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 | learned the sick feeling that comes when one fails in helping a heifer to deliver a live calf or sees four or five cows dying on the range from having eaten larkspur. Before coming here, I was in Minnesota for a couple of years. I remember how exciting it was when, with our high-altitude--balloon experiments, we discovered that not only hydrogen, but the atoms of all the elements were in the cosmic rays coming from outer space. In thinking about my life, I arrived at some ideas about what was necessary for a fruitful life. First, you become involved in projects that you can put your heart into. They seem important. What happens, the outcome of your efforts, must make a difference to you. Second, the outcome must have, directly or indirectly, a wanted effect not only on you but on something outside you, on other people or on science or on a ranch or on a business. Third, your project must involve some effort in doing, and especially in learning and experimenting. Fourth, you have to really commit yourself by being willing to stand for something and represent the kind of person to yourself and to others that is not inconsistent with what you are involved in. In this sense, taking something seriously often means that one is conscious of acting a role. Now this subject of acting a role is a tricky one. There are many people who are thoroughly obnoxious or pathetic because they are continually acting the role of someone they would like to resemble but cannot. The standard cartoon about insane people shows them pretending to he Napoleon. I am not going to try to answer the question of when and to what degree role-playing is proper and appropriate. But I know that to get much out of what you are doing, you have to act the part and be consistent with its restraints and customs. But I cannot draw for you the fine line between devotion and obsession or between | |||
| tell the difference in taste between Mocha and Java and Guatemalan and Brazilian and Costa Rican coffees. I drank my own mixtures and occasionally served them to my friends, each type of coffee for the proper time of day. Undoubtedly my friends thought I was nuts, but I thought of myself as a connoisseur, an expert. Now, twenty-five years later, I can chuckle at my former self. But obviously at the time it was not a trivial interest, or I would not now recall it so vividly. I do not want to relive my life for you, but I would like to mention, for the purpose of example, a few more of the things that have absorbed me. During the War, it seemed enormously important to me that America develop an atomic bomb as quickly as possible and before anybody else did. Now the making of atomic bombs seems repugnant and evil to me. Before the War, I worked hard and long to help support the Spanish Loyalists against the fascist invasion of France. After the War, I gave speech after speech on the need for nuclear disarmament. During my years here in the Basin, I put my heart into my ranch, trying to make it a better one. I derived pleasure from the flourishing crops and animals, and I | ||||