Problems = Opportunities
In 2700 b.c. Emperor Whing Tee asked his wife Ce
Ling Shee to try to find out what was damaging his Mulberry trees. The Empress
first noticed that a drab-colored moth was laying tiny eggs on a Mulberry leaf,
each hatching into a caterpillar that ejected a thread for three days which it
wrapped around its body until it formed a cocoon. She dropped the cocoon into
hot water and saw a single thread begin unwinding itself. She had discovered silk.
The Empress observed that fineness and beauty of the silk thread. She unbound
it completely and found it to be l/2 mile long from that
single cocoon. And she thought that these fine threads might be made into
cloth.
Soon a loom was
developed on which they could be woven. That silk cloth that was woven on their
loom was in such demand that later Romans are said to have <; weighed
the silk before buying it and then paid an equal weight of gold for it.
For more than
3000 years only the Chinese knew the secret of silk. Then in 1 a.d. 522 Roman Emperor Justinian sent
two monks to buy silk from China Europe two
silkworm eggs and Mulberry tree seeds in their hollow monks' staff. They were
apparently the first industrial pirates. From * these two silkworm eggs the
Roman Empire acquired enough silkworms to make it partially independent from China
Like so many
serendipitous events, the discovery of silk came while trying to solve a
problem. Before long the business of growing Mulberry trees was for the sole
purpose of providing moths with leaves on which to lay their eggs so that the
production of silk could be increased.
Nothing like
silk had ever appeared before in fine fabrics. It brought about a world of
revolution in fashions. The very word silk brings to mind something that is
soft, lustrous or luxurious. The wealthy of the world have always dressed themselves
in silken clothes.
It's important to
look for solutions instead of trying to avoid problems, so when j you have a
problem of some kind, remember that you also have an equal opportunity.^
Source: Frank Morgan “Rambling
through Time,” Fort Lauderdale
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