At the center of things

     Wherever you go in the world there are  people convinced that that particular place, no matter how unlikely, is the center of the universe.  We are in Manchester, England because that is the closest international airport to the start of the Coast to Coast trail.  We have few days before we begin walking tho and Manchester is a pleasant place to spend the day.  It also happens to be the Center of the Universe.  I bet you didn't know that.  
      The Museum of Science and Industry here makes  a persuasive argument that it is so. Manchester was the heartland of the British Industrial Revolution, which funded the expansion of the Empire which, among other things, arbitrarily drew the borders of nations that ultimately do not necessarily cohere, the most recent examples being Iraq and the tragedy that is Syria.  Is that stretching the filament of causation too fine?  Well, did you know that Frederich Engles arrived in Manchester in 1842 to document the misery of the factory workers and met with Karl Marx at Chetham's Library in downtown Manchester.  And you know what that led to: that whole Cold War thing.  
        Manchester has evidently long been a hotbed of liberalism and radical thinking, promoting  such dangerous ideas as universal suffrage and trade unions. The local newspaper, the Guardian, (liberal and not ashamed of it )  is not far off from its 200th year of publication.  The Guardian ( along with the Washington Post) published the revelations of Edward Snowden. (And a big thank you to both of them and let's hope Mr Snowden is making progress in learning Russian.  As a former Russian major myself, I'm sure he is since it takes a mind like a computer to process all those damn declensions.) 
       Perhaps I found the evidence of the centrality of Manchester to Everything particularly convincing because I haven't really slept in 30 hours.  And though we were at the museum at midday  in Manchester, it was 6:00 a.m. in the city from which our flight departed, Washington DC. Where, as it happens, there is a sizable contingent of people who believe in their hearts that they are the Center of the Universe.