If I Had a Chance

image from the Guardian.com

A friend recently posted this question on Facebook, “If you had a chance to go to the concert of someone deceased, who would you choose?”

Aside from realizing that she should have used the word ‘whom’ (perhaps I’ve been spending too much time in edit mode) it occurred to me that I’d rather sit in on a lecture being given by Stephen Jay Gould. An evolutionary biologist, he wrote essays for Natural History magazine. Many of which were published as collections. These were my only opportunities to experience his knowledge and humor. Hens' Teeth and Horses' Toes, and The Flamingo's Smile are two that come to mind.

But the original question was about a concert performer. Okay. Freddie Mercury and Queen. It would have been loud and rowdy with lots of flash. “We Are the Champions” of the world!

And my mind was off and running. Of course there was Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers and activists. His novels presented the world from a little left of reality, a point of view that suited me perfectly. So maybe lunch with him. He was a WWII American prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, during the firebombing by Allies. He was named Humanist of the Year in 1992 by the American Humanist Association.

Which brings to mind Isaac Asimov, a past president of the AHA and prolific author of science, both fiction and nonfiction. His science fiction is generally considered ‘hard’ science fiction meaning that his vision is consistent with what is a believable extrapolation from what science knows today. And his nonfiction is brilliant and clearly stated. From Atom I finally got the answer to my question about electricity. When you flip the switch in your living room, is it a particular electron generated in a particular power plant that has traveled down those miles of line that lights your world? Or is it an electron that was already in that bulb and is excited by an electron beside it in the wire that was excited by an electron beside it, and so on along those miles of line back to the generating plant?

Or instead of a concert or lunch with someone, I think I would like to march with Gandhi or Dr. King.

No. I think lunch with Margaret Burke-White. She photographed Gandhi and Stalin and so many interesting famous and nonfamous people in between.

Or Abigail Adams who was in on the ground floor at the founding of our nation. A competent and independent woman who would have many other interesting people at her dining table. Including Benjamin Franklin, of whom she probably disapproved in many ways, I’m sure I would think him a better story teller than her dear husband John.

I’ve got it!

Lunch with the artist Georgia O’Keefe who left New York City when it was the center of the world and embraced the wide open lands of New Mexico.

Dinner with Carl Sagan to plan our out-migration from Earth.

But, best of all, to wake up and have breakfast with Robin Williams during one of his quiet times between mania and depression.