Some people say that life is a circle; but to me, it’s more like a helix, the shape exhibited by that winding yet unsteady metal staircase we see in “The Haunting.”
I took my first step early in life, when I wanted, more than anything else, to be an actress. My mother enrolled me in drama classes at the Northridge Theater Guild, where I studied for nearly two years, and also took every drama class that Nobel Jr. High School offered at the time.
By the age of 13, my interests had changed. I no longer wished to act. I began to understand math for the first time in my life, and I planned a career in science. I studied diligently, earning straight As until a bout with high school chemistry knocked me off course. I’d had a difficult time with some of the concepts, and sought my teacher out between classes. Before I could ask my question, I noticed his eyes resting on my chest.
“You have a lot of buttons on that blouse,” he said. “That makes it harder.”
Dumbstruck, I backed away, unable to formulate my query. I told no one of the incident and struggled through the class, never asking him a question, again. My midterm grade of “B” ruined my straight-A average; and when I received a “C” as my final score, I decided to drop out of a science career path, entirely.
Yet that setback proved to be temporary. After several years of perambulations both inside and outside college—which included working as a “Kelly Girl” temp in Silicon Valley industry, studying at Oxford, and traveling to countries including England, Ireland, Greece, Israel, and Egypt, all with money I’d made as a clerk-typist, I returned to school and earned a bachelor’s degree in math.
My first job provided no path to career success, for a variety of “good reasons.” For instance, I hadn’t gone to Stanford. I held only a bachelor’s degree. I had no contacts within the government that might assist my career in a government contracting firm. And I noticed that while I received the same “A” grade, and the same number of points in a graduate class as a fellow employee already working in a discipline I’d wanted to enter, I was nevertheless turned down when I sought the firm’s more challenging work.
I returned to school to complete my master’s degree, and had the great good fortune to meet professors and students whose friendship and influence were to be lifelong. I studied remote sensing, observation of the earth from spaceborne and airborne platforms, earned the M. S., and promptly returned to industry. Within a few months, the Berlin Wall was down, the Cold War ended, and engineers with advanced degrees and decades of experience were turned out into the streets, our nation finding no further use for their professional assets.
Every time I think of that deliberate, massive waste of talent and the disruption of lives and livelihoods by a government that had, for decades, encouraged students into math and science careers, I bristle! And I note that the only film of the era that depicted, in any way, a laid-off aerospace engineer was “Falling Down,” which had about as much to do with an under-reported national tragedy occurring right before our eyes as “Alice in Wonderland” has with the opioid crisis.
Film can do a better job—of bringing important situations to light, of creating characters who are real, and not cardboard cut-outs, and of expanding the viewpoint of events—opening up the lens, if you will—to points of view that have not typically been heard. Surely an engineer or two, creating content based on first-hand experience, will be an asset in this regard.
My initial project is “When the Government Lied: Waco’s Infrared Deception,” a teaching endeavor which appears here. I have many, many stories in the on-deck circle. I am not a flash-in-the-pan.