often more aware of how fragile life is and are more down-to-earth.

The Space Race

 

In the 1960s there was a Christian song in the songbook, “Youth Praise” which commenced with the words, ‘We are in a great race to put rockets in space’.  It certainly reflected the reality of the times.  In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 from Kazakhstan and though it was hardly bigger than a large beach ball it was the first man-made object to orbit the earth.  It was hailed as a great victory for Russia and communism, though the Americans pretended it was of little consequence with President Eisenhower claiming it as ‘a small ball in the air’.  Yet the Americans knew they had lost that initial race as Sputnik 1 travelled overhead every ninety minutes, every day for three months.  The US government’s reaction was to increase the budget of its space programme from $0.5 Billion to $10.5 Billion.

Later the Soviets launched Sputnik 2 with a dog inside named Laila and that was the first animal in space but it did not survive.  America’s attempt two months after Sputnik 1 to send a rocket into space managed to reach  just one metre before it fell back and exploded.  It was sometimes referred to as ‘Flopnik’. In 1959 the Soviets again got a first by sending Luna 2 to the surface of the moon.  That was the first spaceship from earth to reach the moon, though it crashed on landing.  In 1960 with America trying to catch up with space exploration they launched a satellite to study weather patterns. The Soviets launched Sputknik 5 carried two dogs, Belka and Strelka and they both survived the experience.