What is one thing I am proud of? Do I have to choose just one? ‘

I raised three daughters who are all wonderful people, and I miss them terribly as they are off living their lives.

I created a marvelous statue from soapstone commemorating the trials of the people of El Salvador.

Recently, I am proud of completing my Master’s degree in Space Architecture from the University of Houston. During that time, I worked on two different sets of plans for proposed Lunar bases. I found working with engineers from Boeing, and ILC Dover absolutely fabulous.

As an architect, you have to consider ALL of the environments the proposed structure must inhabit, from the design and materials environments, the political environment, the financial environment and the storage environment – space projects may be stored up to a decade before being sent to space – to the transport environment, the launch environment, the space environment, and the particular locale on the Moon the base may be located. A base on the South Pole of the Moon will be subjected to sunlight 24 hours a day every day, engendering heat that will produce temperatures of 400 degrees F, while a base located on the Sea of Tranquility will endure cold that gets down to 300 degrees below zero for two weeks out of every month.

Analyzing and accounting for all of those environments gives a serious focus on the NARRATIVE part of architecture. You have to appropriately tell the complete story of what environments the project will face, and what will have to be done to deal with them. If you are building a house in Michigan, you must include the possibility of 5 feet of snow load on the roof, in order to make the roof strong enough to support that. If you are building a house in Houston, Texas, you have to include the possibility of ten inches of rain in 12 hours and 75 mile an hour winds, in your narrative of what environments the building will have to endure.

When NASA reported to Congress after the Apollo 1 disaster, they were asked what the root cause of the fire was. They responded that it was a lack of imagination. They had failed to imagine that the environment they were using could provide the conditions for a disaster.

When you are considering a project, you start with a statement and description of the project, and then you proceed to write a narrative that includes all the different parameters that you expect the project to have to meet. Then you have to translate those into engineering specifications, which are a much more specific addition to the narrative.

Your narrative drives your specifications, and your design. Somewhere along this part of the process, you begin drawing proposed designs and picturing what forms the structure will take and considering whether the forms and designs will provide solutions to the problems raised by the requirements of the project.

It all gets back to the narrative. That extends to the story we tell ourselves about who we are. Our narrative drives our decisions, and our designs for ourselves. Wikipedia says that narrative is: “… a constructive format….it is thought by some to be the fundamental nature of the self.” Who are we, but the sum of the story we tell ourselves about who we are?

And further, in world politics, our history narrative drives our decisions and opinions. What is the conflict in the Middle East, but a conflict of narratives? I grew up hearing about the Israeli narrative of the sack of the temple in Jerusalem, and the diaspora, and Exodus, and the Holocaust, and the creation of Zion as a separate righteous homeland in the holy land. I have a Muslim friend who grew up hearing about the depredations of the Turkish Empire, and European Colonialism, and the illegal displacement and confiscation of the historic Palestinian homelands.

It doesn’t matter what the tactical situation on the ground in the Middle East is, because around the world you have millions of people believing one or the other of these two diametrically opposite narratives, and the tactical situation on the ground really doesn’t matter to millions of supporters who feel that their side has been illegally wronged by the other side.

Peace isn’t a truce between two armed camps. It is when I can trust that my neighbor will protect my grandchildren and my backyard when I am not there, and my neighbor can trust that I will protect his grandchildren and his backyard when he is not there.

Until the two sides in the Middle East can reconcile their two narratives and agree to a solution where each can trust that the other will protect the other’s backyard, and their grandchildren when they are not around, their supporters around the world will continue to agitate for a violent solution that violently eradicates one or the other of the sides.

Years ago I wrote a poem:

NOT THE DESTINATION

The journey is important,
Not the destination.
The goal, the cause, the purpose
May be our motivation.
But we spend our lives —
We spend our time and effort,
Our grace, our character;
We spend our passion
Along the way.
We spend
— Us —
On the journey,
Not the Destination.
We also GAIN
— Us —
On the Journey.
We gain our friends,
Our skills and understandings,
We gain our experiences,
We GAIN
WHO WE ARE
On the journey,
Not the destination.