The Imperative

I was in the Hall of Biodiversity when the thought hit me like a bullet.

I had saved this room for last, preferring to wander first through huge halls filled with gleaming minerals, reconstructions of wooly mammoths, and ferocious skeletons of fanged mammals and terrible lizards - all extinct, of course. I even ducked into a special exhibit on global warming before heading to the biodiversity hall-of-shame, preferring the exhibit's attempt at an upbeat climate prognosis over what I expected to be a gloomy report from two floors below. This is one of the reasons why I've begun to avoid museums - there's just so much dead-and-dying stuff one can take in the Age of Consequences.

Still, on a business trip to New York City in mid-November I found myself with some time on my hands, so I thought a visit to the American Museum of Natural History would be nice. Crossing my fingers as I climbed the stairs past the statue of Teddy Roosevelt, I paused in the rotunda to read some of the former president's inspirational words, set in stone:

"The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value."

"Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life."

"Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike."