We’ve had a bit of a heat wave in my region over the past week, and I haven’t had much inspiration to write anything, other than a comment on “Doctor Happiness’s” blog about how karma might stem from and reflect the formation of strange attractor patterns amidst the complex wiring of the brain, and likewise on the higher but still complex plane of human society.

Recall from my last blog post that strange attractors are wobbly and yet stable patterns (or “vibrations”) of activity and relationship between the various factors that define the “state” of an organism, be that organism an ant, a human, a colony of ants, or a society of humans. Strange attractors are known to be rare, and yet rather robust and self-sustaining once started. So perhaps karma is explainable in terms of chaos theory. The concept of fractals and of sensitivity to initial conditions can help one to understand what the eastern sages say about karma, especially how little things can cause big effects and how patterns shown in little things teach us about the patterns of much greater things.

But otherwise, about the only thing on my mind (other than the whole health care reform donnybrook along with the daily concerns of work and family relations) has been the announcement of a new Ken Burns documentary to be aired this autumn on PBS, about the National Parks. Some folk are wondering whether Burns is aiming too low this time, after taking on such big topics as WW2, jazz, baseball and the Civil War. I myself believe that Burns is trying to do something more ambitious, i.e. aiming at something of lesser concern to most Americans as to show just how interesting and significant it really is. That’s more of a challenge for a filmmaker, and I’m sure that Burns will do a great job. Who knows; he might zoom down even further in the future as he matures in his craft, perhaps taking on the history of the gas station or the thermometer (or thermometers on the walls of gas stations!).

Burns suffers somewhat in the public eye from the great success of his first successful effort, The Civil War. He’s like an actor who became famous in a certain movie or TV show, and throughout the rest of his career was always seen by audiences as “the guy from _______” (fill in the movie or show, e.g. Star Trek, Friends, Cheers, etc.). For each Burns documentary following Civil War, I’ve expected to see an interview with Shelby Foote, or to hear a gravely voice reading a quote ending in that infamous salutation, “William Tecumseh Sherman”. Actually, Burns did bring historian Foote back for a word or two in Baseball. Unfortunately, Shelby Foote died in 2005, so he probably won’t appear in National Parks.

As to William Tecumseh Sherman, it would be a long shot; the US National Parks Service got started around 1915, while Sherman died in 1891. However, the first US government effort to protect a natural preserve began in 1872, when Yellowstone was set aside as a park on federal territory. Sherman was still the numero-uno general in the US Army until 1883, and thus he was in charge of the federal Indian wars going in the west. So it is just barely possible that Sherman might have written something at some point about Yellowstone or Old Faithful. A quick Google search shows that Sherman narrowly missed running into a Nez Perce band while visiting Yellowstone, and that he ordered an Army attack against them while there.

So I hope that Burns managed to find a relevant WTS quote in his new series; I’d love to hear that gravely voice and ponder that warrior’s ironic thoughts one more time. As with karma and fractal mathematics, it would help to show that the smaller topics (like national parks) can actually be quite big and important, when considered in the right fashion.