Tell us when you had a Eureka insight or Christopherian experience

“Just as Christopher Columbus challenged the notion that the earth is flat by sailing ‘beyond the edge’ and thereby showing its curved shape…” (Armstrong, p. 152).

•Seeing something differently than what you expected…
•A change in the way you look at the world or how the world appears to you…
•Some sort of revelation, Eureka-aha, epiphany…


One of my most arresting experiences was seeing my first dump. We were in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on vacation during the summer. Dad and a friend were driving around with a couple of us boys.
We stopped at a dump outside of town. I'd never seen a dump before nor had I ever thought about what happened to trash, et al. (I must therefore have been quite young.)
The day was warm, sunny, and bright. Lovely green trees surrounded the dump. What we saw was utterly grotesque in my eye.
It was so ugly I couldn't comprehend it. There was so much trash it almost made me sick. Of course, it stunk. It seemed senseless.
I remember trying to ask Dad where it came from and why it had to be here. He answered, but not to my satisfaction. I couldn't stomach his answers. I urged him to leave soon.

Feb. 4, 1999—Crossing the Great Plains in a car is much better than by horse, but it's still a tedious trip. I've wondered how the pioneers maintained their sanity. Some years ago on a road trip back to the Midwest (with those wide-open spaces that give one time to think), I passed the time change line someplace in Nebraska and began to wonder when time zones were devised. I knew from a sunset table I had for bird hunting that each degree of longitude equated to 15 minutes of sunlight. Yet a degree of longitude was 30 or 60 miles and farther than anyone travelling by covered wagon could cover in a day.
So when did time zones become necessary? About the time that one could notice a change in the sun, actually lack of movement if moving west. When did people start moving fast enough to be concerned if they were experiencing the day at the same rate as others? The earliest technology that transported people that fast was the train. So I figured time zones were instituted about 1860 when there was a transcontinental railroad moving people east to west or west to east faster than the sun moved across the sky and the day time would be noticeably different from the time one got on the train to the time one got off.

Giving Blood
Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at Stanford Hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes, I'll do it if it will save Liz." As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away?" Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood.