Two girls on a field trip, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico / June 2007
Two Juarez girls hamming it up at the NASA traveling exhibition that was shown at the Centro Municipal de las Artes in downtown Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico in May through June. For some reason, unlike the mechanical drawings, photos and other miscellania accompanying the exhibit, the dummy Astronauts drew great laughter and spirited behavior from most onlookers.
Editorial Comment
Perhaps the mirth comes from the absurdity of NASA’s $16.4 Billion budget and the fact that most people on this planet are hungry and poor and the cost of one space suit is more than an average campesino or low income urbino makes in a lifetime. Perhaps it’s the Lightness of Being of being an emerging nation as opposed to a declining empire. Perhaps that’s the behavior one feels on a field trip ( I remember that). Perhaps it’s just being a teenager in a room displaying the equipment and ambition of a species dedicated to propagation in the universe forever while not being able to pursue sound ecological practices or end nuclear proliferation so as to propagate it on the planet Earth.
Perhaps it was the combination of being in Juarez, Space Suits, all of the above, youth, freedom and the interaction with a voyeur with a camera.
It was a fun late Spring day.
