Can We Talk 2

Sure Knowledge or Research

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” ― Albert Einstein

         My first thought on reading this was that this is going to be my motto from now on. When someone thinks or accuses me of not knowing what I'm going, I'll say, "It's research!" So the recipe didn't turn out: it's okay, it was only research.

         My problem is I've been doing research my whole life. Pretty soon, I'll be ready for the real thing. However, I guess we only get do-overs in the laboratory.

         As far as writing is concerned, I have a lot of research. I fell in love with Westerns a few years ago and decided to write about them. I have my theories to prove. So every time I read a Western, watch a movie or old TV show, or history and geography books, I call it research. I have mental notes and opinions, and I have written ones. I envision a non-fiction book of short takes, that could be used as a resource for writers or movie makers. I can even picture a documentary bringing it a little more to life for the casual viewer. The difficult part would be getting permission for photographs and still shots. I know there is a wave of interest right now, but I spend another year or two doing this research, the wave will die.

         I realize too late in life that I like doing research. I've always loved my encyclopedias, which are out- dated now. I should have been a fact checker for a magazine, but even magazines are leaving with the ice bergs. Nobody checks facts any longer, and much of what is on the Internet is incorrect. I'm sure that if I had become a scientist, repeating the same experiment with slight variations might have been tedious, until that moment when I made a discovery of something new, or something that works. Scientists, genealogists, historians, writers, whomever, all have that same thrill of discovery, of putting the pieces together meaningfully.