Thursday, January 10: It was a truly wonderful experience talking with Professor Oliver Headley. He squeezed me in for 2 p.m. so that I could get his testimony for my I Testify column for the January 13 edition of Easy magazine.
The actual testimony took second place after I mentioned “solar”. The word electrified him.
Instantly his eyes lit up and with the excitement of a little child playing with his favourite toy (or computer game), he effortlessly rattled off facts and figures about developments in solar energy all over the world. I was in the presence of a distinguished Barbadian scientist who is very excitedly positioning this tiny rock to play a big role in helping our planet obtain its energy without destroying itself, as he predicts it will if we continue on our present course. I was also in the presence of a most humble and down-to-earth human.
“Oh shoot,” he interrupts himself, “I was to make this call”. He consults the palm of his hand – not the papers on his desks – and makes a phone call.
Then he comes back to me.
“I think I’ve always kept my childish curiosity,” he said and then went on to tell of how he used to build rockets on Guy Fawkes Night (November 5) and was inspired to experiment with homemade rocket fuel after the Russians shot their first Sputnik satellite into space. I have always enjoyed my science,” he said, “It has always been fun”.
There were three or four other telephone interruptions but he always came right back to where we left off. Professor Headley is of the opinion that much of what we are doing now in the name of science and technology is basically immoral. There is too much money-grabbing and there is still too much misery. He tells me, jokingly of course, that his wife does not agree with him for not going after the money.
“Take for instance what we are doing now – cutting down all these trees and putting in golf courses and skyscrapers and that kind of thing. Sooner or later the planet is going to require it of us.”
Short pause. Then: “If I were a member of a lesser species I would be asking God to take Homo sapiens off this plant. We have persecuted the planet with extermination of other species. The history of Homo sapiens is the history of extermination.
“All kinds of species are threatened because we go and destroy their habitat, or we pollute the water and the living things in the water die.
“The bison were almost exterminated. The turtles . . . we throw plastic bags in the sea and the turtles swallow them and it blocks their alimentary canal and the turtles starve to death; and then we go and redevelop the beaches and when the turtles come to lay their eggs there is no way to lay them because there is a hotel where you had a beach . . . so the whole eco-system damage that we have been doing is, well . . . unrighteous”.
I started wondering why Sidney Simmons had recommended I get the professor’s testimony. He seemed more bent on solar and the ecology. I could not get him to talk about himself. He told me what other people said. Yet, I did not feel he was dodging. It was simply that this man is so engrossed in life and enjoying everything he does and finds that he does not even look for too long at the results. I asked him: “What does Oliver Headley say of Oliver Headley? Would you say you are blessed?”
Pause: “I believe I would have to come to that conclusion. As an experimental physicist I would have to say that the experimental data indicates that I have done better than I should have. And if you have done better than you should have, then you are blessed”.