You probably wouldn’t suspect, standing outside the house at 3013 Bridle Path in Friendswood, Texas… 6,389 square feet, priced at $1.27 million back in 2015…
…that the home theater had been designed to emulate the control room of a Federation spaceship similar to the Starship Enterprise of Star Trek fame.
In this case, the ship’s “plan”, displayed on the wall, indicates that you are aboard the USS Cyrus.
The following photos by David W. Payne Photography were shared on the Chron.com website.
How do we explain this enigma called the “United States of America”? The land of the free, the home of the brave… where a ostentatious suburban home can measure 6,389 square feet, while 570,000 American citizens are homeless? And millions more are spending in excess of half their monthly income, just trying to cover their rent?
According research posted on the Economic Round Table website on January 11 by reporters Daniel Flaming, Anthony W. Orlando, Patrick Burns and Seth Pickens, the US will, by 2023, likely have over one million “working-age” adults dwelling in homeless shelters, sleeping on park benches, or crashing on friends’ couches, as a result of evictions and job losses brought on by the coronavirus pandemic… when an additional 600,000 people might be added to the current throng of homeless Amricans in the coming months.
That’s a frightening prediction.
Earlier this week, I wrote a short editorial about a new Town of Pagosa Springs website, mypagosa.org, aimed at encouraging more citizen participation in municipal planning decisions. Citizens are invited to respond to surveys about the two “Featured Projects” posted on that website: the proposed “Yamaguchi South” public recreation project, and the proposed “Public Arts Program”.
I find it fascinating that our Town government is planning to spend millions of tax dollars on yet another recreation facility. Can it be that our municipal bureaucrats have not noticed the effects of a year-long pandemic and a partly-shuttered economy on the working people of Pagosa Springs… who were already struggling to find affordable housing well before the arrival of the coronavirus?
That’s the Town government’s priority, in 2021? Right now, we need more pickleball courts?
I have complained often, in these Daily Post pages, about the millions of dollars the Town government has spent over the past decade on recreational amenities, tourism marketing, and recreation programming — while allocating mere pennies, in comparison, to the community’s worsening affordable housing crisis. You might think I would have learned my lesson by now — that complaining gets you nowhere.
I haven’t learned yet.
Readers may have noticed, I’ve been sharing images from the original Star Trek TV show in this editorial series…
Back in 1964, a TV screenwriter and producer named Gene Roddenberry came up with a curious concept for a new TV show. He pitched his idea to the networks as a “Western in outer space” — a so-called “Wagon Train to the Stars”… but he privately told friends that he was modeling it on Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, intending each episode to act on two levels: as a suspenseful adventure story and as a contemporary social commentary. Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive political agenda reflective of America’s emerging counter-culture of the 1960s, though he was not fully forthcoming to the networks about this.
He wanted Star Trek to show what humanity might develop into, “if it would learn from the lessons of the past, most specifically by ending violence…” The show began its run on NBC on September 8, 1966 — running for three years (79 episodes) as a weekly space drama before being canceled by the network.
Many of the conflicts and political dimensions of the show were allegories of contemporary cultural issues: war and peace, the value of personal loyalty, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, economics, racism, religion, human rights, sexism, feminism, and the role of technology.
One of the more striking features of the show — in 1966 — was the multi-cultural crew, an idea initially opposed by the network.
Here is the bridge crew from 1966. Back row, James Doohan as Scotty (Scottish), Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov (Russian), Nichelle Nichols as Uhura (African), George Takei as Hikaru Sulu (Asian). The front row consists, it seems, of Americans — DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy, William Shatner as James T. Kirk, Majel Barrett as Christine Chapel — along with the ship’s highest ranking alien, Leonard Nimoy as Spock.
A crew representing a wide range of cultures, working together to bring peace, justice and understanding to the universe.
Producer Roddenberry stated: “[By creating] a new world with new rules, we could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages, and fortunately they all got by the network. If you talked about purple people on a far off planet, they [the television network] never really caught on. They were more concerned about cleavage. They actually would send a censor down to the set to measure a woman’s cleavage to make sure not too much of her breast was showing…”
Ah, yes. Priorities. Measure the cleavage.
Obviously, one of the highest priorities in Colorado, as we head toward February, is the efficient distribution of the relatively meager number of vaccine doses being distributed by the federal government. This week, the state received about 83,000 doses. Given that the state population is about 5.7 million, that shipment will vaccine about 1.5% of the state with a ‘first dose’. Two doses are needed for the optimum protection, according to the clinical trials on both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
At that rate of vaccine distribution, it would take over two years to vaccinate everyone in Colorado… according to my pocket calculator.
Governor Jared Polis stated this week that Colorado has the ability to administer up to 300,000 doses per week — or more — if only that number could be supplied. He expressed his hope that the distributions will improve with a new administration in Washington.
With any luck, the message will be heard.
Other messages, perhaps, will be heard as well.