Monday, July 13, 2009

Degrees of Separation

2 posts in one swell foop!

I watched a fascinating program just now on the Science Channel about networks and connections and it got me thinking about my connectedness and I must admit I was gobsmacked.
Here are a few of the connections I could think of:

  • I am 2 handshakes away from Theodore Roosevelt (my grandmother, as a very young child, attended William McKinley's funeral where she shook hands with TR.)


  • 2 from President Barak Obama
  • 3 from Queen Elizabeth II


  • 3 from Peter Jackson and therefore 4 from the entire cast of LOTR by one route; 2 and 3 by another
  • 5 from Albert Einstein


  • 2 from Liberty Hyde Bailey
  • 4 from NC Wyeth


  • 2 from Kevin Bacon (had to add that one...)
  • 2 from Paul McCartney
  • 2 from Bo Bo Brazil, originator of the Coco-bop



    (Bo Bo's on the right, not delivering a Coco-bop, but such is life.)


And I am just a nobody originally from a tiny village in Ohio, now from a small city in upstate NY. None of these are connections that I could call upon, they are merely handshakes but still it boggles my mind. Wow...


2 comments:

Carol Maltby said...

I got to shake Buzz Aldrin's hand on Dec. 5,1966, after our high school
marching band played in the Buzz Aldrin Day hometown parade to celebrate his
Gemini 12 mission.

My handshake later went to the moon!

I don't think you and I shook hands, but when I bought things at your yard sale years ago we exchanged money from hand to hand, which is close enough to be equivalent.

That makes you two away from the moon's surface.

P.M.Law said...

Wow! Thanks! Even though my Grandmother and I had terrible problems, I was always amazed that she attended McKinley's funeral and lived to see the Moon landing- what a chunk of history.
Thanks again!