Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal: Attending to detail

The color of blood

By James Knudsen

First, I’m going to tell you what I was going to write about. Then, I’m going to write about what I’m writing about.

    I was going to write about horseshoe crabs. The inspiration came from a piece I’d heard on NPR about the medical industry and its connection to the horseshoe crab. Turns out, any piece of medical equipment that is going to come in contact with the human body first gets tested by the horseshoe crab. Ok, it’s not really tested by a horseshoe crab in a lab coat, that would be silly. But, it is subjected to testing that is based on horseshoe crab’s blue blood. Yes, it’s blue. Not bluish, not patrician, but blue like a Dodgers baseball cap or a Dodgers fan’s face during the World Series. The blue tint is a product of copper in the crab’s system as opposed to the iron in ours. But that’s not what’s important to this story. Horseshoe crab blood gels whenever it comes in contact with bacteria. This attribute makes it extremely useful for ensuring the sterility of medical components. It also helps that horseshoe crabs have seen pretty much every form of bacteria because they’ve been around for 450 million years. Four-hundred, fifty million years – that’s the part that got my attention.
    Maybe it got yours too. You see, it just occurred to me that people who follow Moristotle & Co. probably listen to NPR and probably heard this story already. My apologies. But, did you hear that part about them being on this planet for a period of time before the dinosaurs that is equal to the period of time dinosaurs were around before us? In fewer words, horseshoe crabs are to dinosaurs what dinosaurs are to us.
    That was the part that got me. For what might as well be half a billion years these odd little creatures have occupied their niche. And, I’m pretty sure it’s not bio-medical germ detectors. From an evolutionary standpoint, they do what any number of other marine arthropods do, munch bits of organic debris and make more horseshoe crabs. When I took zoology in college, I always found it interesting the way life-forms had found the little unoccupied links in the food chain and found a way to make a life there.
    But, the idea of niche, of finding one’s place, one’s purpose, and to have done it so long ago, and to still be doing it so long after, that is still daunting to someone with an overdeveloped sense of “why?” “Why am I here? Why did I study theatre? Why is the world so fascinating and yet so confounding? Why, why, why?” When everything is so interesting nothing is compelling. That’s what I was going to write about.

I realized that when searching for something to write about it is often wise to look to what is right in front of you. Presently, what is right in front of me is a trip to Disneyland that will be completed by the time this column appears. Disneyland (wish I had the font that makes that ‘D’), The Magic Kingdom, The Happiest Place on Earth. My earlier realization about the listeners of NPR and readers of Moristotle & Co. comes into play once again. I was raised to look down my nose, which is neither patrician nor blue-blooded, at things so bourgeois as Disneyland. The crowds, the noise, the ceaseless consumerism, they are all there.
    But, it is also a place that has provided a livelihood to friends, colleagues, and former students. It is a place where Industrial Art still thrives. Ordinary things like railings and benches have been rendered with an artist’s eye. It is a place where attention to detail is an obsession to be embraced. The theatre practitioner in me rejoices to see every moment accounted for. It is a place where everything is interesting and I am compelled to experience its noise and crowds and detail once again.
_______________
Copyright © 2014 by James Knudsen

Comment box is located below