When night descended on my father’s brain in the year before his death, it was filled with vivid hallucinations. Among them were wild rides around the Brocken, the highest point of a small mountainous areas in Germany, called the Harz. The area was known for numerous myths, associated with witches, and immortalized in Goethe’s Faust, Walpurgisnacht. Goethe himself was quite interested in the occult and there is still a Goethe Weg at the Brocken, Goethe’s Path, commemorating where he walked and explored. Clearly, part of the canon of German literature, something each German child was exposed to, made such a vivid impression on my dad that it recurred, 60 years later, with the force of hellish nightmares, now indistinguishable from reality.

The Brocken was also site of an experiment between science and the occult, around the time my father was 10 years old, in 1932. In honor of  the centennial of Goethe’s death a skeptic was invited to try his hand at magic: turning a goat into a little boy. As the linked article aptly states: “Spoiler alert – science won.” The fascinating – and ludicrous –  details can be read below.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-brocken-experiment-failed-to-change-a-goat-into-a-boy?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=eae8ac97a1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_05_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-eae8ac97a1-66214597&ct=t(Newsletter_5_11_2017)&mc_cid=eae8ac97a1&mc_eid=1765533648

How weird ist that? We are talking the year when Heisenberg receives the Nobel prize in Physics, Neumann establishes the foundation for quantum mechanics, Thorndike finds experimental evidence for the theory of special relativity, Anderson observes a positron, ascorbic acid is discovered to fight scorbutic disease, the first sulfonamide drug is patented, shall I go on? And the population, including attending press, believes magic done right can create a boy from a goat?

The world is a strange place; alas, not much has changed. Except it seems like the magical thinkers are winning in a republican-shaped world.

http://www.salon.com/2014/12/20/7_things_americans_think_are_more_plausible_than_global_warming_partner/

With that said – a happy mother’s day to those who are and a happy day to those who aren’t  – with hopes for  a shared sentiment: