And what if the seed was never planted?

Consistent with our "tradition" which we are trying to build and abide by, we have to tell a story and ask a few provocative questions about it.

One day, visiting a Science and Technology Museum somewhere, we ran across and viewed a great IMAX presentation, explained better here:

www.nancy4caves.net

The story is that two biology lady teachers are also passionate cave-trekkers. One of them, Nancy, has gotten an approved release from her classroom duties on condition that her class back home can "travel" with her through the caves she is exploring via all the tools available via the Internet. The two teachers are systematically exploring unexplored caves and other places where life exists against all odds. They search for would be future medicine, to be based on adapting in the health provisioning field the natural adaptation of the micro-organisms they find in said very improbably life supporting environments. The courage, passion, dedication and determination of the two ladies are much beyond inspiring. We find the teaching/learning model fabulously rich.

... hold that thought for a second...

One day many years back, a child back in another country far remote (and not so much known, unfortunately) from where we write from now--Philadelphia USA--, lived through an interesting happening... they ran out of cooking gas while camping at the sea-side...

No biggie, one can say... except in said place and time there was no Walmart to go to and buy a new gas canister and get on with camping cooking...

What happened instead is certainly related to the family's "addiction" to coffee, but by far not only to that.

It turns out the gas ran out right when the mother was boiling water for making coffee, after lunch.

Learning about the gas running out, the father thought for a few seconds, looked around a little, and asked "son, can you help?" The son showed interest to help and was waiting for instructions...

Long story short, within just a few minutes two camping chairs were about 1 1/2 foot from each other, a used tire standing on top of the elbow supports of both, transparent plastic foil wrapped neatly in place and water added on top of the foil to make a convex lens. The contraption was placed in the sun and a yogurt glass with water and coffee grounds in it was placed in the focal point of the impromptu lens, thus gathering concentrated solar rays.

Within less than fifteen minutes, the parents were enjoying their solar-made coffee while the son was still astound at the new application of something he has read before in Jules Verne's "Mysterious Island", where the water based lens was "built" with the two glass covers of two pocket watches and absent matches was used to start a fire with sun concentrated rays...

... can we now remember the story above, about the biology teachers/researchers exploring caves?...

Some three decades later the story about using sun light to make coffee gets told (and acted--chairs and used tire and foil and water and all) to the same child who was watching the IMAX movie about the inspiring story above with the teachers and exploring the caves in search of would be future medicine...

What if for some reason the first family never ran out of cooking gas camping? Or, more to the present, what if the second family never got to visit the Science and Technology Museum showing the IMAX movie about Nancy the teacher, her colleague and their exploring the caves?

What if the seed was never planted?

How can we make sure that more such seeds are planted every day, by every parent and school teacher everywhere?