Across the Universe

I hope you had a chance to go though the latest issue of Public Garden magazine--the Green Leadership issue. There's a terrific interview with the keynote speaker for the conference, Dr. Charles Elachi, Director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In the interview Dr. Elachi says

We make heroes of sports and entertainment personalities. Yet I have heard that more people go to museums each year than sporting events. We need to showcase the positive things that scientists and botanists do. We need to make the plants the star of the show. I used to take my daughters to Huntington Botanical Gardens to see how amazing it is to watch a flower bloom, and understand why it is pink or any other color. The media should cover the discovery of new plants species like they do the World Series.

I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Elachi. I can't help but think, with all of the media attention that NASA is getting with the Phoenix Mars lander, how different the NASA budget would be if they hadn't started focusing on PR and marketing to get the American people interested in what they were doing. I wonder how different the world would be, our gardens would be, the global climate change discussion would be, if indeed the description of new plants species were to garner even a small amount of media attention that sporting events, NASA, and misbehaving celebrities get these days.

I'm really looking forward to Dr. Elachi's talk.