I'm Right Again Dot Com 


A new commentary every Wednesday        January 25, 2017


Sabrina Gonzales Pasterski

    I write this to honor my Mother, Ethel Phillips Richardson. Had she been alive, Mom would have been in The Woman's March somewhere this past weekend.

    A smallpox survivor who lost twin brothers to that disease when she was barely able to remember the poverty into which she was born, my Mom was the business manager of our family, a continual inspiration to her three children and firm supporter of her husband in his business pursuits. Dad realized her potential early in their marriage and promptly turned his paycheck over to her every payday. From then on, she was Treasurer and Equal Partner.

    However, there is a family legend surrounding the purchase of their first automobile early in their marriage. Dad was shocked when she expressed her desire to drive it. At first he refused to give her a key, but relented when her brother, my uncle Byron, taught her how to jump-start it. Mom was a very determined person.

     Dad was of an age when women were encouraged to just be great homemakers and was nonplussed when after their three children reached adulthood, Mom enrolled in courses at Southern Illinois University in order to become a nurse and was engaged in serving elderly patients for the remainder of her life.

    I recently learned about this week's subject, Sabrina Pasterski, from the Internet. The niche in our world's population that deals with singularity theorems, string theory and virtual cosmology, is occupied by only a handful of geniuses. This 23 year old millennial from Chicago is one of them. I am sure that the world will soon hear of the achievements of Sabrina Pasterski. Write her name down someplace.

  According to the Chicago Tribune, she began taking flying lessons at 12 and once a licensed pilot, built her own single engine aircraft from a kit at age 14. She is now investigating High Energy Physics: the nature of gravity in relation to quantum mechanics and space time while aiming at a doctorate at Harvard.

     Ms. Pasterski, calls herself "a proud, first generation, Cuban-American, graduate of Chicago Public Schools and Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

    The secret to this phenomenon's success: a conjugation of genes of course, and parents who never told her that she should not aspire to the highest goals and the most challenging dreams. Our children can't all be budding Einsteins like Sabrina Pasterski, but we should be diligent in encouraging them, whether boy or girl, to follow their dreams. Remind them constantly, "Yes, you can!"

 

-Phil Richardson, Observer of the human condition and storyteller. "He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself." - Joseph L. Mencken

  k7os@comcast.net


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